Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects - what did you make?

[tagabek]

It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.

[chaddeshon]

http://www.brombone.com

It's a service that solves SEO for javascript driven websites.

For the most part, Google can't crawl sites that manipulate the DOM using javascript (AngularJS, Backbone.js, Ember.js, etc). The solution is to use a headless browser to make html snapshots for all your pages and serve those to Google instead of the page that requires javascript.

This turns out to be a bit of a pain in practice. So, BromBone does it for you. It generates, hosts, and updates the html snapshots. When Googlebot visits your site, you proxy the snapshot from BromBone and serve it to Google. Now Google can see the same thing your users see.

[27182818284]

Huh. I totally thought Google would penalize your ranking for trying something like that. Have you heard of that happening at all?

[ericabiz]

My blog at http://erica.biz makes more than $1,000/mo in advertising and affiliate commissions.

I built the blog after I bootstrapped and sold my first tech company. I talk a lot about growing your business/startup, and especially about all the failures I had while building my businesses. It became popular (1.2 million unique visitors last year alone.)

I've now been blogging there for just over 6 years. Today I'm more focused on my startup, so my blog isn't bringing in as much income as it used to (though it's still over $1,000/mo.) My best month was over $24,000 in income.

[elwell]

Have you noticed a decline related to the rise of AdBlock (and related)?

[davidcristello]

but that 24k month - was it affiliate? product launch?

[someotheridiot]

http://rebrickable.com - a LEGO database that does some number crunching and tells you what you can build by combining parts from all your sets. Lots of user submitted content that is also searched and can be built, everything with instructions.

[yitchelle]

Awesome site! :-) Is most of your revenue from affiliate marketing of Lego items (most obvious one)?

[vijayr]

Most creative and original idea in this thread. Congrats.

[halcyondaze]

easily coolest idea in the thread for me (and I posted as well). Nice!

[makerops]

Really cool!

[drc37]

I started a bag company, https://www.missionarybag.com/, for a niche market (young adults who leave home for 18 months to 2 years). A contract sewer here in the US makes the bags and my stay-at home wife does the shipping/handling. This is our first month to hit $1,000 profit in a month in under 6 months. After spending 12 years in software development, I wanted to create something tangible. And all the ecommerce/SEO/marketing I have helped others with over the years has come in handy - learning a lot in the process. We are looking to fill some larger orders with an overseas manufacturer.

[cgh]

I wish I'd known about this a few months ago when I was in the market for a new bag. It meets all my picky bag criteria including not being made in China.

I ended up getting a SealLine shoulder bag which are pretty pricey but excellent.

[phamilton]

Important to note: Missionaries are now discouraged from using backpacks, so a sidebag like this is great timing.

[jthurman]

FYI, I just tried to send you a message via the "Contact Us" link on your site, and clicking "Send" results in a classic Ruby on Rails "We're sorry, something went wrong" error page. You could be losing sales if those messages aren't going through.

[xur17]

http://pizzacodes.com

My goal was to break $1k / mo by the end of this year. Last month I not only broke that goal, but more than doubled my next highest month.

[investor1234]

I made a nest egg of $150,000 through advanced use of the "spend less than you make" framework. I invest passively with index funds. I average about 6% annually, but this year was significantly more than that. Easily $1k/month.

[jcdavis]

Is that from dividends or growth of capital? 2013 is definitely a historical anomaly when it comes to returns, not hard to do well when the S&P 500 is up 27% YTD

[rhizome]

Ah, a nice green account to go with your bragging. You know what OP means..

[wyck]

A good old fashioned web site which ranks high for a resort town which has a lot of tourists who don't know where to eat so they search in the Google. My next venture is a run on sentence shortening service.

[msr101]

do you make money from the restaurants advertising directly or adsense etc?

[paulwn]

I would love to see your website and how the information you provide for this particular resort compares to what Trip Advisor offers. Any chance to share the url?

[tinco]

What is a sentence shortening service?

[postertext]

I run http://postertext.com. We design art prints for bibliophiles. All illustrations are made entirely out of text.

I've been running it while traveling the world for 3 years non-stop now. Check out my AMA on reddit if you're interested: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1rneli/ive_been_travel...

