Ask HN: (Devoted time):(revenue) ratio for side project | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: (Devoted time):(revenue) ratio for side project

22 pointsselmat13 comments

What are (devoted time):(revenue) ratio for your side projects?

I have been developing odd-ball physics apps (ThreeBody, Geodesic Asteroids most recently).

I'd say I put in about 10 hrs/week => 520/yr.

Last year my revenues were up 400% (to $88) with expenses of about $400 (apple developer fee, web host, test device, couple of books) - so a loss of about $300.

Time/revenue = 88/520 = $0.17/hr

Good to see I'm not the only one losing money :P

I'm in the same ballpark of time and losses. I'm selling a WebRTC-based video chat solution (pretty much vanilla at the moment), which we wanted to turn into a bigger platform.

Earnings should be a bit higher though (they're going to be $ 500 / year if I keep the customers because it's a SAAS model), but they come nowhere close to covering the time invested - and I still have a LOT of basic stuff to implement.

Let's say Time/Revenue: 500/600 = $0.83/hr

Infinite. Can't make many things public nor open source either because nda, non competes or because I didn't ever put them past "it could work" phase. Mostly the latter to be honest. Figuring solutions is so much more interesting that working out kinks and corner cases

Until the last few months, the ratio was stupendous: ~$300/hr

I've been working on upgrading the technology and business model. It's a risk and I think I'll fail...

What are you working on? Hopefully learning a new technology is worth the investment?

Just boring enterprise software. Yes, the new technology makes me more valuable in the job market but other than that, I think I'm just getting old as I see choice of technology as bikeshedding these days.

Amen to that, but unfortunately if you want to stay employable as a dev, you have to :( .

I have an Android and iOS game that took me around 125h to do (including learning time). In the last 12 months it made around $25000, so about $200 per hour.

I'm not counting with time spent maintaining the game, but it should come to about 2~4h/week in the last year or so.

What game is it? if you don't mind sharing

is it Line? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nmssoftwar...

I have a project that I now maintain on just 2 hours a week... But I worked on it for 4 weeks, 10 hours a week...

So that is 136hr/y.

Revenue for the past 12 months is £26,500

26500/136 = £195ph

I'd say fairly good, first side project, so no other to compare to. Also an invaluable source of experience.

5hrs month: 0 revenue.

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