ROUNDTABLES ★ 14 upvotes 2024

Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @umen on Hacker News:

I try to understand if it's still good business idea for simple web apps . from your experience is it ? can you give examples and numbers ? thanks

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2024 where @umen convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
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.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (9 total discussions):

WH @whatamidoingyo Peer Contributor

I've disabled adsense because it brings in like $0.60/wk. When I first got approved, it was like $8.00/day, but that slowly died down. Not sure why exactly. Adsense revenue isn't worth slowing down a site and angering users.

I think it might be worth it if you had a few projects all running Adsense, like 10 sites, or something. Correct me if I'm wrong?

FU @fullstick Peer Contributor

$0. My side projects are for me first and I want to provide ad free experiences for those who happen to use them. Be the change you want to see.

AD @admissionsguy Peer Contributor

$400 / mo at 40-50,000 monthly UU. It's not a web app, just static website with lots of data.

HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 14 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 9 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: