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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

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111–120 of 480 posts

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#111

I built https://markdownbin.com/ because a friend was complaining something like this doesn't exist. Nobody uses it and probably that's why it doesn't exist.

It's neat, but probably needs a bit more features for it to be more useful than pastebin.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#112
post #2

I really don't like talking about my side projects, so I guess they all qualify, but I'm particularly excited about one at the moment. Right now I'm working on a dog treat business - I make a treat mix that you add water to and freeze for a meat-based frozen treat. I feel really good about the product and the packaging design (and this is the first time I've ever worked on any kind of a physical product, so it's real…

obligatory question: did you eat your own dogfood?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#113
I have a creative writing site that lets authors write branching fiction novels together. It's stupid fun, we have Discord/Zoom writing events Sunday nights where we try to write chapters together (usually around 500 words) and read them to each other. It existed years ago and made some advertising money, and then I shut it down because of spam problems (since solved). I brought it back to live because of COVID. I'm petrified to launch the site live because it's on a 10-year-old php stack, the website design looks like it's from the late 90's, and my IP policy sucks (on submit, I own all copyrights, my current authors don't mind but it's always bugged me) and I have no other compliance things going on like coppa or privacy policies because I don't know how to do that and do I really want to hire a lawyer if I have no ambitious revenue plans? If I keep advertising turned off (my preference), my only other current revenue path is publishing books when all threads get concluded, and the writing quality, while better than most similar sites, is not really publication quality. So for now it just sits behind an apache password prompt and gets very little traffic, and that's ok for now. Although if anyone here likes the idea of writing silly creative writing stories on a private website, feel free to message me. Main story right now is a girl who is invited to mage school except she accidentally kills her boyfriend. Well, that's just one thread. In another thread he's a firemoose.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#114

I made almost 6 figures a year on an affiliate website promoting natural health products, when they were extremely popular back in 2006. I would stay awake some nights and jot down every product mentioned in overnight infomercials (before I knew what TiVo was). then write a review on them the next day. Thousands of people would search for “X review” in the days after watching those infomercials and I would rank #1 be…

Sounds unethical

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#115
In this virus season alone I've made $8000 in sales.

You'll find various subreddits where people are buying around 5-10spools a month. Imagine how much virgin plastic is being added like that to the environment.

I've been creating filament and selling it:

https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...

This activity also help recycle waste plastic.

Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filament roll has 850 gram filament and can be sold for $20-30 per spool

It's trivial to get the quality right.

You can sell rolls on Amazon, eBay and Etsy or your own Shopify store and use Facebook ads/Google Ads to advertise your website.

That said I didn't use any ads to sell filament! Only few days ago I started Shopify store and paid $5-10 in Facebook ads. Since we accept credit card, it's not too much of a risk for buyer to buy it from us (even when are new)

I work from home so I take 5 minute break and walk to my garage and check if the filament machine successfully is running on auto pilot

Thing is filament doesn't have huge demand, neither it has very less demand. So you can dominate local demand by creating quality filament.

I focus on fulfilling local demand, I've gained customers who need large supply of filament of ABS, TPU and Nylon12.

If people do actually come to compete with me, it's a win win. More plastic recycled = less plastic entering landfill.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#116
post #29
post #20

http://askjud.com — I made it when I was 15. It’s pretty terrible, but has made $30k+ over its lifetime.

from what exactly? the ads? how long is lifetime? $30k's nothing to scoff at!

Yep, the ads. Monetized for maybe 10 years. Some years are much higher $$$ than others.

Search YouTube for askjud to see how it works. It’s been the subject of a few viral videos.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#117
post #71

It's probably not what you meant, but I recently created a weekend project bot that scans facebook for apartments rental ads. Thanks to this bot, I landed an opportunity I wouldn't have catch otherwise, saving me 6,000$ a year. Assuming I will hold my new apartment for 3 years, this is a net savings of 18,000$. I haven't sold anything, but yet I created something that "generated money" for me. My code is open source…

Interesting. I've never heard of apartment posts in facebook groups but I'm in the bay area. Do other people here in the US have this experience as well? I was thinking it'd be Facebook marketplace, craigslist, and apartment sites (like apartments.com)

FB buying/selling groups (particularly for housing) are quite common I'd say. In my experience, you will generally find them categorized as part of a college or university (e.g. "San Jose State University (SJSU) Housing"), but a quick search for "Bay Area housing" also results in numerous such groups.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#118

I built a Chrome extension that checks websites for SEO, speed and security best practices: https://www.checkbot.io/ Most of the growth has been organic but I post it in forums when it seems relevant. I haven't had much luck with ads but writing articles has been worthwhile.

There was one guy refer about your checkbot somewhere on this thread and I installed. Will start using it very soon :)

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#119
post #71

It's probably not what you meant, but I recently created a weekend project bot that scans facebook for apartments rental ads. Thanks to this bot, I landed an opportunity I wouldn't have catch otherwise, saving me 6,000$ a year. Assuming I will hold my new apartment for 3 years, this is a net savings of 18,000$. I haven't sold anything, but yet I created something that "generated money" for me. My code is open source…

Interesting. I've never heard of apartment posts in facebook groups but I'm in the bay area. Do other people here in the US have this experience as well? I was thinking it'd be Facebook marketplace, craigslist, and apartment sites (like apartments.com)

A Facebook group is the primary source for advertising rental properties in Juneau, AK. Just a normal group, not the marketplace.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#120

I sell prints of public domain artwork on Etsy [0]. I’ve automated the print production and fulfillment, so all I need to do is set up the artwork and maintain the product listings. It consistently brings in around £100-300 per month and if I put any time at all into marketing it could probably do a lot better. I also maintain a directory of UX tools, resources and information [1]. It currently doesn’t bring in anyth…

Could you elaborate on your automation toolset?
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