Show HN: Analyzing 9 years of HN side projects that reached $500/month

[haileyzhou]

After analyzing 9 years of HN side project posts, I found some counter-intuitive patterns about what makes projects profitable.

Three things that stood out:

1. B2B dominates: 73% of $500+/month projects target businesses, not consumers

2. Speed matters more than polish: Average 47 days from launch to first sale. Most started charging with 3-5 core features.

3. Pricing cluster: 87% price between $20-49. Low enough for impulse purchase, high enough to be sustainable.

I compiled this into a dataset of nearly 700 projects with tech stack, pricing, and timeline data. Built it because I was planning my own side project and wanted to see patterns, not just success stories.

Available at [https://haileyzhou.gumroad.com/l/pknktt] ($49) as html report and raw .csv data.

Data source note: All from public HN posts 2017-2025. I did the cleaning, categorization, and cross-referencing.

Happy to discuss methodology or findings. Curious what patterns others see or if this matches your experience?

[cinntaile]

Was your own project really selling a dataset at the higher end of what successful side projects make or was this a sidesideproject?

I'm curious about your own sales today and in a week's time.

[haileyzhou]

well, it's like you cannot get valuable insights of wikipedia for free as well. i spent several efforts to figure it out.

hope you can get more insights from this story i published in medium. :)

https://medium.com/@katnissstoa/analyzing-9-years-of-hn-side...

[haileyzhou]

hi guys, i wrote a long medium story about this project, and i highly recommend you to read this story, i extracted the most important three patterns of those successful projects. enjoy reading! https://medium.com/@katnissstoa/analyzing-9-years-of-hn-side...

[keepamovin]

This is great! I love this. Smart idea, and cool way to turn it into a product. Well done.

[haileyzhou]

well, thanks. and i hope those insights can be helpful for you.