How Much I Money Made From Side Projects In 2008

http://www.pseudocoder.com/archives/2009/01/04/how-much-money-i-made-from-side-projects-in-2008/

by hbien • 18 years ago

190 60 18 years ago

chops7• 18 years ago

Everyone's gotta start somewhere, and eventually, maybe one of those projects will take off and start generating a decent amount of profit.

A few years ago when I was a consultant, in my free time I worked on my World of Warcraft guild's website and after a year and a half, I realized it was better than the vast majority of other guild sites out there (imo), and thought, maybe I could charge for this if i made it a service. So I spent 6 months rewriting my own guild's site to make it "general purpose" allowing other guilds to create websites.

The thought was, "maybe I can score a few extra bucks on the side." I launched in May of '06 and was profitable immediately, and by January '07, business was so good that I dropped consulting altogether to focus on the guild hosting site.

So keep plugging away. I probably had 5 or 6 projects (Frozen Custard Stand CMS system anyone?) that I worked on "on the side" before this one actually turned into a profitable venture.

palish4• 18 years ago

Wow. May I ask, how profitable was the WoW meta-guild site?

chops7• 18 years ago

I don't remember how profitable 2006 was (since the income was combined with consulting at the end for taxes), but for 2007 and 2008, it was something like $90k revenue each year. 2008 was on a course for a bigger year (March did $14k) and then it seemed all WoW interest dropped considerably after July (if you look at the alexa ratings for the main guild hosting services, they all took the same dive). It's nothing massive or anything, but it's a reasonable living for providing gaming service to folks who are pretty much just like me :)

patio11• 18 years ago

The great thing about side projects is that they only get better -- your code stays written, your marketing snowball gets better, age and inlinks bring your rankings higher, etc. (If your business plan does not have these features, for example if you are planning to sell iPhone applications which have a shelf-life of cut apples which have been soaked in agar[1], you may wish to reconsider.)

2006: $1k of bingo cards

2007: $10k of bingo cards

2008: $21k of bingo cards

2009: ...

[1] Don't try this at home, kiddos.

staticshock• 18 years ago

$21k in bingo? kudos.

paulgb• 18 years ago

RSStalker is a great idea. Glad it's worked out well for him.

jbenz• 18 years ago

Thanks so much for posting this. Very cool.

RSS Talker is sweet. Matt, if you're reading this, and if you don't mind, here are a couple critiques:

The title of this page should really be the info in that bubble: "Track Amazon Price Changes With an RSS Feed". This should be the biggest, boldest font on the page.

I don't think the average web user is very familiar with the terms ASIN and ISBN. It could be as simple as "Enter your email to track a specific product on Amazon." The How It Works section can explain more.

Can you make it just an email service for people without RSS feeds?

This site has a ton of potential. It's a shame that Amazon's commission rate is so low. It would be awesome to open it up to any web retailer that is signed up through a service like Commission Junction. Some of them offer 15% commission. I'm sure you've thought through all of this.

Good luck!

kirse• 18 years ago

I use a similar site right now: http://camelcamelcamel.com/

I think their interface is a bit cleaner than RSSTalker and probably more developed right now.

L1quid2• 18 years ago

Thanks, I have put quite a lot of work into it since January 2008. The site has been very profitable since launching in April! Here's hoping that continues in 2009...

Suggestions, feature requests, and bug reports are all welcome =)

mattcurry6• 18 years ago

Hey jbenx, Thanks for the critiques. I will definitely take it into consideration.

RE: ASIN and ISBN - I was torn on whether to include those, since I agree with you that it can be confusing. I also have the option of dropping the entire url in there and it will pick the ASIN out automatically. I figured that would be easiest for users.

RE: email - I didn't want to do the email thing because then I'd have to deal w/ unsubscribe and spam issues. I like making services that don't require a signup.

mseebach• 18 years ago

> ASIN and ISBN

You could headline the box with "URL for the product or wishlist you want to follow", and then, in a smaller and greyer font below put "(you can also just put the ISBN or ASIN in there)".

jessep• 18 years ago

I agree about changing the headline. It took a minute to figure out what the site was for, and that's bad. For music.rsstalker.com, I was really confused.

joshwa2• 18 years ago

I can't for the life of me figure out what planbookedu.com does, even after watching the screencast.

It's a calendar? With only all-day events allowed? And with TinyMCE?

What am I missing?

gcheong2• 18 years ago

I had the same reaction. I think if he just spent some time in creating a clear message and then putting that message on the front page he might see an increase in users. If you think about the average user they need to have the selling point made a clear as possible, more so if we're talking about the average teacher ;^).

mattcurry6• 18 years ago

Thanks for the criticism...copywriting isn't my strong suit. In my defense I think the site makes sense if you're a teacher. At least that's what my wife (the teacher) tells me :)

rickd• 18 years ago

I want to echo this as well, because I feel exactly the same - and because I left a comment on Matt's site saying i thought planbook could be MUCH more profitable, but I didn't go into elaborating on HOW it could be. gcheong nailed it.

fuzzmeister• 18 years ago

later.rsstalker.com looks very useful, I will definitely use it. Great alternative to tossing everything into my bookmarks.

joshwa2• 18 years ago

Instapaper is the bomb. And you don't even have to register-- just pick a username (no password necessary).

The iPhone app is also really killer.

mattcurry6• 18 years ago

Thanks fuzzmeister. Let me know if you hit any issues. I coded and launched it in a weekend, so it may have some bugs. So far it's worked well for me though.

