Ask HN: Side project of more that $2k monthly revenue what's your project?

1

Scraping Fish

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

2

HTTP Toolkit

I run HTTP Toolkit (https://httptoolkit.com) which passed $2k a couple of years back. No longer a side project, as it's made enough money for me to work on it full time for a fair while now, but it certainly started that way, and it's still a one-man show (plus many wonderful open-source contributors). I suspect that'll be a common theme in answers here though: if you have a side project making $2k a month, in most of the world that's enough for you to go full-time and try to take it further. If you can make $2k/month on something working only part-time, you can definitely make a lot more if you focus on it. On your questions: HTTP Toolkit is a desktop app (plus a mobile app and other components for integrations) but it's an Electron app that effectively functions as a SaaS (with a freemium subscription model) that just happens to have a component that runs on your computer. And actually getting to $2k wasn't overnight at all - it took a couple of years of slow steady slog. A few inflection points that made a notable difference (releasing rewriting support & Android support particularly) but mostly it was a matter of "just keep pushing", trusting the trajectory would keep going, and steadily grinding upwards. It's great where it is now, but it's hard work - a solo business is not for the faint of heart!

#Software Development #Development Tools #Security 24 social mentions

3

Afterplay

I run Afterplay (https://afterplay.io). It's a game emulation platform where you bring your own games. It took 18 months from first line of code to 2K. It's now my full time job :).

#Emulators #Games #Gaming 14 social mentions

4

Cleavr.io

I made Cleavr as a desktop app first and gave it away for free. I got lots of downloads as well as lots of support requests. To keep support tickets away I put a small price tag on it. People still kept downloading and reaching out for support (not necessarily bugs but eben if they have their app issues). I then decided to go the path of a cloud SAAS app. The desktop app didn't hit $2k mostly be ause the price tag was small and I just wanted to do good and give it away. Once I went cloud, it took only about 4 months to hit $2k per month. [1] https://cleavr.io.

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

5

Remote Leaf

Built https://remoteleaf.com to help remote job seekers. We hand-pick remote jobs from all over the internet and send you the personalised list of remote jobs that are fit for you. It took 2 years to reach $2k revenue and I lost interest in this project due to a lot of manual work. With the advancements in AI, I'm planning to focus on it again.

#Remote Jobs #Startup Jobs #Tech Jobs 17 social mentions

6

Outline Wiki

Https://getoutline.com – A team knowledge base, hit $2k MRR a couple of months after turning on paid plans, has always been steady growth since then. A few years in and almost reached what I'd consider v1 feature complete.

#Knowledge Base #Internal Knowledgebase #Team Collaboration 16 social mentions

7

OpenIn

7 years ago I started a site project for forwarding logs and metrics from k8s, docker, openshift in Splunk. It is enterprise offering, and I started making money pretty quick. After 6 months I already made 40k, and quit my employer. Tight now this company generates 7 figures, and still run by me with one more person helping with accounting. https://www.outcoldsolutions.com Now I also started macOS development for the last 2 years, and making around 2k a month. https://loshadki.app.

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

I built a Charades-game [1] for both iOS [2] and Android [3]. Launched last year and just recently got to around 2k a month, some months like December are of course better than let's say September because of holidays like New Year etc. It took about 10-12 months reaching those numbers, and I'd say we still have lot's of room for improvement. It's also very low maintenance, but highly scalable. What I do is basically localise the game to as many big languages as I can, and then throw some ASO on it and hold my fingers. Haven't spent any dollars at all on the marketing otherwise. [1] https://yangmeistudios.com/games-and-apps/charades.

#Web App #Emojis #Tech 1 social mentions

9

40 Hadiths

#Mobile Apps #Religion #Web Search 1158 social mentions

10

pixelpeeper.io

I run https://pixelpeeper.com on the side. It's a micro-SaaS for photographers who edit in Lightroom. Lets you reverse-engineer Lightroom edits from JPG files and download them as presets that you can apply on your own photos. Took a month or two to reach $2k/mo, riding the wave of instagram's popularity in 2017-2018, plus the project went viral initially. However, the niche is ultimately too small to grow the revenue significantly. Still chugging along, almost 6 years later, though.

#Emulators #Analytics #VPS Hosting 3 social mentions

11

Hacker Newsletter

I started Hacker Newsletter [1] almost 14 years ago and sent out the 647th issue today [2] to 58k folks. It took over a year to break 1k subscribers and a few more years to get to that type of revenue. I could do a lot more with it and plan to one day, but really only focus on it a couple hours each week when I build the issue and talk to sponsors. 1: https://hackernewsletter.com.

#Hacker News UI #Productivity #Web App 22 social mentions

12

Pirsch Analytics

I'm building Pirsch Analytics [0], a privacy-friendly web analytics tool. I think it took the two of us ~1.5 years to get to $2000 MRR. Currently we're setting just above $4000 MRR. It started as an experiment for my personal website and I was in the same position as you're right now. We were already working on a Notion like app to take notes, but didn't make any money and probably went into the wrong direction. As my prototype seemed to work quite well, we decided to turn it into a product. My initial goal was to do server-side analytics without the downsides of parsing access logs, but of course we now also have a "regular" JS snippet integration. You can learn more about our journey here [1] and on our blog [2]. Let me know if you have any questions! [0] https://pirsch.io [1] https://pirsch.io/about-us [2] https://pirsch.io/blog.

#Analytics #Open Source #Privacy 25 social mentions

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

14

webtoapp.design

I've been working on https://webtoapp.design since December 2019. I cracked $2k/month after around 2 years. Could've probably done it quicker if I did more things that don't scale (as people often say). Should've focused less on SEO and more on outreach or other growth channels. I've since got my CS degree and I'm working on it full time now :).

#Web App #Mac #Mobile Apps 16 social mentions

15

Polotno SDK

I am building Polotno SDK (https://polotno.com/). It a mix of SaaS and paid javascript library and react components. It is a design editor that you can integrate into your web app. From the first paying customer it took around 1 year to get 2000 MRR. And I spent around 9 months on making first version before the first paying customer. It took me a very long time to find the idea of SDK. Previously I was thinking only about B2C cases. B2C market is already VERY crowded with Canva and million of its competitors. But B2B market was almost empty when I started.

#Design Tools #Developer Tools #Website Builder 7 social mentions

16

Requestly

I started building Requestly (https://requestly.io [2]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/requestly-redirect-url-mo/mdnleldcmiljblolnjhpnblkcekpdkpa [3]: <a href="https://requestly.io/desktop">https://requestly.io/desktop</a>.

#Testing #Localhost Tools #Developer Tools 24 social mentions

17

AppLaunchpad

Not OP, but have a look at [0]. It’s not great, but good enough. I regularly use it for App Store screenshots with captions and text. [0] https://theapplaunchpad.com/.

#Screenshot Annotation #Screenshots #Image Annotation 4 social mentions

18

Mapbox

Yeah domain knowledge/network is definitely needed, I am working with a friend who has that, it's a must in this field because it's almost set in the stone age. Google maps was crazy expensive I went with Mapbox[1] for now which seems to have enough features and is less expensive. [1] https://mapbox.com/.

#Developer Tools #Mapping And GIS #Maps 12 social mentions

19

Wide Angle Analytics

* Wide Angle Analytics https://wideangle.co – to go beyond simple web analytics alternatives to Google Analytics (paid); SaaS; web with mobile-friendly dashboards * Not Robot https://notrobot.eu – online CAPTCHA; beta live; GA coming soon :) (free); SaaS; We support open start-ups https://wideangle.co/open, but we are not publishing our numbers :).

#Internet Marketing #Sales #Marketing 8 social mentions