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
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.
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
i am in the middle of a project using stripe and looking for alternatives
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.
UK: OFCOM are phasing out the fax support requirement https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infra...
(I slightly balked at the $5 initial price, but then realized: this is a desperation fee and I think for a lot of the users a clear fee for a clear one off service is the best deal. Anyone who wants to send 1,000 faxes will (a) be in the top 1% of fax users in their country if it's not Japan and (b) make their own arrangements. Also patio11's "charge more")
Software wise, if you have a PBX line (which the telco will change for) you can run Asterix and then https://www.asterisk.org/products/add-ons/fax-for-asterisk/ to send as many faxes as you like to the other person in your country with a fax machine.
https://developers.ringcentral.com/fax-api
An audiobook streaming service that focuses on timeless classic works in the public domain.
I do everything from building the app to the audio engineering.
One thing I'm especially proud of is the restoration I did on the "War of the Worlds" 1938 Radio broadcast. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I've made it temporarily free to listen to [1] in case anyone is curious. You should compare it with the original [2] and let me know what you think.
[1] https://app.soundreads.io/discover/item/war-of-the-worlds [2] https://archive.org/details/WarOfTheWorlds1938RadioBroadcast...
Do you think adding a button to the homepage/marketing page that says something to the effect of "See all our content" that redirected you here:
https://app.soundreads.io/
Do you think that would do the trick?
A good chunk of the initial audio has been curated and re-engineered/enhanced from librivox, however I’m also working with voice actors to produce originals. For instance I just release A Christmas Carol which is original to our platform (also see Metamorphosis and Alice and Wonderland). More are coming every month but it takes time to develop real audio recordings with humans.
I appreciate your constructive feedback and welcome more!
Since 2023 we’ve been to 44 restaurants. In 2025 we served 1,099 guests and generated $126k in revenue.
https://www.deadchefssociety.com/
- We do the work to find the restaurant and curate a menu, story, and theme. E.g., we might go to an Indian restaurant and focus the event on only the southern regional dishes.
- Many times we have dishes that are off menu specially for our event.
- Sense of community. We have quite a few regulars who have gotten to know each other. In 2025, 45 people reached their 20th or 30th event with us. Since we take over the whole restaurant there’s a little more freedom in how the space is used. Lots of new friendships have been forged.
- When you go to a restaurant with a friend or small group, you can only order so much. We’ve had events with upwards of 25 different bites. There’s really no better way to sample everything the restaurant has to offer.
- There’s a few people who say their partner are picky eaters, so they come to our event each month to have the opportunity to be a bit more adventurous. It’s an incredibly diverse group with a lot of different reasons to attend.
Our biggest cost center is when we guarantee a minimum number of seats and come up a little short. Doesn’t happen often, but when it does it eats into the margin fast.
From there people started to tell their friends, who told others, then the local newspaper wrote about us, and people started talking about us on Facebook food groups and posting on Instagram. The community grew very organically, we never spent a penny on marketing. Most of the original 13 don’t come anymore, and we have grown into an incredibly diverse community.
Happy to chat, email is in my profile.
5 days before the event we lock the head count with the restaurant. At this point the ticket is non refundable (we allow transfers). Then we pay the restaurant one lump sum. At the event the guests are only responsible for their bar tab (outside the one included drink), we don’t get a cut of that.
Sometimes we have seat minimums we need to hit and eat the cost if we are short (that rarely happens). We don’t allow ordering any other food outside of what’s on our menu.
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.
[1]: https://www.ironcalc.com
[2]: https://nlnet.nl/project/IronCalc/
* It would make the landing page a bit heavier * I would need to synchronize deployments somehow
But I guess I should do that sooner rather than later.
Thanks!
- In terms of data, this is nothing compared to any site serving a bunch of images. The compute would differ, but loading speed shouldn't be an issue if you can render the HTML first, and hydrate it after page load. This static HTML would then also serve as fallback when Javascript is disabled.
