[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What HN post made you money?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What HN post made you money?
Is there a HN post that made you money? What HN posts do you
suggest to help people make money?
Author : cetaphil
Score : 239 points
Date : 2022-08-04 12:26 UTC (10 hours ago)
| rolisz wrote:
| I posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27583185 And
| I got two clients for my consulting business.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| I've had a few HN posts reach the front page and they've enabled
| me to make many tens of thousands of dollars just this year.
|
| How? Well my penchant for yak shaving SOMETIMES produces
| interesting projects --- so now people and companies pay me to do
| interesting work/experiments/writing with their software (or
| software we both like).
|
| Some recent examples:
|
| - https://opencoreventures.com/blog/2022-06-rise-of-o11y/
|
| - https://supabase.com/blog/2022/07/18/seen-by-in-postgresql
|
| It's often very hard to produce something of high quality (I'm
| still working at it) --- I'm essentially doing controlled rabbit
| hole rappelling --- but as far as paid work goes it doesn't get
| much better than this.
|
| Can't ask for more than working with prestigious companies to do
| interesting greenfield work to actually accomplish something --
| the incentives are aligned and it's awesome.
|
| I've liked this so much I've started trying to branch out and
| find more companies to work with, it might change the course of
| my career.
| mustafabisic1 wrote:
| Haven't made me any money yet, but it pushed me in the right
| direction and it happened yesterday.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335165#32335750
|
| Started a weekly newsletter for remote working parents, dabbled
| on it a bit and saw a great post on HN that my newsletter fit in
| fine. Definitely got the spike of motivation to make it happen.
| I'm in the email marketing game for 5 years and sent hundreds of
| millions of emails out, but the one I sent today must be in the
| top 3 emails that got me most excited.
|
| Mentioned it in a comment and got a few subscribers.
|
| I did lose a few karma points for the way I did it tho, but I was
| rusty with my HN commenting skills (working on it)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I actually made, IIRC, $500 from a comment I made on a HN post.
| The story is here:
| https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...
|
| TL;DR I got asked by the NYT to expand my comment into an opinion
| piece, the NYT then changed my writeup of my opinion a bunch
| which was annoying but it was still basically my opinion. Anyway,
| I got paid for my time.
| dbancajas wrote:
| wish I put some money in BTC before.
| jeffwass wrote:
| I haven't actually made money on it (yet), but this HN comment of
| mine last year had a positive impact (not even a post, just a
| comment on a thread) :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004577#27004828
|
| I have a musical YouTube channel, which had minimal traction.
| Just a few views from family and friends. But after commenting on
| that HN post with a link to one of my videos, it got 171 views
| that day. A few more views began trickling in afterwards, and
| eventually 'The Algorithm' started recommending some videos on my
| channel.
|
| It's a _great_ feeling to read genuine comments from online
| strangers to know that you 've touched in some way!
|
| This was the video in the orig link :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNfMZ6g9YWo (Piano take on The
| Safety Dance with ragtime + stride piano influences).
|
| [And if you do see it, pls try to stay to the 1:00 - 1:30 region,
| where engagement spikes to 250%. Ie, on average for every 'view',
| that part gets watched about 2.5x as many times! Most viewers
| drop off before then, but luckily a few stuck around to find and
| enjoy it.]
|
| Eventually the algorithm then picked up this other video, which
| became my most popular, at 7k views :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iun1A2Pc7Kg (Mess Around in Dr.
| John's New Orleans style)
|
| So I haven't earned any actual money on that HN comment, and am
| still far from the thresholds required to monetize (1k
| subscribers + 4k watch hours). But it did help to kick my YouTube
| channel into getting some exposure, even though I'm still small
| potatoes.
| ghostapps wrote:
| Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 - Show
| and tell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15148804
|
| specifically this comment about Shopify Apps
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15149528
|
| led me to build Simple Purchase Orders which I sold last year
| fdomig wrote:
| None.
| unixhero wrote:
| Just reading this site and participating in the comments have
| made me money, indirectly. It is like the colleagues I do not
| have, so I am able to keep up with the new things here. Amazing.
| Like a real time Scientific American & Wired crossover BBS, where
| we're the players...
| 4pkjai wrote:
| "Do things that don't scale". That led me to creating a massively
| unscalable but useful web application that people pay for.
| ttty wrote:
| https://bankstatementconverter.com/
|
| Interesting stories, I read the one about HSBC statement, what
| a mess.
| oliv__ wrote:
| This looks cool but I would expect a big section on the home
| page about why I should trust you and upload my bank
| statements on your website.
|
| I don't doubt that it works but I'm frankly amazed that
| people have paid for this service and happily uploaded such
| sensitive documents without any kind of reassurance (hell
| even just some plain old marketing)
| bigbang wrote:
| Not surprised at all. I know a lot of people that upload
| sensitive docs to format conversion free sites (like jpg to
| pdf converter, joining pdfs etc).
| 4pkjai wrote:
| I agree with you on that, a few customers have called me up
| to make sure I'm not a criminal. It doesn't seem to be an
| issue for 99% of my users though. I don't do anything with
| the documents or data in them, they get deleted quickly and
| automatically as well.