MaysonL2• 18 years ago

I clicked the bookmarklet a little before 3 PST for the Language Log page you should see in your db: it showed up on the webpage, but never made it to the feed (according to Google Reader).

inovica2• 18 years ago

We developed SourceGuardian.com as a side project from my main company (Inovica.com) as we had a need for PHP encryption and were not prepared to pay the thousands of dollars that one company was charging at the time. We developed it for our own sites and then packaged it up to sell it to others. We had some teething problems with the earlier versions, but we're still here a number of years later. It's still a side project (and we have a few of them!!) but it brings in revenues of around $70,000+ a year. There is a team of three people though that worked on this side project and which share on this.

We also run:

www.europeantenders.com - Around $20,000 a year

www.ukscrap.com. This did amazingly well when scrap values were high (we were doing around $2000 a day) but they have become quite low at the moment so its only just covering its costs.

Hope the above helps. Happy to provide more info or help to anyone who wants it

jreposa2• 18 years ago

I'm a bit behind Matt in sales, but I just launched a site the other day that does something quite similar to RSStalker, but specific to best selling books: http://yowzas.com

Best selling book lists are everywhere, but this one is near real-time due to AWS. I find myself browsing the site daily reading book reviews. I have category specific ones like http://business.yowzas.com and just like RSStalker, I have RSS feeds for each major category of best selling book lists.

L1quid2• 18 years ago

Nice site! I dig the simplicity and usefulness of the design.

jreposa2• 18 years ago

thanks! i really got sick of trying to find books on amazon. i essentially removed everything that i didn't care about... so, really i made it in part because i had an itch to scratch.

- list of best sellers - most helpful reviews - books i also might like

palehose2• 18 years ago

I seriously don't see the point of advertising how much money I'm making off a given site. If someone else knows that putting together a site like RSSTalker will eventually bring in thousands of dollars annually with a minimum amount of maintenance, doesn't that increase the chance that my site is going to get cloned by someone else?

If I were to visit RSSTalker and not know whether or not the site was profitable, I would be less likely to take the time to consider cloning the site.

Tichy4• 18 years ago

Free publicity? I had never heard of RSSTalker - until now...

palehose2• 18 years ago

Its one thing to say 'rate my startup', but to say 'look how much I'm making' is something totally different.

inovica2• 18 years ago

To be honest, I think that ideas on their own are worthless. Its the sweat that needs to go into building something that is a real business that is the difficult part. I agree that you might think that people would want to clone it, but cloning something alone does not guarantee any kind of success. There are hundreds of examples of sites that do very well, where other people have tried to emulate them only to fail. Personally I put it down to a lack of passion on the cloners - its not really their 'baby'. They've not agonized over what to create, how to create it and this probably makes (part of) the difference between success and failure.

Personally I often find it inspiring when people do discuss how much their startup makes. Inspiring on the "I could do it too" scale and sometimes there are good lessons in these stories - not so much this one I would hasten to admit!

mattcurry6• 18 years ago

Honestly the reason I wrote the post wasn't to advertise the sites or brag about the money (which isn't all that much to brag about anyway).

I originally started the blog with the goal of focusing on these type of side projects, whether they are mine or not. Check out the original mission statement: http://web.archive.org/web/20070224000551/www.pseudocoder.co...

I'd since gotten away from that, but it's something that still interests me. I posted this because I wanted to be transparent with my sites and hoped it would inspire others to do the same.

As for people copying the sites...go nuts. Enjoy the long nights and dashed dreams...I know I did.

rymngh3• 18 years ago

This is Hacker News, you are free to do that. It inspires us actually.

This is why I go back to Hacker News everytime. I list the reasons again: 1) Because bunch of smart guys hang over here. 2) There's just so much to learn especially on starting a startup, this is one topic that I love because it teaches us something. 3) Because of PG.

And I think this topic teaches everyone of us something worth posting here in HN.

akshaye• 18 years ago

Ask HN: What's better: Having multiple side projects; or devoting all time to one single app? Which has better chance of bringing in more revenues?

brianr• 18 years ago

I'm a fan of the "throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach. Build lots of different things until one starts to get traction, and when one does, focus your attention on that.

rs• 18 years ago

That's good for well sized projects for the time frame that you're willing to commit to.

However, from my experience in the past, I actually tried that on a number of BIG projects - knowing only a couple of things:

1. The ideas were big - thinking about 50k LOC at minimum.

2. I had too much ego to let them go

Bad, bad mistake. Bad rs.

I scaled back to just working on 1 big project, and maybe toying with 2-3 smaller projects, and it has worked out better.

But the essence of your advice is right - work on a number of projects, and focus on one that works.

njharman• 18 years ago

What does YC do? One startup or many?

jwesley• 18 years ago

"All I did for marketing in 2008 was email existing users"

Seriously? That does not make any sense. Why not try a paid search campaign? Or networking with teachers via twitter? What is the purpose of building a business and then not doing anything to market it?

rymngh3• 18 years ago

Google actually did just that. They didn't engage any marketing activities on their early days.

mattcurry6• 18 years ago

Frankly the old version of the site sucked. I finally got around to launching the new version this past summer. I was hesitant to push it considering I had no real QA other then myself. It would have sucked to spent a ton of time/money to market it and then find a huge bug that drove all those users away.

Now that it's half way through the school year and there haven't been any issues I'm more confident. But it doesn't make sense to market it now, since teachers are already in their routine for the year. Next August I plan on making a bigger push.

How Much I Money Made From Side Projects In 2008

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