- For a quick demo, I doubt you will lose people by embedding an older version. Serving a version of a few months ago seems like 80% of the work, with 20% of the effort, in terms of deployment.
Anyhow, nice to see government funds put to a good cause!
- 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).
Also, the user got the pictures after just a few minutes and there is a clear disclaimer, and an email is being sent to the user once the pics are ready. On top of that, I have no complaints from other users about it. It's clear to me that the intent of the user was to cause some reputation harm, which I think didn't work. I also got an email from a person with the same first name (not sure if it's the same person tho) that they offer UX services for Headsnap.
When it comes to QuantiQ, I thought about targeting businesses. I already have 2 major clients and had plenty of demos with others. Usually they are not interested when taking a decision about reading pages on the website. Most of them are concentrated on finding out how you manage incidents, security policy, how do you handle improvement suggestions, SDLC, velocity etc. They anyway do their due diligence when it comes to the founder. But I totally understand your point. For B2C this is really important.
Already fixing the mobile navigation and adding some pages with more info about me.
https://headsnap.io/privacy
Alternately that their presence doesn't grant any rights for other use would be a good clause which I didn't spot.
LE: I just added the pricing page for unauthenticated users too.
I found this so instantly frustrating that I rage-closed the page and came here to moan!
Reading the comments, I don't believe you're looking to implement a dark pattern and not show the price, but that's what seems to be happening currently.
Now I see the main pricing page, it's worth pointing out that the categories and prices there don't match with those on the front page: 'starter' with 30 headshots vs. 'novice' with 35; 'basic' with 60 headshots vs. 'proficient' with 70, etc.
LE: done :D
Not a knock just being honest.
Or do you think this effect is counteracted with AI also opening up for new opportunities for creating services that would not otherwise be feasible pre AI?
Important to mention, IMHO not many people are willing to sacrifice their time and energy to start something that doesn't have a clear path to profitability.
Like, say AI makes distribution and marketing easier, now it’s easier for everyone, but they still compete for the same clients. So while your signal is getting stronger, so is the noise (the signal of all the other competitors). So those who put in the hours and smartness to «invent» a more clever marketing strategy are the ones able to break through the noise and reach the clients?
In other words, distribution/marketing is the bottleneck and the target is ever moving?
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.
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.
https://hackylabs.com
[1] https://notebooklm-web-importer.com
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.
Link: https://maheepk.net/projects/dedupx/
Thanks to my customers' feedback, I've made a lot of improvements to the app as well. Feels good getting positive feedback and hearing from people about their use-cases. :)
Links: [1]: Launch Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1ok5zaq/comment/nm... [2]: ProductHunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/dedupx [3]: Promo campaign on Reddit for Black Friday: https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1paarc2/dedupx_50_... [4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763117
This game was developed by my friends and I during college, then we Kickstarted a few years after.
Sales have dwindled since, but I still like the game. So much so that I turned it into a free web app. Still a WIP but it's maybe 75/80% there.
Play for free here, you will need to make an account: https://lastyearofcarbon.com
Buy a copy here, but you should play the game first to see if you like it: https://lyoc.shop
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.
I'm planning to extend DB Pro into much more than a database manager though, letting you build dashboards, workflows and workbooks.
Neon support is on the roadmap though, and once I add it, it’ll be first-class rather than a checkbox integration.
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.
I started making a daily logic puzzle called Clues by Sam in May and it's been stadily growing since. The number one thing people were asking for was more puzzles, so I started selling puzzle packs instead of monetizing with ads. The reception has been great, and the revenue has been enough for me to decline some consulting gigs and instead focus on improving the game.
$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
* Focus on Windows users. Windows desktop share is 10x that of Mac and nowadays Windows users pay almost as willingly as Mac ones.
* Charge several times more.
