Ask HN: (Devoted time):(revenue) ratio for side project
What are (devoted time):(revenue) ratio for your side projects?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2016 where @selmat convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 22 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 13 comments
I have been developing odd-ball physics apps (ThreeBody, Geodesic Asteroids most recently).
I'd say I put in about 10 hrs/week => 520/yr.
Last year my revenues were up 400% (to $88) with expenses of about $400 (apple developer fee, web host, test device, couple of books) - so a loss of about $300.
Time/revenue = 88/520 = $0.17/hr
Infinite. Can't make many things public nor open source either because nda, non competes or because I didn't ever put them past "it could work" phase. Mostly the latter to be honest. Figuring solutions is so much more interesting that working out kinks and corner cases
I have an Android and iOS game that took me around 125h to do (including learning time). In the last 12 months it made around $25000, so about $200 per hour.
I'm not counting with time spent maintaining the game, but it should come to about 2~4h/week in the last year or so.
I have a project that I now maintain on just 2 hours a week... But I worked on it for 4 weeks, 10 hours a week...
So that is 136hr/y.
Revenue for the past 12 months is £26,500
26500/136 = £195ph
Until the last few months, the ratio was stupendous: ~$300/hr
I've been working on upgrading the technology and business model. It's a risk and I think I'll fail...