Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

1

SteadyMouse

#Ruby Web Framework #Web Frameworks #Fonts 2 social mentions

2

Joyful gifts

I built https://joyful.gifts a couple of years ago. Nice lunch money and was a good technical challenge. I did it to be able to call myself a full-stack software dev. Basically, get over my imposter syndrome.

#Productivity #eCommerce #Web App 10 social mentions

Mission Control Plus [1] and Batteries for Mac [2] make about $3k per month and need little maintenance. Thankfully Apple hasn’t Sherlocked them (yet). [1] https://fadel.io/missioncontrolplus.

#Window Manager #OSX Tools #OSX Window Manager 3 social mentions

#Productivity #Monitoring Tools #Log Management 3 social mentions

5

Nodewood

Well, I've spoken about this before, and on here no less, but only really in response to posts like this. I don't do any advertising or speak about mine except in interviews, since it's usually indicative of the kind of requirements they're looking for. I created a SaaS bootstrap for Javascript called Nodewood [1]. It actually started as just a template for me, because there's a lot of setup for each new JS web project that I kept skipping to get to the "fun" stuff, like I'd just hard-coded the user as ID #1 instead of writing user registration/login code. Since then, it's grown to also have form validation, a starter UI, teams support, subscription support with Stripe, an admin panel, a CLI tool, and I'm currently adding a deploy option via Pulumi [2]. I've sold a few licenses, but also it offers me a platform to "scratch my own itches", which then become available to the people who bought a license. [1] - Nodewood: https://nodewood.com.

#SaaS #JavaScript Framework #SaaS Website Builder 16 social mentions

6

Kbee

Two years ago, my cofounder and I built and launched a tool that turns Google Drive folders into a wiki (https://kbee.app). It's making about $1.5K/month and growing organically on it's own...

#Customer Service #WiKi #Help Desk 5 social mentions

7

FeedMail

I built https://feedmail.org because I wasn't satisfied with the existing RSS-to-Email services available. I figured I would really just be making it for myself but decided to make it a product and have made a few hundred dollars in the first months. It pays for the hosting costs and gives me some motivation to work on it. It's also been surprisingly stable and my monitoring is good, so if I am not actively working on it I can just walk away and forget.

#RSS #Email #SaaS 24 social mentions

8

40 Hadiths

I made an app last year that lets the user track virtually anything. Most notably, it is possible to track prices from any website. The app has made me a fair amount of money, but I don't really mention it to my friends or family. The thing is, I am Norwegian, and most people here use iPhones. Since the app is only available for Android, the conversation usually ends in an -oh, anyway. The app (AnyTracker):https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.shervinkoushan.anyTracker.

#Mobile Apps #Religion #Web Search 1174 social mentions

9

PDFEncrypt

I built PDFEncrypt (https://pdfencrypt.net) a couple years ago based on a very simple need from a client: to encrypt PDF files via a native Windows app, for free. I have been amazed at the number of visitors (4000/mo), emails, downloads, and donations the project has received. I released it as open source software, and I'm now working on V2 (almost done!) which is a complete rewrite based on user requests, as well as a bunch of new features. This has been a very fun side project and good practice coding in C#.

#PDF Tools #PDF #PDF Editor 2 social mentions

10

Online Solitaire

I'm a bit late to the game on this thread, but here goes. For the longest time I had a solitaire app for Mac that I ran as a side-hustle. A couple of years ago I programmed solitaire from scratch for the web. Fast-forward a few years and the site starts to generate some actual traffic. I then decide to put ads on it even though I thought you couldn't really earn money on ads anymore. It didn't generate a lot of money, but enough that I wanted to keep working on the site. Today the site is earning $10.000/month from ads. It wasn't until the site started to earn $5.000/month or so that I actually started to talk to people about it. You can try out the site here if you want: https://online-solitaire.com/.

#Games #Online Games #Card Games 10 social mentions