Been over 2 years since the last time this question was posed and there were a lot of interesting replies the first time around. I'd like to see what people are up to in 2022.
I'm a software developer by trade. I've had essential tremor all my life. Virtually all doctors say, "well, at least it's a benign condition." Right. And it's affected my life in countless ways, none of them good. It's gotten slowly worse over the years. It's not debilitating, but it's frustrating, and it rules out some activities completely. As I type this I randomly touch the touch pad or an unwanted key, and random things happen. :-)
Your software looks amazing for me! Your web site describes my situation exactly. It looks like it's Windows only? Any plans for a Mac version?
Edit: I accidentally posted a truncated version of this earlier (I deleted it), exactly because of my tremor!
> It feels like a conversation that is hard for others to participate in
My dad has Parkinson's and I can relate. My take is: people feel bad for you but society doesn't have canned responses like we do for more common situations like the death of a loved one. This makes people uncomfortable since they don't know what's an appropriate reaction.
Please don't get discouraged though, I didn't even know this existed! The amount of people that will benefit from you bringing this up is >0.
My dad's not interested anymore in computers (more about the cognitive overload than the hand tremors) but this would've helped enormously during the early stages.
This is peak development to me: to write high quality software to solve a problem I care about and make it available for others. If this sold zero copies, it would have all been worth it.
You should consider surrounding yourself with people that can tell the story. It's common to not be able or willing to tell your own story. Others can carry or lift this weight for you, and take it where it needs to go.
Out of curiosity, did you consider creating a browser extension version of your software? As a developer of a dictation extension for Chrome [0] I see that it gets a lot of use for accessibility purposes.
I once experimented with a tremor-compensating extension and some css that hid the “natural” cursor and overlaid a cursor image instead whose position I controlled (using a basic rolling window average to make it steady). This basic test seemed to hold up.
That could potentially open up a whole new market for you…? Just curious if you’ve considered this. Don’t hesitate to reach out by email too if this sounds interesting!
After seeing this on HN at some point, I bought the software for a family member -- as far as I know, they're very happy with it! It's kind of a sore thing to talk about, so I haven't heard it said directly, but last I saw the software was still installed on the machine :)
Not exactly what you're looking for, but to help populate the thread, in the mid 00s I had a big chunk of accidental income that I didn't want to talk about at the time, but can now.
I put Adsense on my blog early on and I'd make maybe $10-20 a day with no shenanigans. I wrote a post recommending a route planner I'd found (pre Google Maps). A month later my income jumped to $100-200 a day and it turned out to be due to the route planner post being #1 or #2 for the route planner's name! I assume people were clicking on my blog post, then clicking on to the real site via the ad. This state of affairs lasted for several months until the algo improved and put the real site on top for good. I can't remember the exact total but I had a good $20-40k out of it and it paid for my wedding.
I follow you on twitter. It seems you've been super successful over the years with side gigs. You're an inspiration to me for when it comes to newsletters.
I sell an excel add-in that integrates with some popular trading software. It makes life easier for traders. It has a couple thousand users paying around $10 a month. That's about as specific as I want to get.
It required a little domain specific knowledge to create, and a recognized name among trading forums to initially market. Otherwise it's super simple and I'm continually surprised that there are no real competitors.
That is the exact niche type of side project that I dream about. Though, with "a couple thousand users paying around $10 a month" that is hardly a side project anymore, given the annual revenue north of $200K.
I created an online market for a game that sold in-game items with revenue at its peak of over $300k USD per month. Initially it just used eBay affiliate links, but since I would track the sellers in my database, I reached out to the big wholesalers and encouraged them to go nearly exclusive on my market for a similar cut. It was all built over a few years and it runs mostly on autopilot, all marketing, hosting, and code built by me. Never discussed it on any forum before.
I've been working on a 3d first person creative writing RPG where you're a Tentacle Monster with a magic mechanical typewriter. You learn ritual magic based on what you write and it can export .txt files. It even has printer "support". It's called Tentacle Typer.
My goal is to make people more prolific and creative writers.
It's not released yet, but I've gotten enough wish lists that I'm confident I will make some money when I do. It's also led to some freelance/consulting work that's kept me afloat while I shamble forth.
A little discouraged by some gambits that didn't yield results I wanted has me not talking about it as much as I was last year. Ah well I bet the hype energy will come back. There's a lot cool here.
