Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell
190 comments
·December 18, 2025skwee357
I run a dead-simple, one-time, online fax service called JustFax Online[0]. While I don't have a recurring revenue as I operate one one-time payment, for the past months I have been consistently grossing over €500/mo.
This also brings tears to my eyes, as I remember[1] browsing these threads and being amazed (still am) by all the people who make side projects and make money from them, and at the same time thinking that I will never reach this milestone, and yet, here I am.
[0]: https://justfaxonline.com [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39110194#39141819
IanCal
Thanks for making a service where people can pay for a thing to happen, rather than an account and subscription and …
I often get frustrated at how hard it can be to give someone money to perform a service I want them to do and they want to be paid to do.
zandert
That's super cool, how do you run it? Are you using some other service under the hood, and just abstract their annoying pricing model?
laurentiurad
I built and run several SaaS platforms:
- https://dave-bot.com -> a full-stack AI platform where you can generate videos, images, music, code, 3d objects with frontier Gen AI models.
- https://headsnap.io -> a platform that you can generate images of yourself based on 4 selfies.
- https://quantiq.live -> a service providing financial and historical data for stocks, as well as government trades.
- https://aivestor.tech -> an AI agent that picks small/midcap stocks and trades them using Alpaca API. It uses Reddit, news, polymarket, Google Trends and many other data sources to take investment decisions.
- @Polyglot_lingua_bot -> a voice-enabled Telegram-based bot that can help you learn new languages.
- https://select.supply -> a directory of carefully-curated and well-crafted products.
All of those allowed me to quit my day job and live a comfortable and flexible life. I still invest time in maintenance and adding new features, but I love coding, marketing and everything that comes with promoting and selling a SaaS (and I also have a serious addiction for Stripe notifications).
On top of that, I developed my own software agency where I help clients build and scale software (https://bitheap.ch).
aembleton
I get 404 when I look for pricing of headsnap - https://headsnap.io/pricing
laurentiurad
thanks a lot for the heads up! That menu shouldn't be available for users that are not logged in. I just pushed a change to hide it. You can check the prices at the bottom of the landing page, before I add a dedicated page for unauthenticated users.
eXpl0it3r
What's your source and/or quality of the financial data? How much do you cover? What data fields do you provide?
laurentiurad
I fetch those from 10-Q forms through an internal scraper I built. The response is quite big, you can check it out here: https://www.quantiq.live/docs
pplonski86
Wow! how do you make marketing for so many projects?
laurentiurad
It's the most difficult part. In my experience paid ads do not work very well so I am not relying too much on those. I usually use social media with UGC videos created either by me or by content creators. I also reach out on Instagram, even dating apps, to users and pay them to use/promote a product.
Recently I started to use n8n automation to post on Twitter/LinkedIn, however I tend to keep those posts short since they are created with LLM's and do not seem authentic.
As for the SEO part, I usually upload search console extracts into Perplexity deep research and ask for actions on how to improve ranking for different keywords.
rahulmax
Headsnap is such a scammy and/or crappy website. I paid to purchase credits for $5, tried to train a model to generate a headshot. Nothing. It just refreshes and comes back with nothing. Will not recommend.
laurentiurad
When did you do it? The minimum package is $8. If you did this in the past, why didn't you reach out for support? I get more than 100 customers per day and rarely have issues.
laurentiurad
ah now I see you generated your pics 8 minutes ago. You can now see them on your account page. I have a clear disclaimer that says it can take up to 30 mins to generate the photos and that you will get an email once the photos are ready.
nationaloil
really inspiring! Any tips on how you manage incidents and customer queries?
laurentiurad
thanks! Most of these projects are hosted on Vercel, and I am extensively using their observability solution to get alerts when something unexpected happens. After some time you get to fix everything and you'll spend less time firefighting.
For customer queries, I usually respond myself. However when I am not available, I have a small team of freelancers that help me just with that. I played with LLMs for responding to questions, but it just didn't work out for me.
nhatcher
I was hesitant to add my own but I think you might find it interesting as we make money not from clients but from grants.
We have IronCalc[1]. We don't make money from customers as we don't have a finalized product yet. But we have an ongoing grant from the NLnet[2]. You can have a look at the kind of projects they are granting money. It's always a source of inspiration.
That being said IronCalc takes a lot of time from me. Way more than a side project should.
tda
The friction to try it out is already really low, I like that! But it could be even lower if instead of an image the interactive version is served right on the landing page. Great project!
written-beyond
This is lovely! I'm surprised I had never heard of it before today
agotterer
A friend and I host a monthly dinner club for people interested in ethnic cuisine. We work with a single restaurant each month to create an 8-12 course all inclusive price fixe menu. The food is served family style and is authentic to the region we are hosting. We typically host the dinners on a Tues or Wed when the restaurants in our region aren’t too busy and could use the extra business.
