To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings.
If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment.
EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9
Oh my gosh, I love this. I even love the name. My fiancé and I were even talking about how we wanted to move the house towards more "invisible technology" (magic mirrors, things like this, maybe the Frame TV if we get a good deal and figure out a good spot for it, etc)
I am curious: as a HW project how did you go through the CE / FCC certification process and production 0-series batch? Did you have some investor or paid from your own pocket?
Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.
The answer is a big "it depends", but there are ways to get basic FCC certification done for as little as $1K-$2K if you contact enough labs and your engineers are reasonably good at adhering to proper design practices (minimize respins and testing repeats).
CE mark isn't actually required in the US, but you'd need it for Europe and other locations. It's more involved, but all-in testing can be done for <$5K for EU if you're careful.
> Did you have some investor or paid from your own pocket?
> Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.
Crowdfunding is how it's done for HW products. Investors aren't going to be interested in anything small time (less than $10-100mm potential revenue + recurring subscriptions) unless they're friends and family or something like that.
It's a lot of money, but it's not out of reach for someone with a tech job who uses crowdfunding for the major production push.
I’ve done a lot of research on CE/FCC and while it seems possible to do CE yourself (since you can self-certify) you are on the hook if you miss something, like certain required tests (and doing some tests can be very expensive).
I was curious... from what I can find online the wholesale price of an e-ink display is not that much cheaper (if any) than buying an equivalently sized Kindle. What is the viability of a business model that involves rooting a Kindle, loading whatever calendar display software you need, and shipping it inside a pretty wooden frame?
I read somewhere that the e-ink expense is because the company which controls the intellectual property chooses to make it a low volume, high cost product. Not that it is inherently expensive, and I am surprised they don't try the opposite strategy, make it cheap and everywhere.
I was curious about this too. From the dimensions listed on the website, it looks like the screen is about 6.3×3.7 inches, or about 7.3 inches diagonal.
There seem to be 8-inch e-ink displays for sale on AliExpress for $20-$40, actually much cheaper than I expected. No idea about the quality though.
Wow, this is great! I was actually just thinking about hacking something like this together on my own, but $200 seems really reasonable for a pre-built product, and it looks much nicer than it would if I built it! :) Any plans to support non-Google calendar accounts?
I wonder if there is a service that (somehow) detects your site has been flagged in various categories by big company firewalls, and alerts you. Wild guess: whatever system feeds into the lists that get blocked in this way probably has a lot of false positives.
It's multiplex. The device in the last picture has plywood but it's an older version.
Multiplex is actually nice since it's cross laminated and thus retains its shape. I experimented with solid wood and it started arching after a few weeks.
Nice!! How big are those displays, and if you don't mind sharing, how much do those displays cost from your supplier? Last time I checked, e-paper displays were pretty pricey on their own.
I'm not quite there yet, but I'm up to $300/mo iteratively building an uptime checker: https://onlineornot.com/
I started with literally just a Lambda function that checks if static websites were still online, added an email alert if it's offline, wrapped authentication around it, integrated Stripe, and shipped it.
Eventually, I added Slack/Discord/SMS alerts, team invites, support for checking APIs for both uptime and correctness, support for checking JavaScript apps, and more.
My trick for launching into 200 competitors providing the "same" service and still getting customers?
- I work two hours a day, every weekday on OnlineOrNot, and no other side projects. I've had this streak going for about nine months now.
- I focus particularly on features that solve my customer's pain (and I ask my customers what that pain is)
- I'm ruthlessly iterative. If I can't get a feature done in two hours, I figure out how to cut scope down to a two hour block, and ship that. Then iterate on it.
I admire you diligence with cutting down features to hit the self imposed deadline.
I've been ferociously learning game dev and have allowed myself unlimited time to jump down rabbit holes. Now that I'm actually building a game I need to remind myself to just build it with what I know.
It's an interesting switch in mind set. Still learning obviously, only now I'm pulling together knowledge buried deep within rather than from tutorials.
I'll keep in mind scope and remember your inspiring diligence next time I'm tempted to peek in a rabbit hole.