* Redo the website. In particular get rid of 3D slant and on-hover animations, put larger high-res screenshots, explain each of them well (and not in gray on gray text), put up "Windows / Mac / Linux" in bold friendly and highly-visible letters. Better yet have separate Download buttons for each. Add version and last release date, next to the Download button. Have at-a-glance summary of features closer to the top of the page. Ditto for pricing and trialing details. Ideally, adjust windows chrome in the screenshots based on the web client's OS, i.e. show Windows screenshots to Windows visitors, Mac ones - to those coming from Macs, etc. The last thing you want to show Mac screenshots to Windows people, because it implies that the Windows version was an afterthought.
All in all, the site gives an amateurish/hobby project vibe, and the $5 price cements the impression. If you are to spruce things up a bit, you can potentially live off this app. At the very least and with not much of an effort you can double/triple what you make off it.
- Clicking “Demo” (for macOS) points to the 3.2.0 ARM version
- Clicking “Intel Mac” points to the 3.1.0 (!) Intel version
The Github release page appears to list all available versions: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App/releases
To me, it would have been clearer to avoid the “Demo” button label altogether and be explicit about the different versions and OS targets. Also, I think the visual hierarchy of the two respective buttons is too subtle.
The base product is open-source and I make money from custom builds, additional plugins, paid support, and the occasional extra feature for companies with specific needs. It's a bit more than noodle profitable but quite under a normal salary.
[1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
The payment model is a pre-paid model for 12 months of write access to your calendar. It brings ~500-600 Euros (before taxes) a month since 6 years.
https://www.tredict.com
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.
(We'll get back into 3d printing once life slows down a _little_ bit again)
It started as just an uptime checker for websites, eventually I added support for APIs and cron jobs, and automated status pages (you may have seen this one yesterday: https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/)
I started it in 2021, I give it two hours a day before work every workday, and I cut scope on most features to ensure they're shippable in two hours. Then I iterate. It works because it's default-alive. I keep a full time job to be able to build it exactly how I want.
Like my React blog, I started it knowing thousands of others were doing the same thing. I made a bet that my unique perspective would be useful to others, and it paid off.
Has been above $500/mo since 2022, growing steadily since (still a few years away from being able to replace my salary).
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
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
Currently right above that $500/month when including lifetime purchases. Had a sizeable bump in October thanks to blowing up on here which also gave me an app store boost so thanks guys :)
I'm working on new lessons at the moment, after that I'll probably try to improve on the animations and sound effects to give the app more "juice", should be a fun thing to work on. Also still trying to figure out marketing and how to get visibility overall...
https://www.escape-team.com
It‘s making about $700 on iOS and $300 on Android, solely from $2.99 IAPs for the later missions in the game (the first 2 missions are free).
I think a main reason for this is that escape rooms (and games) don’t „saturate“: you play them only once, because then you know the solutions. So another escape room (place, game, app) doesn’t cannibalize the market - it may rather strengthen the others by fostering it as a group activity.
I also put 0$ into ads- it solely spreads itself by being a group activity (3-5 people are best) and through its mission editor (people can make their own missions, used in school and for birthdays etc).
Curious to see where it goes next!
Mainly used in organizations with developers who want to deploy to a corporate Kubernetes environment, but don’t want to deal with the complexities.
It’s fully open source so we’re covered by sponsors, the largest being Portainer $5k+ / m from sponsorships.
Makes it possible to keep the cloud offering totally free.
On the discord, or chris@ canine<dot>sh
It's freemium. And offers lifetime purchases and monthly sub. Will experiment with adding an annual sub soon.
https://stationdisplay.com/
[1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vbz-fahrgastinformation/
[2] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/turning-a-project-into-a-...
When Twitter killed off third-party apps, the browser extension I'd been developing ever since "New Twitter" launched in 2019 suddenly became one of the few ways to make Twitter more tolerable to use, and the number of users of the Chrome version tripled from 30k to 90k in a fortnight (mostly in Japan).
When they confirmed third-party apps had been killed on purpose and jacked up the price of the API to discourage new ones, I started selling it on the App Store the next week and it's made more than $500 per month ever since.