I think I personally fueled the PSD2HTML craze by launching designslicer.com back in late 2006 and heavily undercut the competition by charging just $70 per 'sliced' page. I had no portfolio, just a dumb typical web2.0 era styled website and a very cheap price. I easily made $5000 with that website in the short 9 month period that it lived, then sold the domain for $1300. Also I noticed that $70 per page became the new price around all competitors after I launched, it was lovely to see.
The old version is actually still in the Wayback Machine [1]
I staked $15k, bought season tickets for my favourite baseball team, wrote an electron app to auto-price and market those tickets under face value.
We ended up going to 6-7 games for free, sat in MUCH better seats than we ever could have afforded to, and had access to playoff tickets at face value. Further, my friends had access to great seats at reasonable prices and I avoided having to buy from resale sites (who I detest). 90% of the process was automated.
I was wondering why I had a sudden bit of traffic coming from HN this morning... for anybody interested in the dog treat business I answered some questions about in the original thread (https://coopersdogtreats.com/), I did about 150k in revenue last year and roughly broke even on that. This year I expect to do a bit better and turn a bit of a profit.
That said, I've got manufacturing and fulfillment mostly outsourced, so my day-to-day is really marketing emails, managing FB ad spend and sending product to the warehouse when I run low on inventory. Given that, it's looking like this is going to get relegated back to a side project while I find myself a real job.
While I'd obviously prefer to be making a boatload of cash, it has been really enjoyable so far, and I have learned a ton. The most painful thing has been Apple's privacy changes - before those, I was running FB ads that were effective enough to be immediately profitable from customers' first purchases. Now the cost of acquiring a customer is greater than the profit I make on the first purchase but less than the lifetime profit I make from a customer, so I can still do it profitably but it requires investing cash up front.
I built a tool for educators ~7 years ago at my previous employer. That employer shut down and I bought the tool then sold it to my current employer. This year, my employer decided to pivot and we are no longer serving software services. I now have ownership again with multiple clients paying $5k a year for the tool. I was restricted on my time spent on the tool while it belonged to my employer, but now that it's mine again, I can start working on needed improvements and seeking out more clients.
I also have a fairly large YouTube back catalogue of ~1,650 videos. While most of my videos get less than 50 views, I still generate ~$500 a year in AdSense.
I got my BlueRetro [1] project which is a universal BT controller adapter for retro console.
I'm making a pretty bad job monetizing this TBH. I originally wanted to sell the HW myself but turn out that with real job + young family with the little energy and time left I can't do more than "here's the code".
Turn out a few makers pick it up and are nice enough to give me a cut on their sales. Adding user donation I maybe made 2K out of it this year, not much but better than nothing I guess.
I wrote a retrospective about the last three year working in this if you like more detail [2]
Over a weekend during the height of the pandemic, I made a digital school material website that has a "donate" button on it. Totally unexpectedly, it was making $1k/mo via donations. The original hope was to just pay for the hosting costs.
Well, I've spoken about this before, and on here no less, but only really in response to posts like this. I don't do any advertising or speak about mine except in interviews, since it's usually indicative of the kind of requirements they're looking for.
I created a SaaS bootstrap for Javascript called Nodewood [1]. It actually started as just a template for me, because there's a lot of setup for each new JS web project that I kept skipping to get to the "fun" stuff, like I'd just hard-coded the user as ID #1 instead of writing user registration/login code. Since then, it's grown to also have form validation, a starter UI, teams support, subscription support with Stripe, an admin panel, a CLI tool, and I'm currently adding a deploy option via Pulumi [2].
I've sold a few licenses, but also it offers me a platform to "scratch my own itches", which then become available to the people who bought a license.
I've considered purchasing an application boilerplate like nodewood, but can never bring myself to drop a couple hundred dollars on code of unknown quality using methods or conventions I may or may not like.
Do you offer any way to view the source before purchase?
This is cool! Great to see you've had some success here!
I've built something similar for my favorite tech stack but haven't had any sales yet. I find it useful in my own projects and I've seen other similar projects make some money (like JumpStart Pro for Rails) so thinking it's something around my positioning / offerings rather than full lack of a need.
Some things I think you're doing really well:
* Great sales copy and documentation
* Great aesthetics -> adds to "trust"
* Message bot for feedback
Qs:
* Q1: Did you do any customer research to help determine what features to build?
* Q2: What did you find (if anything) is the biggest reason people choose to use boilerplate rather than rolling their own?
For those interested -> CloudSeeed - SaaS boilerplate for Sveltekit + .NET + Postgres - https://cloudseed.xyz/
Mission Control Plus [1] and Batteries for Mac [2] make about $3k per month and need little maintenance. Thankfully Apple hasn’t Sherlocked them (yet).
