Who here is making money with side projects?

a fat guy

I'm talking specifically about software projects, just so we're clear (And that this doesn't get re-directed to the entrepreneur forum).

I've had a story-based Android app that's been on the backburner for a while now (A Masters takes up a LOT of my time...). The layout is basically done, it's essentially a Choose-Your-Own-Action zombie survival type game. At the moment I'm looking to have a tonne of different story arcs in it, since the ground-work is already done and dusted.

I'm going to put advertisements in it, rather than charge for it since I think that's the best way to get more downloads. I don't really mind if it doesn't make any money.

Other than that, I'm also working on creating my own website/blog in Rails that I could use adsense on at some point. That's something I'll think about down the line anyway.

Graham

a fat guy wrote: »

Other than that, I'm also working on creating my own website/blog in Rails that I could use adsense on at some point. That's something I'll think about down the line anyway.

Don't bother with Ads on a personal blog unless you're attracting vast amounts of page views. It looks crappy and the revenue is only likely to be sufficient to buy a small lollipop each year.

Michael_Dare

I have a small portfolio of desktop apps that I've built up over the past 6 years. Collectively they bring in around €20K a year, with little support or work required. I've got a new app (desktop again) that I'll be releasing in about 2 months, that I expect will add around €10k per annum to that. I'm hoping it will be much more than that (I always hope), but I'm confident of at least the 10k figure.

All of my apps are in the same space, so each new release targets the same user base. This helps each new app get a start, rather than having to market and sell from scratch each time.

I work as a .Net contractor, and work on new apps during downtime between contracts, and in the evenings and at weekends. I'm kind of lazy though, so it can take a year for me to push out a new app.

In the past, I've made numerous attempts to build up websites and sell advertising. They all failed. Even busy sites that had up to 1 million page loads a month struggled to earn real money from adsense or other ads. On top of this, I found that web apps and sites require a lot more ongoing work than desktop apps.

14ned

a fat guy wrote: »

I'm talking specifically about software projects, just so we're clear (And that this doesn't get re-directed to the entrepreneur forum).

I've made about forty grand in the past ten years from my open source software libraries, mainly from people paying me to enhance them in some way.

It's a terrible return on total hours invested, but a nice sweetener for essentially charity work I'd have done anyway.

Niall

RoRo979

Michael_Dare wrote: »

I have a small portfolio of desktop apps that I've built up over the past 6 years. Collectively they bring in around €20K a year, with little support or work required. I've got a new app (desktop again) that I'll be releasing in about 2 months, that I expect will add around €10k per annum to that. I'm hoping it will be much more than that (I always hope), but I'm confident of at least the 10k figure.

All of my apps are in the same space, so each new release targets the same user base. This helps each new app get a start, rather than having to market and sell from scratch each time.

I work as a .Net contractor, and work on new apps during downtime between contracts, and in the evenings and at weekends. I'm kind of lazy though, so it can take a year for me to push out a new app.

In the past, I've made numerous attempts to build up websites and sell advertising. They all failed. Even busy sites that had up to 1 million page loads a month struggled to earn real money from adsense or other ads. On top of this, I found that web apps and sites require a lot more ongoing work than desktop apps.

Could you PM the things you developed. WOuld love to see it as inspiration of what is possibly for the everday,lay-person to achieve

StupidLikeAFox

Michael_Dare wrote: »

I have a small portfolio of desktop apps that I've built up over the past 6 years. Collectively they bring in around €20K a year, with little support or work required. I've got a new app (desktop again) that I'll be releasing in about 2 months, that I expect will add around €10k per annum to that. I'm hoping it will be much more than that (I always hope), but I'm confident of at least the 10k figure.

All of my apps are in the same space, so each new release targets the same user base. This helps each new app get a start, rather than having to market and sell from scratch each time.

I work as a .Net contractor, and work on new apps during downtime between contracts, and in the evenings and at weekends. I'm kind of lazy though, so it can take a year for me to push out a new app.

In the past, I've made numerous attempts to build up websites and sell advertising. They all failed. Even busy sites that had up to 1 million page loads a month struggled to earn real money from adsense or other ads. On top of this, I found that web apps and sites require a lot more ongoing work than desktop apps.

Out of curiosity, how do you make the money? Is it a small/large once off fee for the app or a subscription based thing? Do you just have a website with a download link etc?

Colonel Panic

I've been paid money foriOS apps, but I'm not sure I'd be in the black if I factored in the time spent developing them in the first place.

BrokenArrows

I wrote a basic SFTP server a few years back and created a simple website to sell it. I use www.getdpd.com to sell it. They take care of the file distribution, emailing, taking payments and issuing license keys.

The program probably took me 3 days to write and its generated about 3k over the past few years. I havent done any marketing or advertising. I really should improve it and do some advertising.