I didn't see any competitors in the space solving the problem the way I would solve it (good UX + a focus on developer-experience), I wanted an uptime monitor that didn't piss me off with my own freelance clients, and I figured if there was room for a 200th competitor, chances are there would be room for a 201st.
Love your focus and commitment, especially the 2 hours a day every weekday for nine months streak.
I'm going to try building a similar discipline with my side projects. Not much would get done in 1 day obviously, but the amount of things that can get done over a longer timeframe like 6-12 months is huge!
Scrappily - any way I can, whether that's content marketing (my preferred means), commenting on forums, twitter, facebook, broadcasting my domain URL via my phone's hotspot, merch/stickers, etc.
I'd recommend the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg for ideas.
My side project currently grosses close to $1,400 per month through Patreon.
I run a modded Grand Theft Auto: V roleplaying server with around 1,500 members (around 300 really dedicated MAU.) If you're not familiar with GTA RP, it tries to emulate real life as closely as possible while still recognizing that GTA is an arcade game. Players live lives as if they were real people, buying cars and houses, holding jobs, opening businesses, receiving medical treatment, being arrested, etc.
I've spent around three years working on the gamemode and spend, on average, 30-60 hours per week on it. It's really a pure passion project. Players support the project through Patreon in exchange for priority queue access (when the server is full, players are held in a queue until a slot opens up for them), custom license plates on their vehicles, custom phone numbers, and other cosmetic perks.
My son plays FiveM almost exclusively when he is on the computer gaming. He has been enamored with it for years now. As a parent who is also a gamer, I can't help but chuckle when I hear the conversations going on between everyone. Although it is not my cup of tea now, when I was that age, I would have killed to have such a world available for me to engage with.
The conversations can be interesting to put it mildly. When I get the chance to play, I mainly play a police officer and it has caused more than one moment of confusion when I didn't realize my partner had taken a work call and their co-workers could hear me barking out "lawful orders" from the other room.
Roleplaying games are really great for exercising your social skills and creative expression though, that's for sure.
I had a look at the servers for rent through your affiliate, and I did not like that they have 'drip'pricing - starts out at 7.40AUD or so, then the add ons come, like server location or decent RAM. Then on logout they offer e 50% off coupon, so I go back, choose a server and nowhere to put the discount code! SO awesome service, Ilove it I'm going to set up a a server, but maybe look for a better server provider with clear pricing. Also their servers in Sydney were down, so thats a flag also.
Wow, this sounds really interesting. As someone who used to be an avid GTA V player, I can imagine how much fun this can be. Do you have any videos on the mod and/or on the playing experience?
FiveM is the most popular platform for this type of modding, and is the one I use. nopixel is the most popular server on the platform and usually a good place to start getting a feel for what's possible on a modded GTA server.
If you check out https://nopixel.hasroot.com/, they maintain a list of all Twitch streamers currently streaming nopixel.
Linkz.ai is hyperlink auto-previews that keep visitors on your website. It's heavily inspired by Wikipedia & Google Docs link preview popups with special extras. For example, when you click on a YouTube hyperlink, it does not take you to Youtube website, instead it opens lightbox with Youtube video on your website. All with just one line of code.
Super interesting, I added this (albeit way less pretty) to my personal site and generally got poor reviews. That being said, I'm really enthusiastic about the idea.
I've just started this product late last year; the response has exceeded my expectations.. give it a few more months for sites/companies/people to adopt :)
Dug a little into your background, read some of your posts. Appreciate the different perspective with "Choose Money First." I think a piece of that will stick with me forever now, just because it hit a little different. So I guess just.. thanks for the thoughts.
Thank you! In person I'm a bag of laughs, but on text I really come off as aloof, so it feels good to read that someone was impacted by something I wrote.
I've got so much more that I'm afraid to publish. Might have to reconsider.
Technically I don't work currently, so I'm not sure if this is a side project.
I was the founding engineer and Head of Eng at Reforge the past 4+ years while I was building Closing Credits. I left in August 2021. So, it was a side project for nearly 5 years.
If I have 3 side projects and no full time job at this exact moment, where do I stand? I'll delete my post if I'm violating the side project rule.
