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Show HN: I made a meme creator that makes around $4k a month

418 points| par | 4 years ago |metameme.app

217 comments

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[+] kebsup|4 years ago|reply
Good job! I've created gif meme creator and so far I've only received one 5 USD donation. :D https://gifmemes.io
[+] par|4 years ago|reply
Uhhh, WOW! This is actually really well done. I love the labels anchored to the objects in the image. That is so crucial. And the frame editor, the label position editor, I mean this is seriously well done. I think it might be a bit too powerful for average users though.
[+] khazhoux|4 years ago|reply
How do I donate? I'll double your year-to-date earn!
[+] didibus|4 years ago|reply
Well, you offer it for free, but also you don't target mobile? Maybe that's the difference?
[+] atum47|4 years ago|reply
this looks super cool. I'm working (from time to time) in a web flash app, that could be used to this kind of meme creation.

How do you do the tracking? Is it blob tracking or do you use something more sofisticated?

this is how my web flash app is coming along: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3pnEx5_eGm9BbCp2ZTj6...

[+] notabanker|4 years ago|reply
It would be ideal if the app creator is able to provide some verification to show they are indeed generating the stated revenue of $4K per month?

At the very least it will help me improve my understanding of the kind of things for which people are willing to part their hard earned money.

[+] im3w1l|4 years ago|reply
It looks nice, but some people might be instantly turned off by the new meme dialog.

I was pretty tired so I didn't read everything that carefully, and just pressed the "upload gif" button expecting file picker, but instead I got an error message that the upload failed. I actually thought your webpage was broken.

Only when I when back and read everything carefully did I realize what had happened. Two and a half suggestions: In my mind upload means its transferred from my device, so consider changing the text to "fetch" or something. Handle empty url as a special case. Like maybe just highlight the url box in a red border or something. And finally the half suggestion: measure whether uploading (my guess, but idk) or fetching is the more common usecase, and emphasize that one visually.

[+] rPlayer6554|4 years ago|reply
Wow that is amazing...how can I donate? I've wanted an easy way to make animated memes for a while...
[+] bcherny|4 years ago|reply
This is neat! Is it open source? Or, do you have a write up about the algorithm somewhere?
[+] tomerbd|4 years ago|reply
I wonder now two things created to solve same problem 1 - $5 total revenue 2 - $4000/month ? What was the marketing difference???
[+] drevil-v2|4 years ago|reply
That looks amazing. Did you have fun building it? What's your tech stack?
[+] bernardv|4 years ago|reply
Great job, especially the UI, which is clean and simple. I like the Tools section of your thesis - not being up-to-speed on web dev, I understood the which? and why? of your tech stack in under 5 minutes.
[+] mimifriends|4 years ago|reply
Neat. I have a real business problem to solve using very similar techniques if you are interested to discuss. Not memes specifically, but with the image and text mix.
[+] Mossly|4 years ago|reply
Would you be open to adding .webm or perhaps even .mp4 support with a filesize limit? In my opinion .gif has rapidly become a legacy format.
[+] steelbrain|4 years ago|reply
I went to your website and pressed space. It broke :P

> An unexpected error has occurred.

[+] cookingrobot|4 years ago|reply
Looks neat. FYI the templates search isn’t working.

I’d love to browse for more examples.

[+] zem|4 years ago|reply
that's seriously impressive!
[+] jwithington|4 years ago|reply
template search isn't working. did you exceed your search api's limit lol
[+] lpa22|4 years ago|reply
This is incredible work
[+] aazaa|4 years ago|reply
> The total cost of this tool is: 60$ (yearly, domain) + 60$(yearly, hosting) + more than 150 hours of programming (which would be about 4000$ from where I live). Revenue is non-existent. I've decided to leave the site ad-free because ads suck but now it's only eating money so please donate. My current plan on getting a payout is getting Elon Musk to use it and hoping he will buy me a Tesla.

That is a seriously good result for 150 hours give or take. I wonder if Elon peruses HN...

[+] yawaworht1978|4 years ago|reply
Good job, may I ask , what was your marketing strategy? Did you engage a lead generation company, SEO? How did you gain visibility in the virtual shops? Used social media for promotion? Pricing structure?

If those questions are too profound, feel free to not address them, but either way, this is impressive for a solo Indy dev.

And what is the tech stack? Do you listen to users feature requests and bug reports?

I have a project in mind myself and all the above questions I wouldn't know how to handle.

