Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#21

Post by kebsup » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:36 PM UTC

Made 240 USD in December. About 9k visitors and 27k page views tracked through plausible. Spent maybe 5 hours working on the codebase in 2023, which makes a solid ((240 * 12) / 10) = 288 USD / hour.

All of the money are from the watermark removal sales (10 USD). A lot of people say I could be making much more with some subscription model, but so far I'm resisting. (And the codebase is a mess :D )

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#22

Post by ijhuygft776 » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

hawski wrote: post #3

mikece wrote: post #2

Given the pace of inflation shouldn't we raise the bar to $1000/month side projects? I'm always in search of "I could pay my mortgage with that!" side projects...

At least $500 would pay for my mortgage almost just as well as when I got it.

you must have bought a long time ago

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#23

Post by thekevan » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:37 PM UTC

kLama wrote: post #18

I have a serious question to those making money and I am hoping to learn here. How did you acquire customers? We have a startup going on for 3.5 months but it is incredibly hard to acquire customers. People don't respond to email or LinkedIn. We have not tried SEO and Ads yet.

Could you link it here? It's hard to say without knowing what we are talking about.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#24

Post by pjot » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:38 PM UTC

mateuszbuda wrote: post #9

A web scraping API: https://scrapingfish.com/

I’m curious who your customers are; being tech savvy enough to use an api, but not enough to scrape the web confuses me. Mind explaining how you make money?

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#25

Post by bdominy » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

kLama wrote: post #18

I have a serious question to those making money and I am hoping to learn here. How did you acquire customers? We have a startup going on for 3.5 months but it is incredibly hard to acquire customers. People don't respond to email or LinkedIn. We have not tried SEO and Ads yet.

If you have an audience in mind, try meeting them in person to demo your solution. I've found people are most receptive when they see your passion and resolve.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#26

Post by shinycode » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

kLama wrote: post #18

I have a serious question to those making money and I am hoping to learn here. How did you acquire customers? We have a startup going on for 3.5 months but it is incredibly hard to acquire customers. People don't respond to email or LinkedIn. We have not tried SEO and Ads yet.

Try a service like lemlist But usually it’s not free in time and/or money. Even harder if it does not really solve a pain point

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#27

Post by taylorbuley » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:39 PM UTC

kLama wrote: post #18

I have a serious question to those making money and I am hoping to learn here. How did you acquire customers? We have a startup going on for 3.5 months but it is incredibly hard to acquire customers. People don't respond to email or LinkedIn. We have not tried SEO and Ads yet.

If you're struggling to land your message, your value prop might be off or you might not be communicating it well in your pitch. Take a look at your outbound marketing and focus on the call to action, destination, content and "give a shit factor" ... then test various approaches. If nothing works, it's probably not your message, but the product's value proposition itself.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#28

Post by FriedPickles » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

I got annoyed that my MacBook case would slightly buzz when plugged in, so I worked with a factory to make these grounded Apple adapters: https://www.amazon.com/Grounded-Duckhead-Apple-Mac-Adapter/d...

They've been selling consistently to others annoyed by the problem or who want to ground their MacBook for other reasons.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#29

Post by jmhmd » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:41 PM UTC

I started and run https://pacsbin.com, a radiology teaching file/research platform. I’m a radiologist and started this as a resident while unsatisfied with all existing options. It has been really gratifying to work on a niche problem for which a lot of my colleagues need a solution, and has helped me learn a ton about the tech and standards that underpin my profession.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024 – Show and tell

#30

Post by chocoboaus2 » Tue, Jan 23, 2024, 10:42 PM UTC

kebsup wrote: post #21

https://gifmemes.io/ Made 240 USD in December. About 9k visitors and 27k page views tracked through plausible. Spent maybe 5 hours working on the codebase in 2023, which makes a solid ((240 * 12) / 10) = 288 USD / hour. All of the money are from the watermark removal sales (10 USD). A lot of people say I could be making much more with some subscription model, but so far I'm resisting. (And the codebase is a mess :D )

Personally I think you are making the right call avoiding subscriptions in a side hustle project like this.

Once subscriptions get involved you have to deal with a lot more complexity, churn metrics, refunds (more so than now because of people 'forgetting' to unsub), the stuff around do you pro-rata at subscription cancel or leave it running until date is reached, stripe makes that a little easier but its still a thing.

so yeah, good move imo.