Those making $500/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

1

OpenIn

#Project Management #Website Testing #Webapp Testing 8 social mentions

2

Type Nine

I wanted to give swift a try when it came out in 2014. I created the keyboard I know you all miss on the iPhone, and it's been doing quite great since. https://typenineapp.com.

#Task Management #Todos #Productivity 3 social mentions

3

Deckmill

I sell cheap but high-quality Anki decks for language learning: https://deckmill.com Created using a mix of automation (TTS, machine translation, etc.) and human reviews. Built it with a friend, making around $500 a month, very stable over the last couple of years. Spend 1 or 2 hours a month on it, mostly customer support.

#Online Learning #Language Learning #Flash Cards 3 social mentions

4

Scraping Fish

Scraping Fish - a web scraping API powered by custom-build, ethical, mobile proxy pool: https://scrapingfish.com/.

#Data Extraction #Web Scraping #Web Scraping API 29 social mentions

5

malmal

I made collaborative painting apps, https://hellopaint.io and https://malmal.io. In the best months I made 800€+ in ad revenue from malmal but currently it's a lot less. I think there's potential to make a lot more though, although I'd like to stop showing ads and switch to some more predictable income model. I do have a patreon but it only brings in ~100€ per month. I could promote it more though.

#Diagrams #Digital Drawing And Painting #Graphic Design Software 4 social mentions

6

Team Today

I built https://team-today.com in a lock down as a way for my remote team to see when people are on holiday, going to site, or wfh. Since then it’s grown to include other features like desk booking and PTO approvals. But at it’s all been built around the core concept of seeing when your colleagues are working and where they’re planning on working from.

#Productivity #Project Management #Digital Asset Management 4 social mentions

7

ToolWall

Https://toolwallhq.com - Digital organizer for your physical tools. I used to have a hard time keeping my shop organized, so I jumped in and came up with a solution that has worked for me so far and perhaps might help you. The idea is you use the digital artboard to visualize your tools on the wall and then buy the holders to mount it on your workshop wall. There seems to be a growing overlap between programming and woodworking for whatever reason. I could go on about the similarities, but after hours of staring at the screen, we sometimes want to make things with our hands and woodworking helps me do that. If you're looking to get started, I can't recommend visiting a local makerspace enough. PS also on Etsy if that's your thing: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ToolWall.

#eCommerce #Garage #Organizer 1 social mentions

8

Video Hub App

Created <i>Video Hub App</i> (that will be 5 years old next month). I sell it for $5 and $3.50 of each purchase goes to the <i>cost-effective</i> charity <i>Against Malaria Foundation</i> (See <i>GiveWell.org</i> for details). It was averaging around 100 purchases per month, though it's lower over the last year as I've not had time to release new updates (moving to another state is challenging). https://videohubapp.com/ - Think of it like YouTube for videos on your computer. Browse, search, and organize your videos MIT Open Source: <a href="https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App">https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App</a>.

#Video #File Manager #Video & Movies 21 social mentions

9

40 Hadiths

Https://FreeSolitaire.win brings around $500/mo (advertising revenue). I started making this PWA in 2016 and I’ve been slowly adding to it over time. I intend it to stay minimal & lightweight. Fun fact: because it is so lightweight, it was included in the Moya app (<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nu.bi.moya">https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nu.bi.moya</a>), a popular messaging app in South Africa that is “data-free” for users (it uses reverse-billing). Now half of players are South Africans.

#Mobile Apps #Religion #Web Search 1161 social mentions

10

Cleavr.io

I was pretty depressed at work a while ago and to take my mind off I made a desktop app for provisioning bring your own servers, creating sites, and deploying web apps. It was free. Fast forward a few years and a coworker joined me and we made a cloud version of it. It is doing ok but yet pay for two of us full time. However, we looooove working on it and helping customers esp. With their deployment issues. It is seriously more fun than our jobs that pay handsomely. https://cleavr.io.

#VPS Hosting #Product Deployment #Build And Deployment Automation 34 social mentions

11

Zeplo.io

I acquired a side hustle in late 2022. It’s doing $1k/month. I’ve been enjoying it so far. Basic queues using http as input and http output. https://zeplo.io.

#Sales Automation #Lead Management #Marketing Automation 4 social mentions

12

Twitter Archive Eraser

Twitter Archive Eraser (https://delete.tweets.app) makes ~3K USD per month. I don't do any active work on it any longer for the past 2 years or so, other than the small bug fixes/when Twitter changes the archive format. Bracing for a shutdown to the API soon anyway. Past submissions on how it used to bring in $7k per month and a few technical details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23439606 (June 2020), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29998723 (Jan 2022).

