Ask HN: How do you make money on the side?

23 pointsyogurt10y ago9 comments

A variation of this question comes up once in a while, but it's been a while. I am curious to know what type of projects HNers are working on that is acutally generating some side income.

9 comments

9 comments · 5 top-level

dangrossman10y ago· 2 in thread

This is still on the front page of Ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9941005

Not many replies this time around, which is too bad since I love reading these threads. There are links to the previous posts in there.

I usually talk about the same projects of mine, so this time I'll talk about a few smaller projects instead that also make money on the side.

http://www.daterangepicker.com -- a JavaScript widget for choosing date ranges, like hotel reservations or dates for a report. Initially it was just a post on my blog and a zip file. It got so much traffic I put it up on Github and gave the thing its own site. That site gets over 1000 daily uniques. I put one small banner ad in the sidebar, and that generates $200-400 per month.

http://www.websitegoodies.com -- A site I started in the mid-1990s to share what I learned as I taught myself web design. All the articles and tutorials became outdated, but the tools still had some popularity, so I rebuilt the site around them one weekend. A banner ad or two on each page generates $50-100 per month.

I have a few very old sites that resell another company's advertising services. Almost all the customers are new site owners, small businesses, that sort of thing. After checkout, there's a "resources" page in the customer area of the site with links to SEO services, payment processing services, and other things a new site owner might need. Those are all referral links, and I earn $200-300 per month in commissions for the business those links generate.

panorama10y ago

First of all, I never get tired of seeing you post in these threads. Keep it up and thanks for being so transparent every single time.

Second, I'm surprised that ads work to such a significant degree for DRP. My assumptions off the bat would've been a. 1000 uniques is too few to generate significant income, b. a tech savvy crowd (developers) wouldn't click on ads/are more likely to have adblock. Am I missing something?

dangrossman10y ago

The products targeted to developers are SaaS (huge lifetime value) or business priced ($$$+ per purchase), which means there's a ton of money for customer acquisition. The ads I'm getting on my sites are paying over $1 per click, so 1000 daily uniques generates a couple dollars a day even with a CTR under 1%.

caspercrf10y ago· 2 in thread

I started to make simple Android apps about a year ago. I have 8 apps, 1 makes 50% of the income, and 4 make the other half. The other 3 do nothing. They make ~$250 a month, so nothing crazy, but it's 100% passive. Once I release the apps, I rarely touch them again.

zerr10y ago

With ads or just paid apps? Any idea how to sell apps from unsupported countries? Thanks.

caspercrf10y ago

Just ads, I've never done a paid app.

andersthue10y ago

I still get a couple of thousand every month from my TSR projects, mainly http://www.watermark-image.com but some of the other TSR products are getting some traction.

The TSR LAN messenger has been getting some traction because people are scared of the privacy concerns with public chat clients. http://tsr-soft.com/products/lan-messenger/

The TSR photo manager gets a purchase every know and then, but to be honest I don't promote it much. http://tsr-soft.com/products/photo-manager/

All income frome those TSR projects is funneled into a new SaaS project http://timeblock.com

(My main income is from my consulting business.)

ljw100110y ago

depends on why you want to do this. if you're an engineer in a good job market, you could probably get more money out of your primary job than a side project (obviously there are exceptions). You could, for example, switch jobs, work harder, ask for a raise (even without working harder). A side project might make more sense if you did it for fun.

newdaynewuser10y ago

I have helped setup WordPress sites for friends and family which led to helping friends of friends. I usually tell them what it cost to build a site professionally and let them pay me whatever. Usually they pay very little for my time spent. I just enjoy building sites.

But I have only two rules, no deadlines, no nitpicking. Most people seems to be ok with it.

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