Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell
Previously asked on 2020 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2022 where @deadcoder0904 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 ★ 540 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 611 comments
I make around $500 per month running a gaming VPN service - https://www.aussievpn.com.au
I initially built it to route PUBG players in Australia (myself included!) onto the fastest links to overseas servers as the Australian servers did not have enough players. It was strung together with OpenVPN and a Discord bot as I never expected more than around 20 people would use it... mostly figured it would be me and my squad mates. Within three months I had around 350 users by word of mouth paying $5 per month. Most of my users came from established competitors as my service was a lot simpler to use. The user numbers died down over the following year mostly due to competitors offering an aggressive referral system and I was focused on other projects.
Last year I decided to expand to other games and regions. I rebuilt it as a standalone Electron based Windows app using a kernel network driver that can route individual Windows apps through my WireGuard VPN servers. I built everything except the network driver which was done by a Windows networking specialist - https://ntkernel.com
I currently support PUBG, DOTA 2, iRacing, Apex Legends, Rocket League, Final Fantasy XIV, Super People in Australia/New Zealand and PUBG and Rocket League in North America.
The service is stable and relatively scalable so this year I'm hoping to focus on the marketing in between other projects. Part of that will probably include a name change as I figure it doesn't make a lot of sense to people outside Australia
I'm not quite there yet, but I'm up to $300/mo iteratively building an uptime checker: https://onlineornot.com/
I started with literally just a Lambda function that checks if static websites were still online, added an email alert if it's offline, wrapped authentication around it, integrated Stripe, and shipped it.
Eventually, I added Slack/Discord/SMS alerts, team invites, support for checking APIs for both uptime and correctness, support for checking JavaScript apps, and more.
My trick for launching into 200 competitors providing the "same" service and still getting customers?
- I work two hours a day, every weekday on OnlineOrNot, and no other side projects. I've had this streak going for about nine months now.
- I focus particularly on features that solve my customer's pain (and I ask my customers what that pain is)
- I'm ruthlessly iterative. If I can't get a feature done in two hours, I figure out how to cut scope down to a two hour block, and ship that. Then iterate on it.
Built Shopping Saga:
Real-time Online Shopping Deals by Product Category | Thoughtful Gifts for Every Occasion, Recipient, Category
Gifts:
1. Daily-updated gift products catalog 2. Direct Amazon and Etsy product links for gifts and deals 3. Browse and filter by price, category, recipient, occasion, popularity
Shopping Deals:
1. Grab online shopping deals as soon as they are available 2. Category-wise segregation of deals 3. Deals updated half-hourly
Initially, it was only web and android, but now I have released iOS app as well.
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mysticpeaks.shoppingsaga
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1604578567#?platform=iphone
The web version was pretty basic, so I've taken it down currently. Learning Vue JS to enhance the frontend/UI.
The apps have pretty clean UI.
My side project https://playtoearn.one/ is not making $500/month yet, but it's getting there: a tiny bit more than $400 for this month
It's getting around 250-300 visitors a day, and in a high paying niche
I started using "classic" ads - which were/are making next to nothing - but just signed a deal with a direct client for 400$ for 3 weeks of displaying his game on the site, on the top banner
There are so many play-to-earn games popping up at the same time that projects are fighting for visibility, which playtoearn.one can bring
So now, I've hired a designer to make a great looking UI and I'm getting motivated to turn this side project into something more than this
EDIT: Traffic for the past month:
https://simpleanalytics.com/playtoearn.one?period=month&count=1
I have two such side projects that run almost passively, neither is an app though.
1- An extremely simple habit tracker spreadsheet template that I also use myself - https://www.preetamnath.com/habit-tracker-template
Makes ~$100/mo but this month it's on track to make $200, probably due to new year's enthusiasm?
2- Learn Programmatic SEO, a straightforward course to help people identify repeatable keyword patterns and use that to drive traffic to their business, website, projects etc. SEO beginner-friendly - https://www.preetamnath.com/programmatic-seo
The course makes between $300-$500/mo.
I don't have any costs other than website hosting and Gumroad fees. I do think these projects have scope to improve and grow. Would love feedback from anyone who finds them interesting!