Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make? • Hacker News Board

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#241

Post by jonoalderson » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

I run https://www.daysoftheyear.com, a calendar website which lists all of the weird, funny, odd etc national days, holidays events. Alternative celebrations, like 'Ferris Wheel Day' on Feb 14th (vs Valentines Day). They're all real celebrations researched, described, etc. It was built (and rebuilt several times, and constantly iterated) by me, from scratch, on WordPress, in my spare time over a period of years.

The site generates >$1.5k per month at the moment from AdSense alone, without any marketing other than SEO and broadcasting to the social followers we've accumulated. This revenue is secondary to the real and long-term value being generated in the form of large numbers of membership/email subscriptions and social followers.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#242

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

stickperson wrote: post #198

magnetpeep wrote: post #108

I started thumbnailing porn torrents at http://www.magnetpeep.com , then the Pirate Bay went down (who I used to index the torrents). I need to get back on that project.

That's an interesting technical challenge, at least to me. Could you talk a bit about it? edit: Could you also talk about SEO and how you market your site?

[deleted]

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#243

Post by adzeds » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

mantenpanther wrote: post #231

adzeds wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also just started to allow 3rd parties access to my data! I plan on expanding this functionality over the coming months as well, as there are a number of websites that keep requesting feeds and API access to the algorithm predictions.

Do you mind to disclose your data source(s)? Every now and then I've ideas in this space, but ultimately I'd need a (free or very cheap) API with history soccer results and match data - which I did not find so far.

I use a number of sources and several systems that I have built myself for collecting live score data on a daily basis.

A good place to start out would be here: http://www.football-data.co.uk/data.php

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#244

Post by wisienkas » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

stevenh wrote: post #204

doh wrote: post #102

A year ago I developed an universal video downloader site http://savedeo.com . I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but people liked the site and kept coming back. Year later the site generates around $30k a month and the operation costs are around $90 (close to nothing). The site is very lightweight as it doesn't really downloads anything. It just extracts direct links to the files. There are a great challeng…

You're pushing malware via popups. To convert one video, I was subjected to each of these popups three times: http://i.imgur.com/qqK77qp.png http://i.imgur.com/eCAtjOi.png You're probably paid per install, unless the distribution model for malware has significantly changed in the past six years. Assuming $2 per install, that would mean you're infecting 15,000 machines per month. At bare minimum, this malware you dist…

I'm just getting betting sites tab-pops

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#245

Post by dcalacci » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

mappum wrote: post #208

An Android app I made in a few hours makes $500/m from ads, and has 1M+ downloads on Google Play. It claims to be a radar detector for your phone, but that's not even possible (it's actually just completely random). The description says that it is for novelty purposes, but the reviews show people believe it works and it has a placebo effect. Most reviews say things like "I drove past a police station and it went off!…

"I seriously didn't think it would work at all but to my surprise it did so I put my phone along side my $500 Valentine detector and they both went off same time"

amazing

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#246

Post by shanecleveland » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

gedrap wrote: post #82

There was a number of similar active threads over the years, some great ideas in them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7094402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8107588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8246255 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5903868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=387789

Great resource.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#247

Post by ef4 » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 4:59 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #127

I spent all of 2014 building a SaaS for dog daycare/kennel owners. The MVP turned out beautiful. Went to a few trade shows towards the end of last year and people went crazy over the software. 0 outbound marketing yet, and already have 22 customers at $100/month. This year my goal is to scale up to 200 customers. It's a really weird market niche where no one has built software for in 10 years. Pretty neat.

This pattern works all over the place. Get to know any kind of small business owner and you'll see they need good software that doesn't exist.

Partly that's because they can be cheap and hard to market to at scale, which discourages deeper-pocketed software companies from going after them. But if you're solo and just interested in a lifestyle business with recurring revenue, it's a very reliable path.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#248

Post by alexivanovs » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 5:00 PM UTC

flippyhead wrote: post #187

http://fetching.io makes well over $1,000 / month but we're just getting started ;)

Looks good, might become a customer soon!

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#249

Post by adzeds » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

patrickk wrote: post #232

adzeds wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, the site is: http://betalyst.com/ It is just on a stock wordpress theme at the moment as I am currently developing a better site for it. The algorithm selections can be seen here: http://betalyst.com/tips-zone/ Still a lot more work to do on it! - Feel free to share are potential improvements, I am not afraid of constructive criticism! It is very much something I threw together to get the algorithm into the wild…

Nice job! You're probably aware of this site https://betegy.com/ maybe you can get some ideas from them (not affiliated). You should discuss your site at /r/soccerbetting my email is in my profile if you want to discuss further.

Yeah, I am away of the Betegy site. They offer a paid service.

That is not something I am looking to do, I would prefer to hand out all my tips for free.

I have on two occasions run my predictions vs theirs and have beaten them on both occasions which is good.

I may set up a tracker between both algorithms over a longer timescale to see which is more accurate.

Re: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?

#250

Post by ambr » Tue, Jan 06, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

How are you guys marketing these?

I'm not making anything close to that but I've worked on a side project of mine for months with no gain. At this point I'm debating if I should just move on. It's not revolutionary but but any advice would be beneficial.

http://www.psswrd.io