Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

> I am exploring something very similar, but for a different language.

Which language if I may ask? I'd like to branch out into other languages too in the future (preferably into something that's easier to parse than Japanese), but since I'm nowhere near done with Japanese at this point it's probably going to take many more years until I do so.

> I am curious if you considered making this a business (as in paid features/subscription based) and if not why not?

I do already have some Patron-only features. For example, normal users get access to two different voices for the audio files, while Patrons get access to four; Patrons get early access to work-in-progress new features, etc.

But inherently I'd like to keep the base product, and in consequence the major essential features, free. It's probably a horrible business decision, but I recognize that not everyone can actually pay, and I want those people to be able to use my site too. I was once poor too, so I know how it is.

I used Patreon since it was a convenient way to 1) just get some money flowing without having to deal with all of the complexities of integrating a payment processor, e.g. without having to waste what little time I have on things like taxes (Patreon automatically handles the VAT), 2) I don't necessarily run this as I would run an actual business and most of the features are completely free, so it kinda fits Patreon's model of "supporting a creator" instead of your normal SaaS model of completely paywalling everything and giving you only a two weeks' worth of trial use, and 3) most people have already heard of Patreon, so when you're brand new and just starting out it's somewhat less sketchy than asking for people's credit card numbers directly.

In the long-term I'll probably switch to using Stripe or something along those lines (while still keeping the option to use Patreon for those who prefer it), but at this income level it's not really worth my time.

So to answer your question, I think that whether using Patreon is a good way to finance your side projects depends on what those projects are, and on what exactly you goals are.

If you're trying to run a profitable business then what I'm doing is not a good example of what you should do. It might be totally obvious, but the more you give out for free and the more you rely on voluntary Patreon-like donations the less money you'll make. I know of other apps (using a fully paywalled financing model) in this space which have less users than I have and yet they're already hiring other people to work on them, while I can't even pay myself a livable wage to make this a full time job, never mind even thinking about paying someone else to help me out.

I am quite a real person, with hopes and fears :-) Thank you!

This being the internet, the answer is going to be something useless like Gamestop.

For me, in my 40s and based in Australia, I am invested in Apple and a three different ETFs.

There are plenty of investment forums and subreddits that discuss investment and FIRE strategies, and it depends on your country.

It's never too late to begin.

Generally an ETF or similar is worth looking into :-)

Vanguard. Like VOO or VTWO - and once you have good savings in there, branch out to more divided payers if you'd like them to kick out some spending money. A 4-5% ARR is probable.

I don't understand what the age is supposed to suggest here. Are you asking what to buy and hold until you retire?

Right now energy is hot. I won't give any specific tips, that is what investing is about - you do the picking and choosing and you spend your own money, it is your responsibility. You should look into commodities though. If you feel lost I can recommend TFM's Market Minute on SubscribeStar. For $5 a month you get a daily newsletter. I don't follow it but many people who are not well versed in investing really like it.

I would not consider years a short period. But anyway I have started with around 50-65k. Don't remember exactly. Around 50k was inheritance. I knew about investing since I was a teenager. I was interested in trading futures because that's what was popular back then during my high school years. But I realized day-trading is just another day job, so I never got into it. And stocks, back then, were expensive(broker fees) and you needed a lot of money(thousands instead of hundreds) which was simply out of the question for a teenager. When I inherited the money, I wanted to tuck it away and preserve it but then I said to myself "F. it", I always thought about investing in stocks one day and there won't be any better time. So I started.And I found out the fees and complication were no longer such an issue like in the past. On the contrary, it was very easy and cheap. Slowly, with couple of thousands to get my feet wet and couple of months later, I invested all of it and my own money on top of it, as I gained confidence. And it was the best decision in my life. Mostly because it inherently provided the best financial, economic and geopolitical education no school could ever give you. And as I have said, I have been living off of my investments already. Since last year(I could have sooner but I had a great job). Sure, not all people inherit money to start with but that can be equalized by time(ie. start sooner with less). Also, it is a waiting game. You need patience. It's not get rich quick type of thing. And you learn along the way. You make mistakes and you learn from them. If you have 1000$, there is nothing stopping you but your fear of letting the money go(not lose, just not have access to it).