[tchadwick]

I bought a couple poster texts about 3 years ago. They're awesome :)

[HackyGeeky]

This is interesting, just requested a book I'd like.

[kerrsclyde]

I run a forum (historic vehicles) members donate to see additional content, mainly old posts and bigger images, this is the primary income. Our recurring income is in that range.

Certainly not hi-tech but valuable to our membership and increases by at least 10% each year.

We don't run any keyword advertising but in the past year I we started selling advertising space in 12 month plans which has supplemented income.

Facebook has taken a bite out of our daily posting figures but it has made no difference to traffic/income. Facebook can't compete when it comes to delivering old content.

There are several associated niches to ours which don't have a centralised web site, much potential, you do however need a good knowledge of the subject matter and time to build the community.

[benhirashima]

I made an Android app, Unlock With WiFi, three years ago. It has brought in about 64K over that time. The app unlocks your phone when you're connected to your home wifi. I'm currently working on a complete rewrite that will support patterns and face lock for root users.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benhirashi...

[motyar]

Great idea.

[manyxcxi]

http://www.shipadick.com - no joke. They sell themselves.

[jthurman]

I built and sell a collection of plugins for the Delphi IDE at http://www.twodesk.com. (Yes, people still use Delphi), for a consistent single-digit multiple of $1K each month.

[nobleach]

That is AWESOME... back in 2000, I was writing a vertical app for an oil company using Object Pascal/Borland Delphi (it was still Borland... and Kylix... at that point) It got me using Interbase/Firebird/FirebirdSQL for a couple of years. Glad to hear it's still around.

[xauronx]

I was developing primarily in Delphi for 5 years, took a year off, and now doing it on a the side again a little bit. It's not SO bad mumble mumble mumble

[akanet]

https://coderpad.io is a SaaS product I built that provides the highest fidelity experience out there currently for interviewing other programmers over the phone.

I got to my current rev with a mix of self service plans and enterprise deals.

[tectonic]

I use coderpad.io for remote pair programming interviews. Great work!

[2mia]

cool, you've protected yourself against a fork bomb. lxc - makes sense.

[anon292929]

I built and run the internet sales for my fathers and friend company and both produce over $1k a month for me: http://bluebidet.com and http://naturalsinsonline.com

[heldervasc]

In my spare time i make more than $1,000/mo designing and building Android Native Applications for companies and businesses. Is hard to balance your time between your day-day job and your personal projects but i think is possible with a good management of time.

[stevenp]

My mobile app, Routesy (http://routesy.com), falls into this category through a combination of sales of the paid version and advertising in the free version. It was one of the first 500 apps in the App Store when it launched in 2008 and has been pretty consistent in its earnings ever since then.

[tectonic]

Thanks for Routesy, I use it most days. :)

[chuckouellet]

https://snipcart.com

It is a shopping cart service developed for developers and web design agencies.

This is the a side project we have with the team @ spektrummedia.com.

We are up and running since last August, we won the site of the day on Awwwards.com back in August and then we have a lot of traffic and we are getting new customers everyday.

[lifeformed]

A music album I made fits that description, although it is winding down, as to be expected: http://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/

Via album sales, Spotify streams, iTunes, etc, all done through TuneCore (https://www.tunecore.com).

[tprice7]

Cool album. How did you get a big enough audience to make real money from this? Was it just word of mouth from making good tracks? Or was it also from doing shows or reaching out to music blogs or something?

[tinco]

Ah that's great, thanks for linking to the album, I love video game music :)

[23andwalnut]

I make quite a bit more than $1k a month from Duet - http://duetapp.com

It's a project management app for freelancers and small businesses. Hopefully one day soon it will be more than a side project.

[nreece]

Good on you! Curious to know how do you market & promote the app, considering that project management is a very competitive/saturated market segment?

[davidcristello]

This app looks amazing! I'm doing something similar but in a much different vertical - if it makes sense I'd love to talk to you about UI !

[davidcristello]

did you do the UI or was it based on an admin template?

[veesahni]

http://www.supportfu.com - SaaS. bootstrapped.