My project is BugMuncher - https://www.bugmuncher.com - a website feedback tool I created back in 2011, and it's currently making $1,489 Monthly Recurring Revenue.
Strictly speaking it's not a side project anymore, as in Sept 2015 I fired all my freelance clients to focus on BugMuncher full time, but I've never taken funding, and I'm the only person working on it, so it still feels like a side project :)
If anyone is interested I've been writing a blog series about my mission to go from side project to profit, which starts here - https://blog.bugmuncher.com/2015/10/22/from-side-project-to-...
Its different from a free trial since if they like your product will use it until they grow enough to upgrade and might eventually start giving you money.
I can think of countless products that I ended up upgrading from free to paid after using their product > a few months on their free tier.
Offer the whole service for free. Revenue generated through advertising/sponsorship.
Looking to move into a premium model over the coming months to gain some MRR to allow me to develop it furthur..
Currently earns over £75,000 per year in advertising/sponsorship/affiliate revenue.
Work on it for about 2-3 hours a week.
If anyone has any tips I am all ears... I like to work on small budgets, as I don't believe you need to spend a lot of money to gain traction online.. I have only spent around £1,000 to get to where I am now...
Share any ideas you have.
Might be easier said that done but wanted to mention in case it was something you hadn't thought of.
That is something that I have considered but am not sure how easy it is to scale and diversify the content at the same time... Needs some planning but dont think it is impossible..
Have it noted in my product roadmap.
Advertising and affiliate revenue is done direct through a range of bookmakers..
I have not implemented any display networks or advertising networks into the site yet. I may decide to do this in the future but find that the returns are not that great...
Looking to build my own ad platform to manage ad space in the coming months as well.... Have this all designed and wireframed, just need to build it
Do you put your money where your mouth is? Place bets that your system pops out?
Edit: Roughly how many visitors do you get, monthly?
I am looking to add an extension to the site so it places bets automatically through the Betfair API then I can track the growth of the better balance that way.
I am planning to turn all the learnings from this into a free betting guide/ebook as well in the coming months to educate people on how to pick better bets and manage their bankroll.
The site gets around 25k visitors a month, and has a very good pages per visit rate and visitor duration. - The bulk of the engagement comes from the Android app which has around 75k users.. I am hoping to actually release the new improved version in the coming months and then launch on iOS as well. - There is also an email database with just over 20k subscribers, which gets a 30% open-rate and 5-6% click-rate on average per email.
Is all pretty fun... Currently spending more time on the site as I neglected it a bit when focusing on the app and the algorithm. Working hard on SEO to get the traffic levels up. Want to have 100k monthly visits to the site by the end of the year.
One option could be to have a section of the site that contains the highest accuracy of predictions that can only be accessed by premium members..
Or I could maybe gate some of the more details analysis to only premium members..
I am not sure how scalable these options are or what I could charge as a fee for this.
I am open to suggests if anyone knows a good way I could introduce a premium model?
Automated social media assistant for small businesses in the UK - currently making £750 MRR. If you have any questions I'm happy to answer.
Sorry if I have missed something, it's a cool project anyway and it's 100% solving a pain point many people feel when using Twitter.
Can it maintain picture galleries across accounts?
What makes it UK specific?
2) Yes, when you include a picture in the status update it goes across accounts.
3) It's UK specific purely because of my location and the high touch sales process I have at the moment - there isn't anything stopping the product working in any timezone.
Word of mouth is starting to bring in new business, my accountant has recommended a few people to me! :)
I am using the money to build http://timeblock.com that currently makes around $350 a month.
Marketing wise I primarily offer great and fast support also in building additional features, this drives a lot of user reviews and reccomendations on forums.
Email me if you want more insights, I will be happy to help you building something different!
When you use the app/methodology you get less stress, less chaos, more creativity and better planning leading to more revenue and better quality of your products.
One user said "it's like scrum, just more humane"
You would pay for it if you wanted more transparency and improved communication between you, your co-founders, your employees and your customers.
It is also an app that supports the methodology, it currently integrates with Jira, and we are working on Asana and TeamWork.
I apologize for the missing info on the website, we are shooting explainer videos today!
You have a few UX issues and lots of conversion blockers on there....
If you want a hand optimising the site let me know, (for free!). Might help to double your revenue pretty quickly for this project
Thank you so much for offering your help!
Then a friend suggested I made a product out of it and the rest is history :)