Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming? 2025 edition
Some years have passed since last time I asked...
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2025 where @napolux convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.
CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →
HISTORICAL ERA Post-ZIRP & AI (2023–2026)
COMMUNITY SCORE 4 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 2 comments
I'm getting to the "semi-pro" level in photography; two years I was getting bored w/ photography then looked out the window of my office to the sports center and then I started going to games. Now I'm pretty good
https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social/post/3lewyzub3pc2s ↗
and my pics are better than the pics other people are selling to local papers. I also know there are parents who really want pictures of their kids performing. In either case it's a marketing problem, the first case is a matter of "just do it", the second is a matter of figuring out how to reach those people. I'd love to be able to write off a $5k camera off my taxes.