#Twitter #Productivity #Tech 2 social mentions

13

Simple Scraper

I'm making https://simplescraper.io - a no-code web scraping tool. Saved up, quit my job and went all in...on a todo app. Needless to say it, that didn't go far, but it did teach me how to code. When I was close to broke (much too close) I pivoted to this product and finally gained traction and now it's doing well enough to be my main source of income. I'm kind of following the "1000 true fans" ethos that pops up here occasionally. There's a dedicated group of customers who really benefit from the easy and speed of the product and they're like my product team. I check in with them often, make sure they're happy and build features for them. Turns out, what they value other people value too, and so the product slowly but surely grows. Learning to code was honestly one of the best decisions I've ever made. Felt like gaining wings.

#Web Scraping #API Tools #Scraper 18 social mentions

14

Newsy

I'm continuing with my project Newsy https://newsy.co A modern take on domain parking. I have ~50 un-used domains. I wanted to make some good use out of them instead of just parking them. So I built Newsy to convert them into automated content aggregators.

#Domains #Make Money #No Code 20 social mentions

15

The Coding Career Handbook

Https://learninpublic.org - I did a livestream with stripe about it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-UxzCtpB74">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-UxzCtpB74</a> its 3 years old and still making 2-3k a month but I've gone from happy to guilty - I havent had any time to make updates to the book but I really want to and every single month that goes by that I don't I lose credibility. I'll still do it but its so hard to go back to something when my interests keep shifting.

#Developer Tools #Tech #Education 8 social mentions

16

volt.fm

#Music #Spotify #Analytics 51 social mentions

17

Pikaso

#Photography #Design Tools #Twitter 4 social mentions

18

Xnapper

I built a screenshot app for macOS and made ~$3k/mo from it :) https://xnapper.com People like the app for its ability to turn a normal boring screenshot into a beautiful one that they can share on social media instantly.

#Design Tools #Screenshots #Productivity 6 social mentions

19

SecAlerts.co

I built SecAlerts https://secalerts.co a few years ago. Fairly straight forward SaaS product to send email alerts on new vulnerabilities matched to customer software.

#Vulnerability Scanner #Security #Security Monitoring 3 social mentions

20

Chartbrew

I'm working part-time on my project https://chartbrew.com It's an open-source data visualization and reporting platform that I started in 2018, I abandoned in 2019, then resumed working on it more seriously in 2020. Currently, the platform is doing $1,138 in MRR from then managed hosting service and has made over $11k in revenue so far. It's been growing steadily in the last few months but going through a rough Dec-Jan period at the moment. You can see the open page at https://chartbrew.com/open Onwards and great job everyone at working to make side projects work for you!

#Data Dashboard #Data Visualization #Business Intelligence 9 social mentions

I did a Show HN 4 months ago[1]. The reason I started KTool was to spend less time on computer screens, and more on e-ink Kindle. I was afraid of going blind. After 4 months improving KTool, it now becomes a tool to help you combat doom-scrolling. Instead of mindlessly scrolling the web, I deliberately send interesting articles to my Kindle. Recently, I added newsletter & RSS support, it's 100% automated now. My favorite source of content is Hacker News RSS[2], Stratechery[3], Indie Hacker Newsletters[4] and a few other Substack newsletters. I can enjoy reading HN latest stories or my fav authors' latest pieces on my Kindle without spending hours browsing on my computer. I just reached $620 MRR today (Jan 23) [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637996 [2]: https://hnrss.github.io [3]: https://stratechery.com [4]: https://www.indiehackers.com/newsletter.

#Email Newsletters #Social Networks #News 28 social mentions

22

KTool.io

I built KTool (https://ktool.io) — it allows you to forward web articles, newsletters and RSS feeds to your Kindle. ---.

#Reading #eBook Reader #eBook Manager 33 social mentions

23

Aptakube

I have two projects, combined doing ~€1500/mo https://fider.io - an open source alternative to UserVoice. I started this one 6 years ago to learn Go and React. I’ve seen thousands of instances out there being self hosted, so I started a cloud hosting to those who don’t want to manage it themselves. https://aptakube.com - Desktop Client for Kubernetes. This is very recent, launch was 2 weeks ago, so it’s only starting to get some traction now. I’m leaving my job to go full time indie hacker now, wish me luck!

#Developer Tools #Kubernetes #DevOps Tools 8 social mentions

24

Pika.style

Being a designer, I share my experiments in UI and design on Twitter and some other sites. To present designs, I used to beautify them in Figma. This was a routine process where I would open Figma, create a gradient background for my design, add shadows, rounded corners etc. And export the image in correct size, so if i’m to share it on Dribbble I would export it in Dribbble size, for Twitter the size is different this whole process used to take like 20 to 30 minutes easily. So I built an app https://pika.style to do all of that for me quickly it started as a hobby, open-source and free to use project which I was building in public on my twitter(@thelifeofrishi). In a matter of time I started getting DMs on Twitter for feature requests I remember a founder of a company wanted to have a certain feature, we discussed that and in the end I asked whether he would be happy paying for that feature, to which he said yes. I added the requested feature in 2 days and got back to him, he instantly purchased annual subscription and started using Pika. That was in February, 2022 fast forward to today, almost an year later, Pika now has 150+ paid users and makes $1,500+ in revenue each month. i’ve turned it from just a screenshot beautifying tool to a tool to design very customisable mockups and images. You can use it to generate images for your website, app, code, tweet etc. And to keep it more accessible, it has a free tier which doesn’t even require registration to use i’ve also added a plan just for students and teachers so they can use Pika’s paid fearures at a very discounted subscription fee if you’re a programmer, marketer, designer, no coder or work in the tech industry, I think you’ll definitely find Pika useful :).

