Ask HN: Do you currently have a side project that you make money with?
if no - why not?
if yes - what's your biggest pain right now?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2022 where @curious-mind 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 Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 5 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 5 comments
Yes, I have a SaaS side project I developed with partners over the past year and we already have a few customers.
My biggest pain at the moment is the struggle to balance my day job and my side project, which has an ever increasing demand for attention.
Unfortunately it's not yet at the stage where I could finance myself by working full time on it, but I need to dedicate it more time to grow it to that stage. Kind of an egg/chicken conundrum.
Seeking an investment could be a solution, but this is a stealth project in an industry that is usually shunned by investors, so I'm not sure that could work out.
Yes (https://sumi.news). My biggest pain is marketing. If I get it in front of the right people, I get new subscribers. But getting it in front of the right people is an ongoing challenge.
I simply don't have time to work on my side project. Plus, I'm not sure how I would even make money from it.
https://randomdailyart.com
My biggest pain is not knowing whether I'll still be in business 3 months from now.