How Much Money I Made From Side Projects In 2010

[lylejohnson]

This is very inspiring! Matt, for your next post(s), in addition to the monetary costs I'd like to hear about how much time you put into maintaining and supporting these projects. I can imagine that with a couple of thousand users you could easily spend a lot of time answering support emails.

[patio11]

You'd be surprised how easy it is to support web applications, if you work on killing the issues which continue to cause support requests. (BCC had something like 75k trials in 2010. My support load is typically well under an hour a week.)

Maintenance in terms of "Making sure stuff doesn't break" also doesn't have to take a lot of time. January was a bad month for me, and that only took about one hour of firefighting and one hour of (hopefully) preventing the next firefighting.

[mattcurry]

Thanks. Will do.

[patio11]

Hat's off, that was some fantastic growth last year. If you're ever in the mood for chitchatting, I also sell to your market and know a few things about a few things.

[mattcurry]

That would be great.

I actually emailed you in the beginning of '09 after reading about your site in Bob Walsh's MicroISV book. You took the time to send a lengthy and detailed response which was very appreciated.

[muhfuhkuh]

Is that market averse to monthly subscriptions? Charging $5/mo. Could triple your revenue and turn a side biz into the main stage. And 5 bucks is a latte a month.

I recall patio11 speaking about marketing to the educational market but not sur if he covered recurring subscription revenue vs. Flat annual rate or not.

[damoncali]

Nitpick - I think you mean "revenue" not "earnings". Nice article though - very inspiring.

[dolinsky]

I don't think that's nitpicking at all. He did mention that he was going to break down associated costs in follow up posts, but it's very prudent to note the difference between revenue and earnings.

[mattcurry]

You're right. I fixed it.

[johnohara]

Nice article Matt.

I taught high school CS for ten years and can tell you from personal experience that you are scratching at the surface of a very promising market. Most schools hand out the traditional lesson plan books at the beginning of the year during faculty meetings and in-services. They are a pita to fill out and maintain and frequently change year to year if you are worth your salt

However, I believe your sales would increase dramatically were you to target administrators and department chairs instead of individual teachers. $20 per instructor is well within their annual budget and they are very open to ideas that make day-to-day operations smoother.

Making it possible for parents to view the lesson plans would enable you to engage entire districts without much difficulty.

Well done.

[mahipal]

Do you mean, specifically, the "lesson plan book" market?

Are there other similar things that teachers have to deal with, that he could expand into?

[mattcurry]

Any tips on the best way to approach admins or department chairs?

[mcantor]

Hey Matt, out of curiosity, why do you want to avoid this blog post showing up in Google searches?

Thanks for these posts, by the way--I find them patently inspiring. It's nice to know I'm not the only developer with a million ridiculous project ideas. Keep up the good work!

[mattcurry]

I've been going after some big schools and entire districts lately, so I worry that they'll be less enthused if they knew I was just one guy doing this on the side.

[mgkimsal]

Probably doesn't want people who are paying for it to know how much he's making. At least, doesn't want that to show up as the first thing in the search results when people search for it.

[mdoerneman]

Thanks for the inspiration. I needed it.

[getsat]

FYI: Matt, your "redacted" links on the 2008 and 2009 versions of this article still link to the site in question. The Twitter link on the 2009 article actually links to the Twitter account in question, too.

[guynamedloren]

Very, very inspiring. I love posts like this (as we all do) because it's a good way to benchmark my own projects and gives me hope for future projects. When I finally round the numbers up (hopefully later this week) I'm going to make a post detailing the financials of my little 4-hour profitable project (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176771)

[crocowhile]

As I see it, both your renewal rate and the number of free users are high enough to launch a promotion (e.g.: $10 instead of $20 for the first 12months).

[rmc]

If you haven't already, I recommend you read what patio11 says here (and on their blog), they are in a very similar market with similar customers.

[tomthorns]

Great post. Do you have some sort of referral scheme whereby current users can recommend the product to their coworkers and get a discount if someone signs up? I think that could help you grow it if not, your existing users spend all day alongside your target users - give them a reason to talk about it!

[mattcurry]

I did a few years ago, but it went poorly. Might have just been my implementation. Either way I removed it.

[fady]

nice post. really. I bet if the UI of the sites were refreshed for something more intuitive, easier on the eyes, and a better layout (rsstalker) - i bet you would see an increase in signups.

http://planbookedu.com/ - seems to have a better design than the others. The UI of a site really is important to me, and how I perceive the company or outfit, not sure if that is a good thing, but its important. You will attract the more web-savy peeps - IMO

[rmc]

This service might not be targeted at web savy folks

[prpon]

Matt, What caused the signups and new orders to go up compared to an year ago? Other than AdWords, are there any strategies that worked well for you?

[mattcurry]

Most of the traffic still comes from Google search, so I'd say a combination of user interest in this type of thing and being near the top for most of searches.

As far as features I added sharing which allows teachers to generate links that they can send to other teachers and embedding which allows teachers to put their planbook right in their website.

Nothing revolutionary, but both helped w/ SEO and increased visibility with target customers.

[toadi]

So you have spent 100k in adwords and over the years you haven't earned that amount back?

Or did I mis something?

[mattcurry]

Sorry, that was unclear. Off the top of my head I probably spent $5k in 2010. I'll know for sure once I write the next post.

[scottbessler]

Pretty sure they are presenting a hypothetical situation where the revenues mentioned are worthless, implying that revenues are not the whole picture.

[ryandvm]

That's a big "if", eh?