Wow, Mission Control Plus is one of those "super-obvious" once you are shown the idea, ideas. On an iPad you can close windows in the app switcher by swiping, the Mac does nearly the same thing but has no way to close windows. And I had to check for Batteries as well, seems so obvious that it exists on Mac coming from an iPad...but it just isn't there. Well done.
Circa 2006-07, I made around $4k by selling Adsense coupons. I saw people selling these on SEO forums and thought that there must be a way to get them. A little googling and I found a way to get these $50, $75, $100 adsense vouchers. These would sell sell for anywhere between $5-$20. It literally was free money till it lasted.
I funded life over the pandemic selling bots for MMO's. Made way more than I expected. Enough it became a full time job for a while. Died down a little after people started returning to work after Covid.
I created a web app that extracts transaction data from PDF bank statements. I talk about it with friends, but often a lot of people think I'm running some sort of data hoarding scam.
Two years ago, my cofounder and I built and launched a tool that turns Google Drive folders into a wiki (https://kbee.app). It's making about $1.5K/month and growing organically on it's own...
[+] [-] gottebp|3 years ago|reply
It has gone through a lot of development since then; it is my best work as a developer.
It suffers from the common flaw us engineers have of hyperfocus on the product while not caring about marketing enough. It makes enough.
I have a hard time talking about it in everyday life for some reason. It feels like a conversation that is hard for others to participate in.
Do other founders feel this way? I wish I understood it better.
[1] https://steadymouse.com
[+] [-] scrozier|3 years ago|reply
Your software looks amazing for me! Your web site describes my situation exactly. It looks like it's Windows only? Any plans for a Mac version?
Edit: I accidentally posted a truncated version of this earlier (I deleted it), exactly because of my tremor!
[+] [-] kaoD|3 years ago|reply
My dad has Parkinson's and I can relate. My take is: people feel bad for you but society doesn't have canned responses like we do for more common situations like the death of a loved one. This makes people uncomfortable since they don't know what's an appropriate reaction.
Please don't get discouraged though, I didn't even know this existed! The amount of people that will benefit from you bringing this up is >0.
My dad's not interested anymore in computers (more about the cognitive overload than the hand tremors) but this would've helped enormously during the early stages.
[+] [-] wnolens|3 years ago|reply
This is peak development to me: to write high quality software to solve a problem I care about and make it available for others. If this sold zero copies, it would have all been worth it.
[+] [-] txdm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rozgo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 35mm|3 years ago|reply
In terms of marketing (if you’re not already doing it), you could write blog posts about different topics around Parkinson’s + tech use.
The use a tool like Surfer SEO to make sure you’ve covered the search term topic cluster well, and then more people will find it via Google.
[+] [-] gregsadetsky|3 years ago|reply
I once experimented with a tremor-compensating extension and some css that hid the “natural” cursor and overlaid a cursor image instead whose position I controlled (using a basic rolling window average to make it steady). This basic test seemed to hold up.
That could potentially open up a whole new market for you…? Just curious if you’ve considered this. Don’t hesitate to reach out by email too if this sounds interesting!
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dictation-for-gmai...
[+] [-] micvbang|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plasma|3 years ago|reply
If you don’t mind me asking, what do you find hard to talk about?
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] orang2tang|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petercooper|3 years ago|reply
I put Adsense on my blog early on and I'd make maybe $10-20 a day with no shenanigans. I wrote a post recommending a route planner I'd found (pre Google Maps). A month later my income jumped to $100-200 a day and it turned out to be due to the route planner post being #1 or #2 for the route planner's name! I assume people were clicking on my blog post, then clicking on to the real site via the ad. This state of affairs lasted for several months until the algo improved and put the real site on top for good. I can't remember the exact total but I had a good $20-40k out of it and it paid for my wedding.
[+] [-] kilroy123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amerine|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exceltrading|3 years ago|reply
It required a little domain specific knowledge to create, and a recognized name among trading forums to initially market. Otherwise it's super simple and I'm continually surprised that there are no real competitors.
[+] [-] dsiegel2275|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdthedisciple|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daenz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slivanes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrLeap|3 years ago|reply
My goal is to make people more prolific and creative writers.
It's not released yet, but I've gotten enough wish lists that I'm confident I will make some money when I do. It's also led to some freelance/consulting work that's kept me afloat while I shamble forth.
https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1469737611824713739 <- My feed is mostly my progress.
A little discouraged by some gambits that didn't yield results I wanted has me not talking about it as much as I was last year. Ah well I bet the hype energy will come back. There's a lot cool here.