The secret of making money in the stock market is:

1) to really know the stock you are investing in

2) keep your nerves

3) buy for less then you sell; add the fees too

4) luck

The people who make those courses make money from the courses themselves, not from their investing.

lol, no. i don't do meme stocks. i made most of my money in industrial stocks(copper and silica mostly).

What makes you so sure?

if it generates discussion i dont see a problem ... sooon we ll have to learn to live along with such machines

I've just changed into the per-user pricing (From fixed rate) to give better flexibility for organizations of all sizes. Would look into the pricing again in 6 months based on how it performs for now.

Thank you for the feedback, it is excellent. This homepage was done by me last month and you are correct. It speaks more of the offerings than exactly what it does or how it works. I'll get on it today.

As to what it does, It's basically a Rostering app for Slack teams to automate turn rotation and assign for who has to perform tasks when.

Users can setup their roster by selecting the interval (Daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly), notification time and select the squad members. RosterBird will automatically assign members per the configuration (factor in off days, absences, etc) and notify the assignee on their turn.

I'm working on additional features that allows the team members to book their convenient slots themselves instead of auto-assigning, that should give a different angle to the app and increase the potential usage, hopefully.

Io be honest, i'm not much of an expert on this either. I've built several projects and have abandoned midway.

I put down all of my ideas with a title and 2 lines of description on evernote whenever it strikes (mostly when seeing a problem, there could be other solutions that exists for this problem at this point).

And whenever in an unrelated instance I encounter a variation of the problem again, which if I believe could've been solved by that idea that I had, I give it a serious thought into researching for solutions and if none exists, I get to build.

I wouldn't call this an ideal process, it just works for me. The bad side-effect I have come to realise from this process is, I build products for which there doesn't exist a solution, which means either the market isn't there or isn't big enough.

The previous project was the same situation (fileql.com, ended up selling it) and now RosterBird. They stay small for relatively long time as you also have to convince users that they have a problem in the first place.

I started off as just another uptime monitor, and just kept adding features as my customers suggested them. Eventually I took stock of what I had built, and started building it into what it is now.

Some more takeaways from the start of the year here: https://onlineornot.com/what-learned-running-saas-for-year

You'd also be surprised at how many competitors ceased to exist over the last 18 months.

Thank you Will fix!

I’m still doing it on the side, but I did get some help from others over the years. Mainly some friends put some $ and got 2 other great partners helping me also on the side. One is in the property management business which is very helpful. He came first as a customer.

Cool. Always great to hear what people tried to do with these intercoms. I played with Arduino myself a lot for similar reasons. Thanks for sharing.

It’s simple actually. We program all the units to call our cloud phone numbers. These numbers are shared among all US customers, so service is cheap to run. Also we got a patent in how we process these calls.

We then process, record, forward, these calls to their destinations. And also we send text message updates for certain events.

Thank you!

Great suggestion about the video, thank you!

I described it above for previous comment but basically we program all the units to call our phone numbers. And then we process these calls in the cloud, record, forward, log, etc.. interface between intercom and us is phone line.

yeah, it's not restricted to only high-paying jobs or tech jobs :)

Thanks for the nice words! I stopped maintaining ThemeUI when I left Gatsby in 2021.

In terms of getting the word out, it's really all based on my personal audience. I haven't found a repeatable marketing channel outside of just… tweeting about it, which is also visible in declining sales as I saturate that channel.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Absolutely! This has taken my 200 initial stake to bit over 5200 now.

Yep, mainly focused on two sports soccer and rugby league (#1 sport in my country) which both have a culture of 3, 2, 1 voting system used in my app. I emailed the presidents or coaching staff of hundreds of clubs introducing the product.