Before the end of the year I'm hoping to roll out a single paid subscription which works across all my extensions when you sign up for it, which enables syncing settings across all your browsers and devices, unlocks additional subscriber-only features, and will enable creation of extension-specific APIs if there are future features which require one. Between Control Panel for Twitter and https://soitis.dev/control-panel-for-youtube I have ~390,000 users, so, y'know, please like and subscribe.
That will _eventually_ include my free Hacker News extension ( https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news ) so things like new comment counts, user notes and muted users can sync across every browser and device you use Hacker News on.
If that takes off, I hope to make the App Store versions free and figure out how to give anyone who bought it 3 months of the subscription per extension they bought as a thank-you. If anyone's done something like that before, I'd be happy to hear about it via any communication method in my HN profile!
Recently crossed the $500/month mark after a painful pivot from HR tech earlier this year. The whole thing started because I did ISO 27001 back in 2019 and was completely lost - overpaid for consultants, got lost with policies and controls, figured it out the hard way.
Passed SOC 2 Type I earlier this year using only Humadroid (yes, dogfooding a compliance tool through an actual audit was... an experience).
Currently finishing automated evidence collection (AWS and GitHub integrations first). Pretty proud of that one - compliance shouldn't mean "panic-screenshot everything before audit."
How do you see yourself against someone like delve.co?
What I'm trying to do differently is depth of context. Humadroid learns about your company first - how you operate, your stack, your processes. From there it generates control descriptions that are actually actionable for your setup, and policies that need minimal review rather than a full rewrite.
Whether that's enough differentiation? Ask me in a year.
From there, the AI generates policies that are yours, not generic docs with [COMPANY NAME] placeholders. Same with control descriptions - they're specific and actionable for your setup, not "implement access control" with no context. It also identifies risks based on what you actually do and helps build business continuity plans around your real critical processes.
You still review everything (it's compliance, not magic), but you're editing 80% done work instead of staring at a blank template wondering where to start.
The price difference is real too, but honestly that's a side effect of being early and solo - not the core value prop.
Your product seems great for actually doing the spirit of these frameworks (reducing risk, improving controls and processes etc.). However from what I've seen the reality of these audits is it's a box ticking exercise for everyone involved, and so improving the efficiency there tends to be the goal. How do you position yourself in that?
Also hope this doesn't come off too critical, it's just something I've been through recently and love seeing new things! I'd definitely add a vanta/drata comparison to your website though as that is inevitable.
Right now I recommend auditors but don't have formal partnerships. Vanta/Drata's auditor relationships are... let's say on the edge of conflicted? I don't want to go that route. And at $250/month I can't play the referral game anyway (Vanta pays hundreds per referral - that math doesn't work for me).
What I can do is democratize access. I've watched too many small teams get excited about SOC 2, then ghost once they see the total cost - $15k+ for the platform, $20k+ for consultants, $15k+ for auditors. I want the barrier low enough that smaller businesses can actually get certified and compete with bigger players.
On the checkbox vs. real security thing - you're right, it's tricky. I don't want to be another "generate docs, tick boxes, forget until next audit" platform. But targeting smaller businesses actually helps here - when you're a 10-person company, management is in the compliance process, not just signing off on someone else's work. It tends to stick better.
That said, sometimes I wonder if I help too much. My System Description assistant is almost unfair - what used to take weeks now takes minutes. Is that checkbox-enabling or democratizing? Genuinely not sure.
And yes - "vs Vanta/Drata" pages are going on the list. You're not the first to ask.
AWS and GitHub integrations first. It auto-fetches and verifies the data (where applicable), creating read-only evidence snapshots. No manual screenshots or "I swear this config was set correctly" moments during audits.
Part of the standard price - no integration tier upsell.
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
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
Pins cost $12, there are 474 pins placed so far. This keeps the quality high (there are no spam pins, only real people) but will fundamentally limit the growth, I think.
I'm actively working on a successor that allows you to create your own custom workout programs using formulas: https://vis.fitness
As someone that has used 531 for a while, I thought an app like this would not add much value. I mean, we can all track our progress in a spreadsheet. But I must say that it looks great.