[+] [-] radiojasper|3 years ago|reply
The old version is actually still in the Wayback Machine [1]
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20061214053323/http://designslic...
[+] [-] MattyMc|3 years ago|reply
We ended up going to 6-7 games for free, sat in MUCH better seats than we ever could have afforded to, and had access to playoff tickets at face value. Further, my friends had access to great seats at reasonable prices and I avoided having to buy from resale sites (who I detest). 90% of the process was automated.
[+] [-] awillen|3 years ago|reply
That said, I've got manufacturing and fulfillment mostly outsourced, so my day-to-day is really marketing emails, managing FB ad spend and sending product to the warehouse when I run low on inventory. Given that, it's looking like this is going to get relegated back to a side project while I find myself a real job.
While I'd obviously prefer to be making a boatload of cash, it has been really enjoyable so far, and I have learned a ton. The most painful thing has been Apple's privacy changes - before those, I was running FB ads that were effective enough to be immediately profitable from customers' first purchases. Now the cost of acquiring a customer is greater than the profit I make on the first purchase but less than the lifetime profit I make from a customer, so I can still do it profitably but it requires investing cash up front.
[+] [-] Random_Person|3 years ago|reply
I also have a fairly large YouTube back catalogue of ~1,650 videos. While most of my videos get less than 50 views, I still generate ~$500 a year in AdSense.
[+] [-] darthcloud|3 years ago|reply
I'm making a pretty bad job monetizing this TBH. I originally wanted to sell the HW myself but turn out that with real job + young family with the little energy and time left I can't do more than "here's the code".
Turn out a few makers pick it up and are nice enough to give me a cut on their sales. Adding user donation I maybe made 2K out of it this year, not much but better than nothing I guess.
I wrote a retrospective about the last three year working in this if you like more detail [2]
[1] https://github.com/darthcloud/BlueRetro
[2] https://github.com/darthcloud/BlueRetro/discussions/289
[+] [-] ryannevius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanHulton|3 years ago|reply
I created a SaaS bootstrap for Javascript called Nodewood [1]. It actually started as just a template for me, because there's a lot of setup for each new JS web project that I kept skipping to get to the "fun" stuff, like I'd just hard-coded the user as ID #1 instead of writing user registration/login code. Since then, it's grown to also have form validation, a starter UI, teams support, subscription support with Stripe, an admin panel, a CLI tool, and I'm currently adding a deploy option via Pulumi [2].
I've sold a few licenses, but also it offers me a platform to "scratch my own itches", which then become available to the people who bought a license.
[1] - Nodewood: https://nodewood.com [2] - Pulumi: https://www.pulumi.com/
[+] [-] CodeSgt|3 years ago|reply
Do you offer any way to view the source before purchase?
[+] [-] SIRHAMY|3 years ago|reply
I've built something similar for my favorite tech stack but haven't had any sales yet. I find it useful in my own projects and I've seen other similar projects make some money (like JumpStart Pro for Rails) so thinking it's something around my positioning / offerings rather than full lack of a need.
Some things I think you're doing really well:
* Great sales copy and documentation
* Great aesthetics -> adds to "trust"
* Message bot for feedback
Qs:
* Q1: Did you do any customer research to help determine what features to build?
* Q2: What did you find (if anything) is the biggest reason people choose to use boilerplate rather than rolling their own?
For those interested -> CloudSeeed - SaaS boilerplate for Sveltekit + .NET + Postgres - https://cloudseed.xyz/
[+] [-] ronyfadel|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://fadel.io/missioncontrolplus
[2] https://fadel.io/batteries
[+] [-] jclardy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keviv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marban|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t0mislav|3 years ago|reply
https://randomcountrygenerator.com/
I didn't touched it, sometimes for many months in a row.
[+] [-] pavel_lishin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elil17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fusspawn|3 years ago|reply
But still makes a decent passive income.
[+] [-] DeathArrow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] healsdata|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4pkjai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdthedisciple|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bronco21016|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetime8192|3 years ago|reply
http://driftwheeler.com
More than 860 users per day, on average. Continuously growing user base. Profit through Met-Art affiliation: https://partners.metartmoney.com
[+] [-] sarora27|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoh|3 years ago|reply
Most people have never encountered the problem, so it’s hard to talk about this in general company.
But it’s solving a pain point for a few hundred finance/consulting folks with Macs, or tech startups buying Macs for their finance/strategy teams.
Haven’t worked on this as much since kids came, but I’d love to figure out better ways to get this in front of people who need it.