Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025

Posted by cvbox 12/18/2025

Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell

It's the time of the year again, so I'd be interested hear what new (and old) ideas have come up. Previously asked on:

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

485 points | 560 commentspage 4

abe-101 12/18/2025|

https://mergecal.org - First project I built when learning Django a couple years back. Takes multiple iCal feed URLs, merges them into one feed. Turns out people actually need this!

tiziano88 12/18/2025||

cool project, but what on earth is going on with scrolling and back button?

tecleandor 12/18/2025||

I almost built something like this a short time ago. Some devices/softwares (in my case it was the Supernote calendar app) only allow for one calendar as a source, and I had to merge my work and personal calendars to show up in my device. :)

wahnfrieden 12/18/2025||

Manabi Reader - learn Japanese by reading

More than $500/month. It currently sustains my full-time focus

https://reader.manabi.io

I quit my job a couple years back to work on this app full-time, as well as its companion flashcard app, Manabi Flashcards. The goal is to help you learn through immersion and eventually replace some of your flashcard reviews time with reading (once I finish auto-reviews for flashcards)

What's special about it? Manabi Reader became popular as an Japanese-focused alternative to services like LingQ in that it locally tracks and analyzes all the words and kanji you read and study. It shows you which words are new and which you're currently learning via flashcards, so you can easily find content that suits your level and see what flashcards to prioritize adding.

It also passively accumulates an on-device (and in your personal iCloud) corpus of example sentences from your reading. It’s also one of few ways to mine sentences including pitch accent directly into Anki on iPhone.

I had built this part-time while working over many years (starting with flashcards and then the reader app) but going full-time gave me the time to do a full rewrite: SwiftUI, native iOS + macOS, and an offline-first architecture that syncs with iCloud and my server in the background.

Although it has a companion SRS algorithm (FSRS) flashcard app, it's also excellent for mining Anki cards. This works with AnkiMobile on iOS and AnkiConnect on desktop.

You can use it like a web browser for the web, or subscribe to RSS feeds. It comes with a bunch of curated content by level. Recently I added EPUB support, pitch accents, and note-taking with todos.

I'm now almost done adding a manga mode via Mokuro, and Netflix/streaming video support via realtime captioning of audio streams.

To scale this with UGC/influencer market I need to make it more beginner friendly. Currently it assumes you can read kana at least.

parttimelarry 12/18/2025||

Been doing a YouTube channel on Python for Finance for quite a while and make some affiliate revenue: https://youtube.com/@parttimelarry

chirau 12/18/2025||

Oh, it's you! One of my favorite channels on YouTube. Learnt Alpaca and TA-Liband backtesting from you and also built my screener with your vids. Awesome content always. I am looking to go through the IB ones soon.

KellyCriterion 12/18/2025||

Jesus, 130k++ subscribers, WOW!!!!

This is a huge success!!! Im also in this field, never thought that you could collect so many people on this niche topic!

If you say: some affiliates - think about getting a sponsoring partner for some B2B stuff, and speak the advertorial by yourself(!), one slot per one video/show. In my country we have a small but good&nerdy startup podcast run by two guys - they do advertising this way, mainly B2B tech stuff (accounting software etc.) - in an interview recently, they unveiled their numbers - per slot (20-25 seconds) they get 8k - 10k. And they have a couple of slots per month.

KellyCriterion 12/19/2025||

haha, getting downvoted for applauding someone who built a successful product, while I judged based on my own professional experience?

:-))

duckkg5 12/18/2025||

Cold call training aka 'exposure therapy'

https://coldcallgym.com

Just a call a number and practice a cold call with a bot. People seemed to like it when I built it so I made a free and paid tier. Getting like 3-5 new users per day without really doing anything.

nanfinitum 12/18/2025|

This is pretty unique and amazing. How are you marketing this all the way to $500/mo.?

duckkg5 12/19/2025||

Thank you. I'm not doing any marketing at all. In fact I noticed about a third of the traffic comes from ChatGPT of all places. I guess that's just from the SEO. But users keep trying it out, maybe because it's really simple to start. Just call the number.

StackBPoppin 12/18/2025||

I released a game on Steam, and work on it a few hours every day. Income each month varies but is consistently above $500.

Link to game if anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2250550/Tornado_Research_...