This stuff is inspiring to see..
Recently started GZCLP after getting sad at how bad I started to look with no activity
My one complaint was that there weren’t more sophisticated training regiments. I didn’t work 5/2 weeks so I just went to the gym every other day and I just clicked whatever in the app when working out, while I would prefer to track my days. Otherwise solid app, thanks for the hard work.
The periodization sounds really cool but the success of the app I would think is based entirely on the good marketing Wendler and Elitefts did with 5/3/1.
But looks really cool ill be trialing it this week!
I cannot stand having to fiddle with my phone while at the gym.
You can control it via Siri, though that only really works in a home gym
It is a carpooling app.
I have a Pixel 6 Pro. That's not thaat old.
Link to game if anyone is interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2250550/Tornado_Research_...
Free for athletes, but I license the underlying "coach" logic to actual, human coaches.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1725424103/summit-train...
The workouts themselves are templates chosen from a list and do not adapt to the rider as an individual. It plugs in a standard periodization schedule with flexible dates.
Repth uses AI for everything with a few guardrails. You pick a peak date, describe your peak event, weekly availability, and ftp.
Repth then generates a macro plan, and the next week of workouts. As you perform, it will monitor for compliance and adjust the prescription depending on your compliance and feedback. All of it is unique per user, optimized for the demands of the specific event.
Overall, TR's approach is fine. Any plan can work as long as you stick to it. I built Repth simply to replace my (human) coach in 2022 and in that regard it has been a huge success
It makes around $500 a month from a mixture of adsense and affiliate schemes. Would be good if I was making more but I've automated most it so I spend maybe 1 hour on it a month.
https://brickranker.com
Since I’ve been shifting more towards platform engineering work in my career, the best reward abut this side hustle isn’t the financial benefit, but is the opportunity to stay grounded in software dev. I love seeing the changing APIs each year with the new iOS updates. And the seasonal approach to doing updates is always fun too.
[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/afi-explorer/id1564964107
Some examples of pages we've built over the years using all the interviews we do with authors: https://shepherd.com/bboy/2025 https://shepherd.com/bookshelf/authoritarianism https://shepherd.com/best-books/if-you-want-to-be-a-mathemat...
And in the process of bringing on a co-founder and building a full desktop/mobile app so you can track what you are reading, what you loved, and we can use that data to deeply personalize your recommendations (as I am frustrated with Goodreads as I don't think they even try to do this well).
https://building.shepherd.com/roadmap/ *early beta coming in late January
Fun to work on :)
I'm a math guy who codes and I do it for fun. I'm shocked people are interested in this stuff.
LeetArxiv Substack: https://leetarxiv.substack.com/
Thanks for this comment!
I built ChatKeeper because I wanted to treat my ChatGPT history like a local knowledge base, with local-first access to my data.
It’s a command-line tool (GUI in progress) that takes a full ChatGPT .zip export and syncs it with local Markdown files. You can move and rename them freely and they will stay in sync on future runs.
It pairs well with tools like Obsidian and lets you link your own notes to specific conversations or even points within them.
Revenue is modest but growing month over month. It’s a one-time purchase, not a subscription.
Most users so far are researchers and other ChatGPT power users who already live in Markdown or want to do things like curate and compress the context of very long-running conversations.
Also, as someone who likes to go to conferences and meet and connect with people, I found it hard connecting to 50 people at a conference on Linkedin and then reaching back out to them. So I build LinkedMemo[2] which is a CRM on "top" of Linkedin. You scan a profile, the profile is automatically saved and enriched in the CRM with a quick note.
[1]: https://drawcharts.xyz [2]: https://linkedmemo.com
https://lgug2z.com/software/komorebi
Been running 1.8 years, current mrr is ~$790 usd.
A platform for digital asset management, review and workflow. Current features focus primarily on review of images aimed at automotive configurators.
