Posted by cvbox 12/18/2025
Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
2024 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42373343
2023 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38467691
2022 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34190421
2021 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095
2020 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167
2019 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899863
2018 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790306
2017 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148804
I help businesses automate their admin work if they already use Google Workspace products using App Script and Typescript.
mojo connects your health data (apple health/health connect) and get real-time AI feedback when new data is logged. It proactively detects your changes and provide insights on achievements and suggestions.
So far it's around $1150 revenue per month with 200 paying users and 4000 downloads.
In the French freelancing market, there’s a specific administrative hurdle: the Compte Rendu d’Activité (CRA). It’s a signed activity report that acts as the "source of truth" for billing. Most people use messy Excel sheets. I built Timizer to solve my own frustration with this workflow. What started as a side project for my friends eventually caught the eye of larger agencies. It’s now a nice $1k/month SaaS.
I recently translated the app in English so I can address larger markets, but I have no idea if this activity report is even a thing in foreign markets, like US, UK,...And if somebody has the answer here I would love to talk about it :)
My website is here : https://timizer.io
My first successful SaaS, The Wheel Screener, a screener optimized for selling options: https://wheelscreener.com
A sister spin-off LEAPS Screener, for buying LEAPS options: https://leapsscreener.com
And, just launched in November, but already profitable, VannaCharm, a dashboard to view and watch in real time dealer hedging metrics: https://vannacharm.com
Looking to launch 1-2 more SaaS in 2026, trying to get to the point where I can do this full-time, let's get it folks!
As the domain (hopefully) indicates, A REST API for the FFmpeg service. So far, it's been a plain API, but now it's adding MCPs and AI endpoints, so you don't have to remember ffmpeg commands.
https://jacobdoescode.com/technicalc
One time payment, no subscriptions or IAPs
Have you also had a decline in traffic in the last 18 months? It seems like the entire independent web is getting strangled out.
Site traffic is indeed down in recent years. The largest decline was when Facebook introduced "boosting," and stopped showing our posts to 90%+ of our Facebook followers overnight. I despise advertising, so I was unwilling to cave to their demand to "boost" our posts into ads. I'd have been happy to pay a reasonable monthly fee to reach our audience there, but that option was never available.
That big dip in traffic came with a big dip in donations, and as a consequence I eventually had to move from a part-time day job to full-time. The sharp reduction in free my time led to a sharp reduction in original content on Damn Interesting, which further shrunk the pool of people willing to donate.
This is a spiral that some would classify as "death," if I were willing to let it die. But it settled into an equilibrium where it pays for itself, makes a modest profit, and remains rewarding. Frankly I'd probably still do it even if donations dried up entirely, the research and writing give me a sense of purpose that would be difficult to replace.
I used to hope that a wealthy benefactor would discover us, and decide to fully fund our project for a few years, giving us space to realize more of the project's potential. But such offers come with strings attached, and I don't have the stomach for most of those. Perhaps I am broken.
Also, your traffic might not be counting those of us like myself who use an RSS feed (a la Feedly) - those links don't go to your site, they just go to, well, the link. =)
And true enough that RSS traffic is largely uncounted, but there are many other indications of reduced visitor count--server-side logs, comment count on original content, number of email subscribers, and that sort of thing.
At least what you have built will endure. Even if your invested just enough to keep the lights on, you would still have a trove of fascinating content. It's something to be proud of.
I personally would still want to see your comment.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/receipt-organizer-receiptgenie...
if it's LLM isn't that too expensive (or flaky if cheap) to be scalable?
I have also been playing with open source VLMs like Qwen3-VL and it was surprisingly not too far behind. I think the next generation I should be able to switch over and save a bit more on cost.
https://aieasypic.com - 3k per month (declining cause not working on it a lot, just maintenance) https://bestphoto.ai - 2k per month (increasing cause of better SEO)
Now trying my hand at an actual non-consumer product, not that b2b but something to make making ads easy because that’s where I find myself getting stuck on when doing fb ads or TikTok organic stuff : https://admakeai.com