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Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

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Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#351

Post by BenoitP »

http://explicable.ai/

Not 500+$/month by any means, but 100$/month. I got 2 subscribers who are older clients that I had to convince -hurray for hallway testing- and I hope to get more soon. Having an actual pricing page and payment funnel might help haha.

It's a dead-simple data exploration and prediction micro-saas, but with a lot of nice pixels and state-of the art AI/ML explainability algorithms. Users come with their prepared excel files, upload them, and they get an 'explanation' as to the relations their data has within itself. It can also work as a prediction service.

For example: It can help a marketer know which prospects are likely to buy (prediction), but when said marketer has too actually talk to these prospects we can help with tailoring the message with the right knowledge (this one will buy because he/she buys like clockwork, whereas this one will buy because we saw them several times on our webpages)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#352

Post by morog »

Gasp0de wrote: post #296
dicriseg wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WordPress is my first thought.

You have to constantly install updates for it to stay secure, then every second update your theme breaks, you find out it's not updated for the new version and have to redesign the whole page.

I guess he's referring to WordPress.com which means no updates needed...at least for simple sites

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#353

Post by OJFord »

itake wrote: post #258
cjbgkagh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that would be because that is making money by having money and not readily accessible to those who don’t already have money.

I’m basically losing money. I spend like $1.20 to earn $1.

Assuming it's a capital repayment mortgage, you're neglecting that you are erasing debt, only the interest payment is really a cost here.

But yeah I think it makes sense to exclude it anyway, needs/wants might change and you no longer have the room(s) available to let or whatever, and it wouldn't really be a useful comparison of your 'side project' earnings to compare a year as a landlord with one not, it's a different thing.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#354

Post by dvno42 »

1). Started a small network automation product over Covid. The software brings AAA, secrets management (pki and passwords ontop of Vault), and config management under one platform. We let admins create programmatic runbooks to make changes to infrastructure using web forms. We have integrations to most major manufacturers to lookup warranty info for all devices. We are prototyping using NLP/OpenAI for users to create runbooks. "E.g.; I need a web form to deploy TLS certificates to all my Dell iDRACS" (but this is a ways off from being safe for anything but the lab).

2). We started another side project recently that manage large deployments of a popular OTDR manufacturer. System reports damage to dark fiber which alerts with with exact location info displayed on a map. Notifications are sent to staff via Slack/Email with photos and driving directions. We made a portal to manage all OTDRs from one interface.

Both of these are side projects but we will likely go full time on these projects soon.

1). www.realmhelm.com 2). No name yet but we will probably brand it under the realmhelm product above.

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#356

Post by andyish »

robofanatic wrote: post #166
andyish wrote: post #68

I built https://team-today.com in a lock down as a way for my remote team to see when people are on holiday, going to site, or wfh. Since then it’s grown to include other features like desk booking and PTO approvals. But at it’s all been built around the core concept of seeing when your colleagues are working and where they’re planning on working from.

Great job! How did you convince users to trust an unknown site to store their personal data? This is one the things holding me back from implementing my side project ideas. I personally know that I won’t misuse users data but how do I really convince users.

We integrate into MS and Google which holds personal information such as names but we do make an effort to reduce the amount of personal information we hold.

The real difficulty is getting government or financial institutions to buy in, they have LONG approvals processes and require proof that certain security practices are being adhered to (ISO27001 helps but is costly).

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#358

Post by teeeeeegz »

fm2606 wrote: post #346
teeeeeegz wrote: post #328

I'm working on a timer app, and is now up to ~$2k/mo! - https://focusedwork.app It's taught me a lot about the non-technical side of building a product. Very fulfilling from a personal growth perspective.

First let me say congratulations on the side project that makes $$. You are doing something that some people, me :-( , can't seem to figure out (or have too much paralysis by analysis, me again) So my question is genuine and not meant to take away from what you have created or accomplished: How are products like this still making money when there are tons of alternatives and some of them free?

Thank you! Try and build something that scratches an itch of yours, and launch ASAP so you can begin gathering feedback. That way, you avoid overthinking!

And that's a great question! There are heaps of great alternatives, but they didn't solve my needs. So I built my own take on a great timer, and it turns out other people were looking for the same thing!

PS: Check out my last couple pieces here https://michaeltigas.substack.com if interested! :)

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#359

Post by goenning »

akkad33 wrote: post #342
goenning wrote: post #274

I have two projects, combined doing ~€1500/mo https://fider.io - an open source alternative to UserVoice. I started this one 6 years ago to learn Go and React. I’ve seen thousands of instances out there being self hosted, so I started a cloud hosting to those who don’t want to manage it themselves. https://aptakube.com - Desktop Client for Kubernetes. This is very recent, launch was 2 weeks ago, so it’s only starting…

Do you use a cross platform desktop app development tool? Which one?

Yeah, I’m using https://tauri.app/

The DX is a thousand times better than Electron. The ecosystem is not as rich yet, but it’s getting there. The Discord community is very active and passionate about the project as well.

I’m also having a great time learning Rust!

Re: Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

#360

Post by phil21 »

galangalalgol wrote: post #136
pxue wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mexicos overall internet presence is literally stuck in the early 2000s. Most business' official website are a Facebook page. In a country of 150M people and growing expat presence, there is a TON of opportunities for software businesses to enter the market. For example: Riviera Maya has no MLS style real estate tracker/listing platform. The entire real estate industry operates on word of mouth, WhatsApp and Facebook…

I keep running into this in the US in large cities. Really well regarded restaurants or music venues do everything through FB and insta. I don't have either of those apps, and I don't remember my passwords from a decade ago. Isn't there a service somewhere, where you give someone some pictures of your food, and restaurant, and you get a container and credentials for a webpage that handles reservations, takes pickup o…

> Why do people do this?

Others have pointed out the simplicity of it. Just use an existing platform, doesn't take much IT skill at all.

The other answer is that this is where the people are. Why waste time building your own website when only those searching you will visit it? Interacting with the various social media platforms instead gives you far more options on discoverability.

If you must maintain a presence on those platforms anyways, it becomes even less compelling for a small non-tech company to maintain their own infrastructure.

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