The problem is generic, however, our USP is we have a couple of enterprise customers that upload packs of 60k+ assets for a round, and thus we aim to help discover what demonstrably changed.
A bit like Github, only working with images, videos, and other digital assets rather than text files.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/standly-standing-desk-timer/id...
Oh, making or losing $500/month?
Never mind.
I’d love your feedback - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/atlas-ai-youtube-du...
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.
It's been a good journey. Thank you so much to whoever keeps running this thread!
I can't find the pricing of the product on the site, I only find that I get '10 free credits', but I don't know how much a credit is and what can I do with it.
Home page says it's one credit per diagram, but then the docs say it's a certain amount of credits per modification (that could be correct or not, I guess...)
I usually skip if I can't find the price, but it could also happen that people create the trial account, spends quickly the credits, then they find the price and it doesn't fit them. Of course, there's always people coming just for the free credits.
I don't know if this is helpful to you or not, but I hope so :)
I stopped a site lately i ran for 10 years, because Google changed the ranking so often over the years, finally traffic drowned nearly completely like 1k visitors per month, it was so frustrating so I just stopped the webserver after so many years.
Another one but turned out it was never really a big deal: some chatbots from frontier AI labs started to support those niche features (people still coming to my app for the flexibility of using multiple AI models).
I think the biggest problem was #2, life kept pulling me the other way.
Everything I do is free for everyone but for the past few years I’ve been running an entirely optional membership program that starts at $1/month.
I’m (probably naively) a big believer in kindness and I keep refusing to monetize what I do in any other way.
TheMapsGuy.com
Still in MVP mode - but it already made some sales.
What's different about it from similar solutions is the way you can get data from an Excel file (most other companies have the JSON and CSV figured out).
It supports Excel style addressing so it's pretty flexible on how you reach for the data inside a PowerPoint template (access every sheet, every cell, named range or table to use it in merging process).
People use it for various kinds of use-cases - creating certificates, automating pricing offers, delivering employee feedback forms, preparing market research presentations and even subtitles for a theatrical play.
Most are older, still functional but rarely updated. A few of the newer ones include:
https://daylightgoals.com - Time in daylight tracker, using Apple Watch/HealthKit as the data source.
https://airlauncher.app - App launcher for visionOS - was much bigger last year before Apple added the ability to organize your apps.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibuzz/id304684758?ls=1&mt=8 - iBuzz - I built this app in a day 15 years ago, it still makes about $100/mo from ads and removing ads. Just a simple buzzer soundboard app.
Did you find the tooling and documentation from Apple sufficient?
https://wallpunch.net/
KeywordsPal.com
It's actually super interesting the technical aspects to scan 50k posts a day for as cheap as possible. I write about it here: https://keywordspal.com/blog/building-multi-platform-content...
I also built it as a result of being unsatisfied with f5bot
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
A reasonable amount depends on their age but somewhere between 7500-15000 is a good amount and maximizes benefits.
Sportsbook API (https://sportsbookapi.com/) - A single API to get odds data from a number of US Sportsbooks
Odds Assist Pro (http://pro.oddsassist.com/) - An odds scanner tool that shows both current odds and things like arbitrage, plus ev, middles. This actually started as just a UI for me to quickly do sanity checks on the API data and eventually grew into a full site. The site is on a subdomain of a site my business partner had built long before we met, so it's kind of positioned as the plus version of that site.
API revenue is really stable and has been pretty consistent slow growth. Pro's revenue is all over the place since it's almost all referrals and promos with big spikes around major sporting events. Probably averages at least $500/mo if you look at the entire year.
It supports SF Symbols, Material Symbols, and a bunch of open source styles, but I’m adding the ability to make a private custom style target.
Since then, I continue to maintain the website and I have around 50k lists, 8k users, and around 400€ MRR (ads and subscriptions).
I'd love to see more users, but I'm glad of what I did with multy !
If you want to check: https://multy.me
Right now it's fine with the number of lists created per day
I develop apps for experienced operators who want to start their own business.