I occasionally do extra custom work for people from time to time. Few grand here and there.

I keep telling myself i need to do more desktop app creation and selling but its just so hard to sit infront of a computer in the evenings and weekends after already putting in a days work.

chris_ie

Always nice to hear some success stories on side projects. I'm constantly trying to think on ideas for something new to do in my spare time. Had started learning objective-c with the aim of developing an iOS, coming from a Java background, but amount of apps out there now is massive. Still have a few ideas that are more niche but would need to brush up on the iOS stuff as its changed since then.

I've just done a website, which I'm not 100% convinced will generate alot of interest I was in the process of learning Laravel (PHP framework) and wanted a topic to develop. Had this site in mind from before so went with it. Then decided to buy a domain and put it up to see what happens. Only been up a week and I still have work to do.

Interested to see others creations.

Michael_Dare

StupidLikeAFox wrote: »

Out of curiosity, how do you make the money? Is it a small/large once off fee for the app or a subscription based thing? Do you just have a website with a download link etc?

One off fees ($40-$70). Though the new app due out in 2 months will have a more extensive licensing system that insists on upgrades each year if you want the latest version. Hopefully that will lead to at least some recurring revenue.

I have a website for each product, with trial versions for download and purchase links that connect to a reseller in the US (fastspring.com) who handles license key fulfillment, Vat, sales taxes, etc. It's all 100% above board regarding tax, and using a reseller means I don't have to worry about handling sales, paying local taxes, fraud, etc.

Michael_Dare

RoRo979 wrote: »

Could you PM the things you developed. WOuld love to see it as inspiration of what is possibly for the everday,lay-person to achieve

Much as I'd love to send you a link, I kind of can't now that I've mentioned the money. I like to keep that quite.

I wouldn't call myself a lay person. The technology I use in all the applications I build is the same technology I use in the day job. One sort of helps the other. And I've built websites and eCommerce sites over the years for paying customers. I'm really just using my own skills for my own products rather than someone else's.

RoRo979

Michael_Dare wrote: »

Much as I'd love to send you a link, I kind of can't now that I've mentioned the money. I like to keep that quite.

I wouldn't call myself a lay person. The technology I use in all the applications I build is the same technology I use in the day job. One sort of helps the other. And I've built websites and eCommerce sites over the years for paying customers. I'm really just using my own skills for my own products rather than someone else's.

Ah well was worth an ask keep up the good work, keep going at what your doing

L.Jenkins

BrokenArrows wrote: »

The program probably took me 3 days to write and its generated about 3k over the past few years. I havent done any marketing or advertising. I really should improve it and do some advertising.

I wrote something remotely similar, to transfer files over SFTP with some sort of SCP integration. Can't seem to figure out what I did with it. More than likely deleted the project.

JackHeuston

When I was in college I was making modules for OpenCart, selling them on their platform. It was alright, after having developed a couple modules that took less than a week of work, I got ~150 € per month the first year. The only work that had to be done was upgrading them when there was a new OpenCart version, and occasionally offering support to people who didn't know how to install them.

Those modules added some features that OpenCart was lacking to comply with my home country's laws on e-commerce websites. I could have made more money since I was the only dev doing them "for the masses", but I didn't want to push it, also because I was a college student and that monthly income was more than enough.

After the first year, a person started buying my modules and offering them exactly as they were for free, on the same platform, despite of the very clear licence attached to each download. I was selling one module per month at best after that happened. After many complains to OpenCart, they did nothing so I just released everything for free under my profile and completely stopped working on new modules and upgrading the existing ones.

So now I'm out of ideas again

L.Jenkins

JackHeuston wrote: »

...So now I'm out of ideas again

I got my hands on Chromis POS, Open Source of course. I'm doing some work on it with respect to diving into the code at the moment, to see what Modules I could implement myself. Instead of selling it, I could offer paid support, while crediting Chromis for the initial work.

I'll see what the license agreements will allow me to do.

BrokenArrows

JackHeuston wrote: »

When I was in college I was making modules for OpenCart, selling them on their platform. It was alright, after having developed a couple modules that took less than a week of work, I got ~150 € per month the first year. The only work that had to be done was upgrading them when there was a new OpenCart version, and occasionally offering support to people who didn't know how to install them.

Those modules added some features that OpenCart was lacking to comply with my home country's laws on e-commerce websites. I could have made more money since I was the only dev doing them "for the masses", but I didn't want to push it, also because I was a college student and that monthly income was more than enough.

After the first year, a person started buying my modules and offering them exactly as they were for free, on the same platform, despite of the very clear licence attached to each download. I was selling one module per month at best after that happened. After many complains to OpenCart, they did nothing so I just released everything for free under my profile and completely stopped working on new modules and upgrading the existing ones.

So now I'm out of ideas again

Sounds like you could have sued OpenCart for distributing stolen software. You probably still can.