Ask HN: Has any side project of yours made a significant amount of money? (>$5k)
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2025 where @atleastoptimal 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 Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 4 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
trading bitcoin. not a start-up idea, but a side hustle, I guess you can say