#Design Tools #Screenshots #Mockups 3 social mentions

25

SlashDreamer

Https://slashdreamer.com/ (subscription) - wanted to do something with stable diffusion - this was the most useful one for me (since I am using Notion a lot) Working on https://ogtester.com/ now.

#Design Tools #AI #AI Art Generator 3 social mentions

26

Reversle

Https://reversle.net/ (mostly via ads) - made a few weeks after mathle.

#Puzzle Games #Games #Entertainment 1 social mentions

27

Focused Work

I'm working on a timer app, and is now up to ~$2k/mo! - https://focusedwork.app It's taught me a lot about the non-technical side of building a product. Very fulfilling from a personal growth perspective.

#Project Management #Productivity #Time Tracking 3 social mentions

28

NoisyCamp

Not $500/month yet, but I'm already having a few paying customers: https://noisycamp.com/ NoisyCamp is a platform for music studios to manage their reservations. It also helps musicians to find place to rehearse.

#Music #Online Bookings #Online Venue Booking 6 social mentions

29

MicroAcquire

I used https://acquire.com/ in this case. I looked at maybe 80 companies just from the surface. Then inquired about 15-20 of them for more details. After about a week of thinking, zeplo wouldn’t leave my mind. There was one other close contender but zeplo was more present in my mind and had better metrics. From there it was letter of intent, due diligence, asset agreement, escrow, and asset transfer. Hopefully this helps.

#Startups #Online Marketplace #Buy Websites 135 social mentions

30

Codemap

2 years ago I made a code visualization tool called Codemap, https://codemap.app, which visualizes function calls in any codebase as a graph, to give the software engineers a high-level understanding of their code. Last year I noticed its user sign-ups are ticking up quickly, acquiring hundreds of users in a few months, so I decided to redesign the app and add more language supports (now supporting Typescript, Javsacript, Python, Ruby, and Go. It's a combination of a desktop app (to parse your local codebase) and a web app (to visualize the graph). Users pay a small price to unlock the full graph, otherwise the graph is capped at 100 nodes, which allows users to fully try out the product before committing to pay for it.

#Job Boards #Hiring And Recruitment #Productivity 4 social mentions

31

Xpiks

I made a cross platform desktop app for people who upload their photos and videos to microstock agencies called Xpiks (https://xpiksapp.com). Initially I was selling one-off forever licenses but last year started moving them to subscription. So far progress is steady and I keep working on it. The app is made in C++/Qt and I’m looking for people who might be interested to join.

#Developer Tools #DevOps Tools #Puzzle 3 social mentions

32

Browse AI

I started making Browse AI (https://browse.ai) about 3 years ago. Quit my job soon after and focused on it full-time when I had savings enough for 2 years of my living expenses. The next 1.5 years were intense. I learned to have better and more conversations with users (we'd crash and burn if I hadn't come across a book called The Mom Test) and we went through several positioning pivots. As I was running out of money, I launched on ProductHunt and got decent initial traction and a group of angels who found us there and invested ~$300k. Then we started making revenue...

#Automation #Automated Testing #Website Monitoring 8 social mentions

33

RocketCrew.Space

#Job Boards #Tech Jobs #Engineers 36 social mentions

34

TAYL

- https://tayl.app - convert all text to audio and listen as a podcast.

#Web App #AI #Podcast 1 social mentions

35

Ultimate Meal Plans

I've got a few Free blog setup service to help people star their own blog → https://startablog.com Meal Planning web app & service → https://ultimatemealplans.com Mobility training and exercises → https://movewellapp.com.

#Health And Fitness #Web App #Cooking 1 social mentions

36

How to Start A Blog

I've got a few Free blog setup service to help people star their own blog → https://startablog.com Meal Planning web app & service → https://ultimatemealplans.com Mobility training and exercises → https://movewellapp.com.

#Blogging #Decentralized Social Network #CMS 2 social mentions

37

MoveWell

I've got a few Free blog setup service to help people star their own blog → https://startablog.com Meal Planning web app & service → https://ultimatemealplans.com Mobility training and exercises → https://movewellapp.com.

#Health And Fitness #iPhone #Meditation 1 social mentions