It averages well over $500 / month in side income. Typically about $3-5K depending on the amount of time I have.
I spent perhaps a decade pushing going independent due to inability to get a product ready. I ended up learning the skills and now to solve that pain point for others.
[1]: https://www.n0c0de.com
https://smart-notes.xyz
Still holding off on the show HN post for now; have a few more features and QoL things I’d like to add first.
It’s been an enormously gratifying project and I hear from users all around the world who have feature requests for their specific use cases. Easily the most fun I’ve had working on a project.
May I ask which channels / approaches benefited you the most in terms of reaching your first paying customers?
Almost all of my customers so far have been directly from the central Anki plugin directory. I made sure to use lots of SEO friendly terms / buzzwords in the title so that when people ctrl+f for AI or ChatGPT, they find mine.
My next steps I think are to better incentivize leaving reviews so that it ranks higher on the add-on list, and then launch it on various language learning subreddits. There’s a whole cottage industry of Anki influencers on YouTube as well (absurd, I know), so that’s another channel eventually.
https://troviamo.app
https://doodle.com/en/
https://www.percento.app
I was an accountant for 3 years before I switched my career to be a programmer, then I kept coding for 10+ years in big tech companies and had always wanted to build a product on my own. Eventually, I found the niche to combine my finance knowledge and my iOS skills into this App and happily building for a few years.
I help businesses automate their admin work if they already use Google Workspace products using App Script and Typescript.
https://mereth.dev/
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.
CoPlay is a platform for managing fleets of gaming consoles, users and subscriptions for pediatric hospitals. Think of it as an mdm for Xbox devices/users that does managed subscriptions
https://coplay.io/
The website needs some love, but the webapp is going well.
https://shoppingscraper.com/features
I love to be able to focus on the design and not the practicalities of selling a hardware product!
https://minichord.com/
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
All I wanted was to build a good product which our users feel like using. Help them with exceptional customer service and build a team and a company worth waking up to.
Basically it’s a code review UI on GitHub for ex-Googlers who miss Critique.
Revenue from courses, apps, community, books...
Still not able to pay myself anything though
This version will hopefully provide a bot free / pump free replacement for iHub, StockTwits, Twitter, etc. to people who manage money professionally or otherwise.
Assuming I get more free time to finish it that is.
Version 2 is live here.
www.gravityanalytica.com
The two products Chat and Horizon both make more than $500/month individually.
This is a just side project. I run a family office.
For those of you who are in your 20s keep it up. In your 40s getting free time can be a real challenge.
Created around 2019 and have recently moved it from side project to main job.
Created around 2019 and have recently moved it from side project to main job.
This is mostly because of the posts gaining high engagement and people signing up and subscribing. Many also migrating from other apps.
Expecting the revenue to go down next month
https://onlyrecipeapp.com
If you sold $500p/m and had costs of zero, then you made $500.
If you sold $500p/m and had costs of $450 p/m then you made $50p/m
I know the saas people have high margins, but some of the commenters clearly have a much lower margin
Link: https://saveforlater.pro
AI assistant in your iMessage group chats https://olly.bot
https://www.findboxes.co
See norma.grouplabs.ca
Initially it was running on donations, but with model costs rising we had to add a paywall. I have a full time job but it's still fun to run this on the side by spending few hours on it over the weekends!
https://zine.baby
The goal is to make physical books. It's still early days, but fun to see what people are creating.
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.
TL;DR? It's a grind, an absolute grind.
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!
I recently open-sourced my first ever tool! and I'm super excited about it guys
It's an HTTP request replay and comparison tool in Go. You can replay real traffic, compare multiple environments, detect broken endpoints, generate HTML/JSON reports, and analyze latency
It’s currently at v0.4, so I’d love any feedback, suggestions, or ideas for improvements. (Be gentle, I haven’t used Go professionally, however it’s my main language for personal projects )
https://github.com/kx0101/replayer
Here's the landing page too: https://www.replayer.online/