Those making $500/month on side projects in 2023 – Show and tell

• Video-Hub-App

  65 545 4.3 TypeScript

  Official repository for Video Hub App

Created Video Hub App (that will be 5 years old next month). I sell it for $5 and $3.50 of each purchase goes to the cost-effective charity Against Malaria Foundation (See GiveWell.org for details).

It was averaging around 100 purchases per month, though it's lower over the last year as I've not had time to release new updates (moving to another state is challenging).

https://videohubapp.com/ - Think of it like YouTube for videos on your computer. Browse, search, and organize your videos

MIT Open Source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

• ExtPay

  56 436 3.9 JavaScript

  The JavaScript library for ExtensionPay.com — payments for your browser extensions, no server needed.

https://extensionpay.com — A really simple way for browser extension developers to take payments in their extensions. Open source library that works across all browsers and allows for one-time or subscription payments. Since 2021 developers have made over $125k with ExtensionPay which makes me happy :)

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io featured

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• chatgpt-google-extension

  40 13,209 9.4 TypeScript

  Discontinued A browser extension that enhance search engines with ChatGPT

I built https://chatgpt4google.com which is a browser extension that enhance search engines with ChatGPT. It got over 500k users in less than two months.

• Traccar

  38 4,818 9.6 Java

  Traccar GPS Tracking System

  

A niche open source project. It's a GPS tracking system. There are a lot of proprietary alternatives, but not a lot of open source ones.

https://www.traccar.org/

I'm making some money on SaaS and some on consultation and customization. In many cases people pay for something I can later include in the open source, which always feels nice.

• Chartbrew

  18 2,288 9.7 JavaScript

  Open-source web platform used to create live reporting dashboards from APIs, MongoDB, Firestore, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more 📈📊

  

I'm working part-time on my project https://chartbrew.com

It's an open-source data visualization and reporting platform that I started in 2018, I abandoned in 2019, then resumed working on it more seriously in 2020.

Currently, the platform is doing $1,138 in MRR from then managed hosting service and has made over $11k in revenue so far. It's been growing steadily in the last few months but going through a rough Dec-Jan period at the moment. You can see the open page at https://chartbrew.com/open

Onwards and great job everyone at working to make side projects work for you!

• hnrss

  68 489 3.5 Go

  Custom, realtime RSS feeds for Hacker News

  

I did a Show HN 4 months ago[1].

The reason I started KTool was to spend less time on computer screens, and more on e-ink Kindle. I was afraid of going blind.

After 4 months improving KTool, it now becomes a tool to help you combat doom-scrolling. Instead of mindlessly scrolling the web, I deliberately send interesting articles to my Kindle.

Recently, I added newsletter & RSS support, it's 100% automated now.

My favorite source of content is Hacker News RSS[2], Stratechery[3], Indie Hacker Newsletters[4] and a few other Substack newsletters.

I can enjoy reading HN latest stories or my fav authors' latest pieces on my Kindle without spending hours browsing on my computer.

I just reached $620 MRR today (Jan 23)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32637996

[2]: https://hnrss.github.io

[3]: https://stratechery.com

[4]: https://www.indiehackers.com/newsletter

• Fider

  19 2,655 3.9 Go

  Open platform to collect and prioritize feedback

  

I have two projects, combined doing ~€1500/mo

https://fider.io - an open source alternative to UserVoice. I started this one 6 years ago to learn Go and React. I’ve seen thousands of instances out there being self hosted, so I started a cloud hosting to those who don’t want to manage it themselves.

https://aptakube.com - Desktop Client for Kubernetes. This is very recent, launch was 2 weeks ago, so it’s only starting to get some traction now.

I’m leaving my job to go full time indie hacker now, wish me luck!

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com featured

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• aptakube

  13 320 2.8

  Modern, lightweight and multi-cluster Kubernetes GUI. Available on Windows, macOS and Linux.

  

I have two projects, combined doing ~€1500/mo

https://fider.io - an open source alternative to UserVoice. I started this one 6 years ago to learn Go and React. I’ve seen thousands of instances out there being self hosted, so I started a cloud hosting to those who don’t want to manage it themselves.

https://aptakube.com - Desktop Client for Kubernetes. This is very recent, launch was 2 weeks ago, so it’s only starting to get some traction now.

I’m leaving my job to go full time indie hacker now, wish me luck!

• magento2-installer-bash-script

  4 45 4.2 Shell

  Simplistic Magento 2 Installer Bash Script

Thank you for starting this thread and providing us with the opportunity to share. I have developed several plugins for Magento 2, an e-commerce platform. Some of them can be found at https://www.magepsycho.com/extensions/magento-2.html.

• Pika Screenshot Editor

  11 592 3.5 JavaScript

  Create beautiful marketing images (by rishimohan)

being a designer, i share my experiments in UI and design on Twitter and some other sites. to present designs, i used to beautify them in Figma. this was a routine process where i would open Figma, create a gradient background for my design, add shadows, rounded corners etc. and export the image in correct size, so if i’m to share it on Dribbble I would export it in Dribbble size, for Twitter the size is different

this whole process used to take like 20 to 30 minutes easily. so i built an app https://pika.style to do all of that for me quickly

it started as a hobby, open-source and free to use project which i was building in public on my twitter(@thelifeofrishi). in a matter of time i started getting DMs on Twitter for feature requests

i remember a founder of a company wanted to have a certain feature, we discussed that and in the end i asked whether he would be happy paying for that feature, to which he said yes. i added the requested feature in 2 days and got back to him, he instantly purchased annual subscription and started using Pika. that was in February, 2022

fast forward to today, almost an year later, Pika now has 150+ paid users and makes $1,500+ in revenue each month. i’ve turned it from just a screenshot beautifying tool to a tool to design very customisable mockups and images. you can use it to generate images for your website, app, code, tweet etc. and to keep it more accessible, it has a free tier which doesn’t even require registration to use

i’ve also added a plan just for students and teachers so they can use Pika’s paid fearures at a very discounted subscription fee

if you’re a programmer, marketer, designer, no coder or work in the tech industry, i think you’ll definitely find Pika useful :)

• tauri

  470 77,588 9.8 Rust

  Build smaller, faster, and more secure desktop applications with a web frontend.

  

Yeah, I’m using https://tauri.app/

The DX is a thousand times better than Electron. The ecosystem is not as rich yet, but it’s getting there. The Discord community is very active and passionate about the project as well.

I’m also having a great time learning Rust!

Suggest a related project