<story><title>Ask HN: How do you make money from your side projects?</title><text>Sure enough, not all side projects are meant to make money. But among those that do, what is your business model?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>david_shaw</author><text>Google Adsense + organic (non-paid) traffic == &amp;quot;passive&amp;quot; money.&lt;p&gt;Not an insane amount of money, of course, but enough that you can consider the project successful if you&amp;#x27;re getting a solid amount of views.&lt;p&gt;My largest project, &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sleepyti.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sleepyti.me&lt;/a&gt;, gets about 1.5 million unique views per month. The revenue Google Adsense brings in is not nearly enough support myself, but it&amp;#x27;s enough to make the effort feel solidly &amp;quot;worth it&amp;quot; in terms of development time and hosting costs (which are very low at this point).&lt;p&gt;How (or if) you should be monetizing depends on the nature of your side project. If your &amp;quot;side project&amp;quot; is a business -- say, designing WordPress themes -- then you should sell your product! If it&amp;#x27;s something that gets 50 views per month, maybe it&amp;#x27;s not the best candidate for monetization (and is instead a portfolio&amp;#x2F;resume builder). Either way, gaining experience building things is almost always a good thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yeukhon</author><text>Sorry, but I don&amp;#x27;t see any ads displayed. Am I missing something?</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How do you make money from your side projects?</title><text>Sure enough, not all side projects are meant to make money. But among those that do, what is your business model?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>david_shaw</author><text>Google Adsense + organic (non-paid) traffic == &amp;quot;passive&amp;quot; money.&lt;p&gt;Not an insane amount of money, of course, but enough that you can consider the project successful if you&amp;#x27;re getting a solid amount of views.&lt;p&gt;My largest project, &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sleepyti.me&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sleepyti.me&lt;/a&gt;, gets about 1.5 million unique views per month. The revenue Google Adsense brings in is not nearly enough support myself, but it&amp;#x27;s enough to make the effort feel solidly &amp;quot;worth it&amp;quot; in terms of development time and hosting costs (which are very low at this point).&lt;p&gt;How (or if) you should be monetizing depends on the nature of your side project. If your &amp;quot;side project&amp;quot; is a business -- say, designing WordPress themes -- then you should sell your product! If it&amp;#x27;s something that gets 50 views per month, maybe it&amp;#x27;s not the best candidate for monetization (and is instead a portfolio&amp;#x2F;resume builder). Either way, gaining experience building things is almost always a good thing.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clockwork_189</author><text>Wow, that is so cool! I remember using sleepyti.me in university to get decent sleep and found it pretty helpful.</text></comment>