Very cool, how long did it take from idea to working v1? Anything you'd do differently in terms of getting it to PMF faster, tech choices, or lessons learned?
I already had a different side project with 300k users so it was incredibly easy to find PMF fast because I just emailed them.
Tech choices: I never reinvent the wheel. I just take working pieces from other work that I've done and glue it together. Anything custom, I'll read how others do it.
Lessons: I probably should've chosen a different market. If I had targeted companies and taught their employees professional education rather than poor amateur voice acting hobbyist, I'd probably be making $20M ARR. But I don't mind, this is still fun.
Assault w/Deadly Weapon - took 15 years to get it pardoned and expunged. The hardest battle I've fought in my life. It makes startups look easy. I'll write more about it one day, but I don't want to screw it up.
Makes around $5k/month now (down from $7k/mo previously), fully passive income as I haven't worked on any new features in the app for the past 1.5 years or so.
Wow, this is kind of the ultimate side project for passive income.
It does one thing, that people need, and does it well, for a fair price. I assume it requires minimal maintenance, except to keep up with Twitter's API (honestly I don't know if this requires much work, I guess it depends on how much the API fluctuates).
No, you are entitled to request to "have your data deleted" but the interpretation is basically left to the data controller. In practice this means that the controller as many options to make your life as miserable as it can/wants when you try removing your data from its systems, and more particularly when you want to remove specific portions of your data.
Twitter is a perfect example: removing "some" of your tweets is purposefully made cumbersome for users so that they get discouraged to manage their tweets. Searching through your tweets by date range or by keyword, and a button to delete all results? "Nah, too complicated for us silicon valleyers" :)
One thing to remember with GDPR is that it is not a law that protects customers. It is a legal framework that specifies a set of requirements, which companies must abide to in order to do whatever they need/want with your data. Once you understand this, GDPR becomes much clearer :)
I start tons of projects, and it's always a bother naming them. I didn't find existing domain generators at all useful, and since my background is in AI, I made my own.
It currently has a modest but pretty consistent 200-300 users daily, almost all of it direct traffic (my SEO skills are very lacking). I'm assuming people recommend it to their friends, and that's where the traffic is coming from.
It's not yet at $500/mo, but it's getting close. Server costs are significant though, since running an AI model is a bit expensive.
"Only show available" doesn't seem to work except on the homepage... but I think it's because the homepage is the only place where any domains are actually marked as already being registered. (when most of the suggested domains on search results seem to be registered already, based on a quick sampling.)
On the same line of thought, it would be awesome (but probably difficult/expensive) if you could show the price of each domain directly in the results.
That is fantastic, I wish I knew about it earlier. I used another popular name-finding site (can't remember what it was) but it wasn't nearly as intelligent and the results were not that good. It also would be great to check for the availability of the name in Twitter/YouTube/etc.
Not crass, I like sharing! We're all here to learn from each other.
The monetization model is just referral links to Namecheap, where I get a 10% commission. I want to make that a bit more elegant (especially for people with uBlock Origin, which it doesn't track), and also add a few other referrals (logo makers and maybe hosting).
Couldn't think of other ways to monetize this without making it obnoxious (I hate ads, and making it pay-to-use also seems restrictive to me). If you have any ideas, I'd be open to hear them!
Cool, I made one called https://mixmatchdomains.com but it never really got much traffic (single digits per day). Maybe the AI thing makes it more marketable, or just being able to type in an open textbox for pure simplicity.
Thanks! Was a fun project to do. I have a bunch of ideas to make it better, but I decided to let it rest for a bit and focus on other stuff. Might put in a bit more effort if it keeps getting the interest it's getting now!
Have you thought about deploying the ML model on the edge, using something like TensorflowJS or ONNX-runtime?
Haven't done it myself (looking into it right now!), but my impression is that model quantization (and possibly prunning) can give you a palatable model size that doesn't affect performance too much.
Readit News
Obviously still nice to see what people have built who missed the last post!
It syncs with Google Calendar.
To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings.
If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment.
EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9
Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.
CE mark isn't actually required in the US, but you'd need it for Europe and other locations. It's more involved, but all-in testing can be done for <$5K for EU if you're careful.