Since 2023 we’ve been to 44 restaurants. In 2025 we served 1,099 guests and generated $126k in revenue.
bot347851834
This is so cool! As someone who loves trying out new restaurants I need to ask: why would I go with you guys instead of going to the restaurants myself with a friend or partner? Looking around your website it seems to me that there's very large attendance, which in my mind means generally less focus on the food itself. Do you think one of the main factors is meeting new people/the sense of community? Anyway good job! I'm not sure what your margins are but it's probably more than 500/month! Congrats!
VoidWhisperer
Out of curiosity, if you don't mind sharing, what is the sort of profit you see on that 126,000 as i'm assuming alot of that goes to paying the restaurants?
thefolks
Love the communal aspect. Curious about the economics of this, how do you typically split revenue with the restaurant, and what’s the average ticket price per guest?
KellyCriterion
this actually is a great idea!
wonderfuly
Last year, I came across NotebookLM and immediately noticed a pain point: importing the web pages I was browsing into NotebookLM required several steps. So in less than a day, I developed this Chrome extension: NotebookLM Web Importer[1], which allows for one-click importing. As NotebookLM has gained popularity this year, my extension has also seen great growth. So, in July, I added paid premium features to unlock additional features. It exceeded my expectations and quickly went over $500 a month. It now has over 100,000 users and is still growing.
Fiveplus
I really liked your extension having used it in the past. Great job and really useful! If you don't mind me asking, how do you manage the paid features from a technical point of view? Do you give paid users a token to enter in the extension which then activates certain features or is it something else?
wonderfuly
It is account based, and I'm using Clerk for the auth.
gustavoaca1997
That sounds awesome. Can you please talk about which premium options you added?
crobertsbmw
I’m still selling Computer Engineering for Babies. And I just launched a new book called Simple Machines Made Simple on Kickstarter a month or two ago. Both books are basically just simple interactive demos for kids and adults.
anotherhue
Literally the first book I bought for my hellspawn. We had fun working out the mechanisms.
jann
I got gifted Computer Engineering for Babies and big Babies last Christmas in preparation for having our first child :) They are great!
tyrust
My kid got a copy of your first book as a gift a couple years ago. It's really fun to have on the shelf. The buttons are so satisfyingly clicky. Thanks!
crobertsbmw
Thanks for buying it!!
ludicity
I bought two copies of Computer Engineering For Babies for some close friends! They were absolutely delightful.
gustavoaca1997
I always see your ads. My first baby is expected to be born next year and I cannot wait to buy it for her
1-more
Bought probably 6 copies between the first and second. Love this book! First gets stuck in NOT mode sometimes but it’s chill.
crobertsbmw
Yeah, I’ve improved it a lot, but a lot of the books from the run I did 18 months ago get confused on the cover page thinking it’s open to the NOT page.
bunnybomb2
Oh man this sounds so cool!! Ive always wanted to make a childrens book.
upmostly
I’m building DB Pro, a modern desktop database client for developers who want a fast, local-first workflow.
I started in October 2025, launched v1 at the end of November, and just crossed $1k MRR.
I also post devlogs of life building and marketing DB Pro and am about to post devlog #4. The latest one is here if anyone’s curious: https://youtu.be/-T4GcJuV1rM
Still very early, but it’s been fun seeing something fairly “boring” resonate once the UX is treated seriously.
kaizenb
Loved the design, looks better then the most tools I've tried. I'm using Prisma + Supabase in one of my side projects and having constant db issues. Can I integrate DB Pro? Will it replace Prisma or what?
upmostly
So DB Pro is a local desktop database client for managing your databases and data. Prisma ORM it won't replace, but Prisma's browser-based data browser, yes it will absolutely replace that. It's not a replacement for Supabase, it works alongside it, if that answers your question?
I'm planning to extend DB Pro into much more than a database manager though, letting you build dashboards, workflows and workbooks.
jamesholden
Hi! When will Windows/Linux be available? I'm growing weary of DB Browser for SQLite.
upmostly
Windows and Linux are both launching next week (just in time for Xmas!)
devonhk
Any reason why neon isn't supported even though it speaks the postgresql wire protocol?
upmostly
It has some behaviour differences (connection handling, pooling, serverless constraints) that I want to support properly rather than “mostly works”. Right now I'm focused on making the core experience rock solid across the most common setups first. My focus has been UX and DevEx and it's working.
