Ask HN: Those making $1,000+/month on side projects – what did you make?
Let's do this again. It can be a SaaS app, a mobile app, or any side project that is netting you recurring revenue.
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2016 where @xrxrxrx 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 ★ 109 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 58 comments
I write retro indie videogames and averaged 1k/mo for the first year and a half after my last release [1]. That dies off pretty quickly if you don't constantly promote though. I have a couple new games launching later this year, one of which is by contract - a 7th guest style puzzle game, and another Action RPG. I've been supplementing my gamedev income with WooCommerce clients, such as [2]. These are purely side projects outside my normal day job as an aerospace engineer.
[1] http://www.TheHideoutGames.com [2] http://shop.bikestripper.com
Discussion from the last time this question was asked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11214497
And the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9508528
And the time before that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6884552
Hello to anyone! I am making it and use it for travelling. It has occurred to me that no one could doubt that vacation plays one of the leading roles in our life. It is really true. So, you have to make it bright. This platform offers you a full range of unique hotels worldwide you can stay at with pleasure. So you are adding new colors to your trip and make it vivid. It is way much better than choose what you got used to! http://www.hotelyouwant.com/
My wife is making high 4 figures a month (record was 13k+) selling educational PDFs on a 3rd party website.
Anything is possible if there's a demand and you market to that audience. Differentiating "cool" from real demand is the hard part. That said, she makes me feel completely inadequate with her side project ;)
Money isn't everything. How sustainable your business is, your required level of commitment on an ongoing basis, and how happy you are doing what you do are also very important.
How about RF hardware?
I make user-friendly RF analog electronics:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/iseeabluewhale/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=
http://gpio.com