> Did you have some investor or paid from your own pocket?
> Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.
Crowdfunding is how it's done for HW products. Investors aren't going to be interested in anything small time (less than $10-100mm potential revenue + recurring subscriptions) unless they're friends and family or something like that.
It's a lot of money, but it's not out of reach for someone with a tech job who uses crowdfunding for the major production push.
I’ve done a lot of research on CE/FCC and while it seems possible to do CE yourself (since you can self-certify) you are on the hook if you miss something, like certain required tests (and doing some tests can be very expensive).
E-paper is a perfect use case for a dynamic shelf calendar
https://lengrand.fr/complete-setup-epaper/
It's definitely something I am having in the backlog, but I cannot promise if and when it will be implemented.
What's the profit margin like?
E-ink displays are expensive. That price point seems not enough to generate decent income.
I was curious... from what I can find online the wholesale price of an e-ink display is not that much cheaper (if any) than buying an equivalently sized Kindle. What is the viability of a business model that involves rooting a Kindle, loading whatever calendar display software you need, and shipping it inside a pretty wooden frame?
There seem to be 8-inch e-ink displays for sale on AliExpress for $20-$40, actually much cheaper than I expected. No idea about the quality though.
Any idea what could be causing this? I am at a loss.
a) the wood frame seems to be too large (probably there is a technical reason for this), but still. Not much too large though, just maybe 25%?
b) the wood (at least from the pictures) looks cheap (plywood?)
Multiplex is actually nice since it's cross laminated and thus retains its shape. I experimented with solid wood and it started arching after a few weeks.
I’m curious about the enclosure, do you cut it out of wood yourself or are you using a supplier for it that cuts it/glues it for you?
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https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9
There’s a decent market for vaguely similar artworks, https://shop.madgallery.ch/products/clockclock-24
https://shop.madgallery.ch/products/nixie-time-zone-clock-v2
https://qlocktwo.com/us/qlocktwo-large-creators-edition-glin...
https://clockforward.com/etch-clock/
I started with literally just a Lambda function that checks if static websites were still online, added an email alert if it's offline, wrapped authentication around it, integrated Stripe, and shipped it.
Eventually, I added Slack/Discord/SMS alerts, team invites, support for checking APIs for both uptime and correctness, support for checking JavaScript apps, and more.
My trick for launching into 200 competitors providing the "same" service and still getting customers?
- I work two hours a day, every weekday on OnlineOrNot, and no other side projects. I've had this streak going for about nine months now.
- I focus particularly on features that solve my customer's pain (and I ask my customers what that pain is)
- I'm ruthlessly iterative. If I can't get a feature done in two hours, I figure out how to cut scope down to a two hour block, and ship that. Then iterate on it.
I've been ferociously learning game dev and have allowed myself unlimited time to jump down rabbit holes. Now that I'm actually building a game I need to remind myself to just build it with what I know.
It's an interesting switch in mind set. Still learning obviously, only now I'm pulling together knowledge buried deep within rather than from tutorials.
I'll keep in mind scope and remember your inspiring diligence next time I'm tempted to peek in a rabbit hole.
I'm going to try building a similar discipline with my side projects. Not much would get done in 1 day obviously, but the amount of things that can get done over a longer timeframe like 6-12 months is huge!
Thank you and wish you the best!
Especially worth noting how things can snowball after several months of consistent shipping.
You're not just starting from scratch every two hours, you've already got work to build on top of, to keep you growing.
I feel like this wasn't really answered. I think its just a big space and you market well and have a solid landing page.
I have different experiences to others on the market, thus I resonate with some more than others.
How do you market it?
Going to sign up now.
It's Next.js, so React + Node.js, written in TypeScript.
I'd recommend the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg for ideas.
I run a modded Grand Theft Auto: V roleplaying server with around 1,500 members (around 300 really dedicated MAU.) If you're not familiar with GTA RP, it tries to emulate real life as closely as possible while still recognizing that GTA is an arcade game. Players live lives as if they were real people, buying cars and houses, holding jobs, opening businesses, receiving medical treatment, being arrested, etc.