[+] RicoElectrico|4 years ago|reply
For some time I wanted to make browser-based utils/time wasters in the same vein (think Photopea but simpler, or .io games) - to generate some passive income, even if it'd be $100 a month or so. Has anybody succeeded in that and can share what was key to achieve income? I mean, most savvy people have ad blockers these days.
[+] javiermaestro|4 years ago|reply
From your comments, you turned from a one-time purchase to subscriptions.

Can you share your attrition rate? Also, how many want to pay per-month VS the full year (heavily discounted price)?

Thanks!

[+] opencl|4 years ago|reply
The Android version seems abandoned, it hasn't been updated in several years and there are several reviews complaining that paid features no longer work. Are there any plans to update it?
[+] par|4 years ago|reply
I do personally apologize for this. The android app was built by a very close friend of mine as a favor/side project back in the early days, and you are correct, it has been abandoned :( The plan is to just take it down. I need to contact him but don't want to offend him! Let that be a lesson of going into business with friends!
[+] gldev3|4 years ago|reply
I enjoy seeing posts like these, good for you pal. Is it hard to maintain? Is this just side income?

:)

[+] par|4 years ago|reply
Thank you! It doesn't take a lot of maintenance, mostly side income at this point. But I have put in a LOT of hours on it over the years. I will work on it in bursts, and take a few weeks and work on it 3-5 hours a day, and then not work on it at all for a while. I do need to keep the image library fresh, but that is pretty easy. To be honest, if I worked a bit more on it, I think it could do a lot better.
[+] santa_boy|4 years ago|reply
Where do most of your customers come from? Any typical profiles?

Quite impressive that you could do this with a meme creator!

[+] dburenok11|4 years ago|reply
This is very cool and inspiring! Would you mind sharing how you implemented the object tracking feature? It seems very complex, I've seen it on big apps like Snapchat or Instagram but you made it all on your own. Would love to know how!
[+] _ink_|4 years ago|reply
I am really envious of people living in countries that have fair use. In the EU somebody would sue you because of copyright infringement.
[+] thaumasiotes|4 years ago|reply
I love the promotional messaging. :D

"Your Instagram page will gain tons of followers. You will be famous on Twitter."

[+] par|4 years ago|reply
thanks, writing copy is not my strong suit, and this was after many iterations.
[+] conqrr|4 years ago|reply
Nice! What brings the revenue? Ads or do you charge?
[+] par|4 years ago|reply
It is subscription based model. $5/month or $35/year.
[+] Gamemaster1379|4 years ago|reply
What lead you to settle on a meme creator?

What would you suggest for a small independent entrepreneur looking to come up with his own SaaS? I'm pretty comfortable with a broad enough frontend and backend stack from my day job. Where I lack is market research.

[+] HumblyTossed|4 years ago|reply
Slightly OT: Other than mobile apps and web sites what are some other ways for devs to make beer money?
[+] samename|4 years ago|reply
$4k/month is beer money? I must be doing something wrong
[+] jslpc|4 years ago|reply
Piggybacking off of this to come back to it later. I'm also looking for some side project to start that'll encourage me to learn more about programming while I'm still in school for CS.

I've launched some hobby projects online in the past but none of which are monetized in any way, and almost all of them ended up costing money to run or still continue to do so. I'd love to build something for practice (to start out), with the intent of it eventually being good enough of a service for others to use too. I'm just blank on ideas at the moment.

[+] gramakri|4 years ago|reply
I am seeing "Did Not Connect: Potential Security Issue" in firefox.

Here's a screenshot - https://imgur.com/a/SzVS75Q

Same in chrome. The cert is wrong, it has the cert of "search.dnsadvantage.com"

[+] par|4 years ago|reply
Hmm, i just installed a new SSL certificate today, but it seems to be installed correctly. Can you try some kind of refresh or a different browser?

edit: oh, please try https://metameme.app

edit: the cert should be sectigo https://imgur.com/a/jb91a0z

[+] appguy|4 years ago|reply
Did you change the original paid app to the free/subscription model? How did the original users who paid for the app react to this? Considering to change one of my apps to a subscription model, but unsure if this is the best approach.
[+] lurn_mor|4 years ago|reply
Whom do you license the Original Content from? Or do you steal it without recompensation?
[+] Etheryte|4 years ago|reply
Since you're essentially mostly repackaging content other people have created, what's your approach to copyright and royalties? Or is the plan to simply hope you never get a DMCA notice or the like?
[+] cushychicken|4 years ago|reply
Man, that's really cool.

I love memes. I've always wanted to do some kind of a browser based meme maker I could either monetize with ads or a nominal ($10/yr) payment to remove ads.