The world is changed - given the low cost of reverse engineering and implementation, it would be product suicide to openly call out a money making product.

I don't expect too many actual >500$ moneymaking projects to be listed. Would love to be proven wrong.

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wccrawford 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, the only time I see people talking about money-making side projects is when it's practically impossible to copy them. I can't see the advantage of bragging about a side project if the threat of losing marketshare for it is on the table.

My side project isn't software and doesn't make $500/mo, but I still just don't talk about it.

	▲	stavros 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		My side-project makes money because it's in a specific niche: It requires trust that the service will still operate tomorrow, and the fact that it's been going for nearly 20 years is a selling point you can't just have Claude copy. It helps that it's cheap, I guess, but it also operates in a market small enough that anything with less than minimal time commitment will lose money. That's why there are tens of former competitors who have all shut down now.

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skc 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Precisely what has effectively killed off the "building in public" trend that was all the rage just a two years ago.

	▲	mattkenefick 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's been like this a long time. Kickstarter was just a platform to test product viability and public response for the big guys.

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ozgung 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My first instinct was that side projects can’t make good money anymore. Monthly new repos on Github increased 5x. Also any good project can be cloned immediately. Maybe people here can confirm if it’s a good time to start indie projects.

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Digish 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I also feel the same all the masterclass about making money using x,y,z is either showing things in past which no longer work or very steep upfront cost/efforts.

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takinola a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

$500 MRR is so low that I doubt competition matters at that point. Plus, implementation is rarely the differentiating factor for a successful product.

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sublinear 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I offer some absolutes in reply and would also love to be proven wrong.

The cost of engineering and implementation has always been low. Passive income has always been a subtle lie. The money has always been in providing a well-supported service.

No customer has ever cared about implementation details beyond what is outlined in the contracts they have with you and the nth-order effects of the contracts they are under with their own clients.

Advertising is the opposite of suicide, but since we have so much negativity on HN in the past few years this is no longer the best place to do that. Every potential customer here is vastly outnumbered by people who belong on reddit.

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unified101 2 days ago | parent [-]

> The cost of engineering and implementation has always been low

With Opus and fable and sol at dozens of dollars for a month, i don't know how you can straight-faced say that. But you do you.

	▲	sublinear 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		How do you think startups and passion projects used to work before LLMs? The cost of labor is irrelevant when it's just your own time and already have your day job to pay the bills. Paying for an LLM is always more expensive. If you're attempting to create a startup without knowing how to write code, you've always been fucked and still are. Every time you avoid getting your hands dirty, you incur cost. How can you already incur cost from just the code? Really bad start.

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AndrewSChapman 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thanks a bingo.

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MindfulChipmunk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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