Neon support is on the roadmap though, and once I add it, it’ll be first-class rather than a checkbox integration.
bgdkbtv
Looks cool and congrats on the $1k MRR! Is the app built with electron?
upmostly
Thanks!
Yep, it’s built with Electron. Performance has been a big focus from day one, and it’s been really performant in all of my testing so far. The goal was a proper desktop-first experience with local performance and direct database access, rather than trying to force it into a web app. Although I do have plans to offer a self-hosted version as well.
iceboy
Wanted to teach my little brother about logic gates. Saw that for him to truly grasp the idea of it, he needed some "hands on" experience to develop the intuition about it. I decided to develop a PCB board that basically turns-on-off the lights based on the inputs. He was like "cool" and kind of threw it in the corner. Rather than just leave it, I decided to further develop it and make it as a learning tool for myself as well(web design, marketing, BOM optimization etc).
Then I started to get feedback on the initial project which was quite helpful(universities, EEVBlog and colleagues) and based on that made a "Logic Trainer" which is like very advanced version of the initial idea. It has so many features and it kind of has taken off in a sense that 2 universities want to buy it for themselves. Also I didn't expect it but most people who buy it do it for their kids. IMHO its way too complicated for kids, but practice and feedback that I have gotten shows that it really isn't. I haven't made any profits from the project yet (due to high development cost) but hopefully in the future it help to pay my rent :).
Check out the website at https://logicgat.es
yboris
Occasionally $500/month, but more reliably $300/month in sales of my Video Hub App - lets users browse, search, tag, and organize videos on local / network drives. Aiming to have an 8th anniversary release February 2026.
$5 per copy (Windows, Max, Linux; keep forever) https://videohubapp.com/
MIT open source (build your own copy) https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
markdown
Intel macs only?
combyn8tor
Curious how you manage licensing?
technusm1
Here’s my own side project that’s been earning a bit on the side:
I built DedupX, a macOS app for finding duplicate and visually similar files fast - especially useful for photographers and anyone with big local storage collections.
What it does
- Exact duplicate detection using incremental hashing so it doesn’t have to fully load huge files.
- Perceptual image matching finds similar images even if they’re resized or lightly edited (not just byte-for-byte duplicates).
- Native macOS integration with a Finder right-click scan.
Why I built it: My brother kept running out of space because of tons of photos, and every existing tool I tried either missed similar images or was slow and clunky - so I spent a couple of weekends building something that felt fast, accurate, and native.
Business side
- Free trial (no CC required).
- Paid tiers: ~$5.99/yr or ~$16.99 lifetime.
Got positive feedback and 100+ paying users shortly after launch. Been growing steadily ever since.
kaesve
My wife's Etsy shop (https://www.etsy.com/shop/LittleLanternShop) is starting to pick up. She is leaning into creating digital sewing patterns for decorative felt crafts. We have had Etsy success before with 3d printed products, but managing printers and fulfilling orders can be stressful and time consuming, and she was hoping to build up a more passive income stream. She made over $1000 in the past month, which beat both our expectations
(We'll get back into 3d printing once life slows down a _little_ bit again)
binary132
Nice one! I love the Our Lady of Lourdes patterns.
bluemoola
How have you promoted it so far?
crobertsbmw
Yeah, these are super fun! Good luck!
mkummer
https://dreamandcolor.com/ has been a fun solo bootstrapped side project for me for the past 2.5ish years - (specialize in converting photos to coloring pages for parents, educators, etc)
I started it primarily wanting to take a shot at productizing an image diffusion model (Stable Diffusion 1.5 when I started) in a novel (at the time) way and it ended up growing legs of it's own.
She's steadily chugging along, growing about 10-20% per month with minimal marketing, exceeding all expectations I had for the project when I set out
pillefitz
Well done! How does it compare to using built-in image models like nano banana?
mkummer
You can get great results with nano banana nowadays (ex: "convert this image to a coloring page") - I'd say we focus on 1. consistency with our base style from image to image, 2. likeness (still really tough to get 100% right but we've come a long way since our MVP) and 3. offering fun alternatives (South Park inspired coloring pages, Minecraft style, etc)
We also handle all the post-processing (upscaling, image cleaning, etc) that you need in order to get great printed results - with Gemini (Nano Banana) or ChatGPT you've got to pull each image out, possibly remove the watermark, set the curves/levels in photoshop/gimp, upscale it, etc then print the page - you can just hit Export and download a pdf ready to print from our site
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