511–520 of 547 posts
I've created five years ago http://www.totalwireframe.com , based on a hunch that it would interest people. It's a site where I sell libraries for an obscure/niche market. The first year, I sold for $0 of librairies. In 2014, I've made ~$45,000 and it's 100% passive income. I'm not proud to say that I've worked a total of 30 hours on the site last year (it sounds as if I'm lazy, and I'm not). Moreover, I've never spe…
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.
"Profitable side-project" might be an unstable equilibrium. If you're doing something without scale, it will die when you lose interest. If you're doing something with scale, perhaps it should grow into a bootstrapped startup. inquicker.com started as a hobby / learning opportunity (2005) and grew into a side project with about $20k/yr in recurring revenue from corporate customers (2008). Eventually, it turned into a…
I read most of patio11's advice as being about exactly this: how to build a not-necessarily-scalable business that you can lose interest in without it dying. (Namely, by contracting out content-generation and community management and treating the commissions/wages of those people as part of your user acquisition costs.)
I wrote a book[1] a year and a half ago that just recently crossed $42k in total revenue. These days it consistently earns $1.5k/mo without much further input from me, other than tweaks to the landing page copy and updates once in awhile when Stripe or Rails changes significantly. [1]: https://www.masteringmodernpayments.com Edit: If you'd like to read a preview, you can do so here: https://www.masteringmodernpayment…
I was thinking about doing something similar. Do you recommend using your own domain name (like nathan barry) or having a custom domain?
That way, your venture ends up with the combined page-rank of your personal brand and the exact-domain bonus. (Whereas if you just redirect from one to the other, you lose one or the other.)
I made http://bankofamericaroutingnumber.com It took less than a day and makes about $150/month. Not quite the 1k but not bad for minimal work.
Hm, how do you get visitors? You don't show up on the first page of Google results for 'bank of america routing number' for me. (I guess you show up second if I add certain state names.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As zrail mentioned below, it's not that much traffic from a load perspective. It's a Java app, so it uses some RAM, but honestly the hardest load to tune for was the inbound spam. I have a massively overspecced server that I use for this, and many other sites/projects - 24 GB RAM, dual X5670 CPUs, etc... Typically runs at a load average of only 0.5-0.6. Like I said, overspecced:)
You probably need a better mail server that can more easily handle that load. Check Haraka out (shameless plug, but it's designed for high loads and this kind of app).
I made http://park.io last June I got into this stuff because I am very interested in domains - especially .io domains At first domains were just a fun hobby - to collect for future projects. But then I sold a few and bought a few more and scaled it out. I created park.io to automate things.
Also, do you plan to extend to more TLDs?
I generated $1000/month selling pens to writers, moms, artists and creative . The project is called Humble Pen. It is a side project. By partnering up with artists from around the world would hep me promote the brand. It also changed lives. Win-win situation! www.humblepen.com