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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11610319

by selmat • 10 years ago

22 13 10 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

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

safeharbourio• 10 years ago

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

musgravepeter• 10 years ago

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

GFischer3• 10 years ago

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

cheez2• 10 years ago

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...

GFischer3• 10 years ago

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

cheez2• 10 years ago

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.

samfisher83• 10 years ago

5hrs month: 0 revenue.

adzeds• 10 years ago

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

desfan• 10 years ago

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.

TimeWaster• 10 years ago

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

shivakaush• 10 years ago

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

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

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