I've spent around three years working on the gamemode and spend, on average, 30-60 hours per week on it. It's really a pure passion project. Players support the project through Patreon in exchange for priority queue access (when the server is full, players are held in a queue until a slot opens up for them), custom license plates on their vehicles, custom phone numbers, and other cosmetic perks.
Thank you for such a killer "side" project!
Roleplaying games are really great for exercising your social skills and creative expression though, that's for sure.
If you check out https://nopixel.hasroot.com/, they maintain a list of all Twitch streamers currently streaming nopixel.
nb: I have no affiliation with nopixel.
Great idea!
Linkz.ai is hyperlink auto-previews that keep visitors on your website. It's heavily inspired by Wikipedia & Google Docs link preview popups with special extras. For example, when you click on a YouTube hyperlink, it does not take you to Youtube website, instead it opens lightbox with Youtube video on your website. All with just one line of code.
$500+/m in a first month
Demo page: https://linkz-ai.webflow.io
Example here: https://blog-545pd1vjp-sambroner.vercel.app/
Technically rich link previews save visitors from the tab-overload.
- Participating in the web dev communities
- "Powered by Linkz.ai" footer in the Link preview popups
- Campaigns on Product Hunt, Reddit & similar
- Soon: Affiliate, LTD, targeted ads for Webflow/Squarespace ecosystems
I found that most teaching platforms for voice actors out there are run by a bunch of celebrities who are pushing edutainment, not education.
So I wanted to make something specific for voice actors. I will try to branch it out to other creators later.
I've got so much more that I'm afraid to publish. Might have to reconsider.
"Make decisions that will give you more choices, not fewer."
I was the founding engineer and Head of Eng at Reforge the past 4+ years while I was building Closing Credits. I left in August 2021. So, it was a side project for nearly 5 years.
If I have 3 side projects and no full time job at this exact moment, where do I stand? I'll delete my post if I'm violating the side project rule.
Tech choices: I never reinvent the wheel. I just take working pieces from other work that I've done and glue it together. Anything custom, I'll read how others do it.
Lessons: I probably should've chosen a different market. If I had targeted companies and taught their employees professional education rather than poor amateur voice acting hobbyist, I'd probably be making $20M ARR. But I don't mind, this is still fun.
Makes around $5k/month now (down from $7k/mo previously), fully passive income as I haven't worked on any new features in the app for the past 1.5 years or so.
It does one thing, that people need, and does it well, for a fair price. I assume it requires minimal maintenance, except to keep up with Twitter's API (honestly I don't know if this requires much work, I guess it depends on how much the API fluctuates).
Twitter is a perfect example: removing "some" of your tweets is purposefully made cumbersome for users so that they get discouraged to manage their tweets. Searching through your tweets by date range or by keyword, and a button to delete all results? "Nah, too complicated for us silicon valleyers" :)
One thing to remember with GDPR is that it is not a law that protects customers. It is a legal framework that specifies a set of requirements, which companies must abide to in order to do whatever they need/want with your data. Once you understand this, GDPR becomes much clearer :)
→ https://www.namy.ai
It currently has a modest but pretty consistent 200-300 users daily, almost all of it direct traffic (my SEO skills are very lacking). I'm assuming people recommend it to their friends, and that's where the traffic is coming from.
It's not yet at $500/mo, but it's getting close. Server costs are significant though, since running an AI model is a bit expensive.
Ideas and feedback are welcome.
On the same line of thought, it would be awesome (but probably difficult/expensive) if you could show the price of each domain directly in the results.
Otherwise, it seems like a neat tool!
Good problem to have I suppose ^^
https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma...
https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/results/?doma...
The monetization model is just referral links to Namecheap, where I get a 10% commission. I want to make that a bit more elegant (especially for people with uBlock Origin, which it doesn't track), and also add a few other referrals (logo makers and maybe hosting).
Couldn't think of other ways to monetize this without making it obnoxious (I hate ads, and making it pay-to-use also seems restrictive to me). If you have any ideas, I'd be open to hear them!
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* not currently a real business plan
Haven't done it myself (looking into it right now!), but my impression is that model quantization (and possibly prunning) can give you a palatable model size that doesn't affect performance too much.