Frajedo 12/18/2025||

Just signed our 3rd customer with TrueCast (600€/month) (https://www.truecast.fr/), which is Granola for tech and non-tech recruiters. Rather than replacing recruiters in the HR process, we want to give them real time hard skills knowledge superpowers so they can better assess candidates before submitting them to their teams. We are convinced that recruiting should remain human-first.

There’s also a bot option, for self-conducted interviews, mostly used for open applications for some pre-filtering.

We are still unsure on how to enter such market, so we are doing direct networking atm, if you guys have an idea on how you’d do it or want a free trial of the product we’d love having a chat with you about it.

Jabbs 12/18/2025||

https://www.unlistedjobs.com/

26.3% of jobs found on company websites are not advertised on any job boards but found using this tool.

The app scrapes company's directly (24/7) and give the user:

- a head start over other job seekers

- access to thousands of jobs not listed anywhere else

- daily job filter emails with ability to be highly curated to reduce noise

akudha 12/18/2025|

1. What is the churn like? Don't people cancel after finding a job?

2. Has any company objected to scraping?

Jabbs 12/19/2025||

1. Churn isn't as bad as I would have thought. There is also the use case for someone who has a job and wants to find the next one. But yea if someone wants to only use for 1 month, that is expected

2. I think companies (or the ATS's they use) might object to reposting a job listing on my site but I'm not doing that. You can search/sort/filter jobs but in order to view the job posting you will open a link back to the original job.

bsnnkv 12/18/2025||

Not consistently, but there have been a few months this year where I have hit $500 selling individual commercial use licenses for my tiling window manager[1]

https://lgug2z.com/software/komorebi

kalterdev 12/18/2025||

Nice licensing

pillefitz 12/18/2025||

I'd buy it for a 20 USD one-time fee

bsnnkv 12/18/2025||

The experiment is end-user mediated wealth redistribution from large corporations by leveraging reimbursement mechanisms, and so far I'm content with the results

cess11 12/18/2025||

I like this, bookmarked in case I'll ever be forced by work into MICROS~1 operating systems again.

popupeyecare 12/18/2025||

I’ve created Pixie, a platform to employ and track your kids work. For families with a business, it helps reduce tax burden and fund a child’s Roth.

I’m a physician with some 1099 income, built the platform myself because my kids help with my side projects, and have since onboarded CPAs who now offer it to their clients. I saved 5k this year on my own taxes by employing my kids and it has funded their Roth.

Soon after launching, I crossed the $500/month mark.

Link:https://trypixie.com

i-dont-remember 12/18/2025||

This is neat, I appreciate that even if I can't use the service, i still learned something new about what's possible. Gonna keep it in the back-pocket for sharing with friends.

Also reminded me of when Justin Jackson talked about how he hired his kids for help with real projects and the positives from it https://justinjackson.ca/flipping-tables

popupeyecare 12/19/2025||

I love working with my kids. They help out, feel accomplished, and its bonding time.

rsanek 12/18/2025|||

Very cool idea, I feel like awareness of this even being possible has to be quite low.

popupeyecare 12/18/2025||

That’s the challenge. Educating consumers.

It’s completely legal and even listed by IRS. [0]

It’s important to be compliant and do it in an easy to use manner.

[0] https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

nefrix 12/18/2025||

What is the maximum amount a kid can earn yearly?

popupeyecare 12/18/2025||

No limit but for staying under them paying tax it’s the standard deduction (15k). And you can only contribute $7500 (2026) to their Roth.

A reasonable amount depends on their age but somewhere between 7500-15000 is a good amount and maximizes benefits.

JKCalhoun 12/18/2025|

I'm…

Oh, making or losing $500/month?

Never mind.

Seattle3503 12/18/2025||

Only $500? Time to increase the number of nodes in your side projects Kubernetes cluster.

3eb7988a1663 12/18/2025|||

Misery loves company. I am certainly intrigued to see what is out there.

groundzeros2015 12/18/2025|||

I think most ideas should start with the “equivalent” of a cgi bin script and domain name before going crazy with infrastructure. Scaling is so much more fun when customers are maxing out what you have now and improvements lead to direct customer impact.

KellyCriterion 12/18/2025||

its just about turnover ;-)

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