| 4pkjai wrote:
| Yup the HSBC documents are generally really bad
| alin23 wrote:
| _The journey to controlling external monitors on M1 Macs_ :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28011861
|
| Made about $1000 in sales just in those few days after the
| article has been on the front page of HN [0]
|
| I was amazed that I could finally give up looking for a job and
| focus on doing what I like (creating apps, solving real
| annoyances) and writing about it.
|
| It's not always like that though. I just posted another article
| similar to that but on a different matter (app/window switching)
| and it's not going anywhere [1]
|
| [0]
| https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/e97660ef769aac9103dfc21b780d1...
|
| [1] _A window switcher on the Mac App Store? Is it even
| possible?_ : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32333659
| throwaway24124 wrote:
| Who is hiring? (Sept. 2021)
| biotinker wrote:
| I got my current robotics job, in a field I at the time had no
| experience in, because of this blog post I wrote:
|
| https://biotinker.dev/posts/seismograph.html
|
| It didn't get a ton of traction when I posted it on HN at the
| time
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138014
|
| But something only needs to be seen by the one correct person to
| make a difference, and in my case it was.
| gcheong wrote:
| That's cool, hope you're still sleeping well!
| hoofhearted wrote:
| We recently launched an MVP that helps online sellers with
| inventory and logistics. It's based on our own internal ERP
| system that we have been developing for a number of years for our
| retail operation.
|
| The discussion on the post below has been very influential on our
| product development and our feature roadmap. Thank you HN
| community!! :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22244750
|
| Link is in my profile if you want more info.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| Sharing about my [iOS book series][0] resulted in about $5k in
| sales. Honestly, it was largely unexpected and I was even a
| little self conscious that the headline was too click bait-ish.
| But it seemed people were interested.
|
| If you look at my submission history, you'll see that none of my
| submissions have really broke a few upvotes, so yeah - wasn't
| expecting it all but it was fun talking shop with everyone in the
| comments. That's what is neat about this site, you can be a star
| for a day and people are happy and genuinely interested about why
| you are.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31534988
| [deleted]
| moviewise wrote:
| I got some donations to my newsletter for this HN post: The
| Wisdom in Kung Fu Panda
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30778692
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| In a sense, this comment [0] from bitexploder made me money; it
| gave me a framework I used to learn how to be a security
| engineer. Funnily enough, I unknowingly applied to his consulting
| firm years later before I found my current role.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14103349
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Every HN post I read while at work, I'm earning money in the
| background - passive income.
| jzelinskie wrote:
| Like many other folks like the founders of CockroachDB and
| CoreOS, we read a Google research paper posted to HN.
|
| I think this is the original post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20132520
|
| We left Red Hat a year later and joined YC to start a company
| based on the Zanzibar paper. Out of that, the open source
| SpiceDB[0] was born.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/authzed/spicedb
| spapas82 wrote:
| A who wants to be hired helped me find a gig!
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| Here's one for you. Buy iBonds from treasury.gov now! Think of it
| as a risk free savings account that pays almost 10%[0] at the
| moment since it tracks inflation which is currently high. If you
| need the money back you just forfeit the last 3 months interest.
|
| If you have a business open an account for that entity as well,
| get one for your spouse, get one for your child, then spread the
| word. Note the limit is $10k per year.
|
| [0]https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ibonds..
| .
| jimbob45 wrote:
| IIRC it tracks at inflation which can run down to zero just as
| quickly as it can run up. That said, I seem to remember that
| you're only penalized three months' interest after year one so
| it's not a crippling flaw.
| sometimeshuman wrote:
| That would be fine. It took over a year to ramp up, if it
| takes takes that long to ramp down you'll still likely up
| ~$1000 on $10k for 30 minutes of your time. I wish I had
| opened my accounts a year ago.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| I saw this few months back. I didn't had money to invest. Now I
| have a bit, but the exchange rate for the EUR/USD pair passed
| from 1.2 to about 1. Kinda painful to have to invest 1000EUR
| instead of 800EUR, especially if the rate go back to "normal"
| again it will wipe out the gains.
| pkrumins wrote:
| My own post made me money:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1936033
| ggambetta wrote:
| This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19584921 And it
| wasn't even my post!
|
| A long time ago I found myself teaching Computer Graphics at my
| alma mater. Over the following years my approach to the subject
| evolved, and I really got the hang of it. After I stopped
| teaching, I took my notes, handouts and slides, and made them
| into a series of articles that I put on my website, where they
| remained in relative obscurity. Hacker News managed to find it
| every once in a while, and it was generally well received, but
| nothing came out of this. Until April 2019, when that post made
| the HN front page again, except this time it caught the attention
| of an editor in No Starch Press.
|
| Long story short, my materials are now a book, Computer Graphics
| from Scratch, sold by No Starch Press [0], and also available for
| free on my website [1].
|
| This genuinely wouldn't have happened without your support. THANK
| YOU, HN community :)
|
| [0] https://nostarch.com/computer-graphics-scratch
|
| [1] http://gabrielgambetta.com/computer-graphics-from-scratch
| fermentation wrote:
| I just wanted to say that I LOVE this book. It did a much
| better job of explaining how to render things than my graphics
| class back in college did, and in a much shorter timeframe.
| ggambetta wrote:
| Thank you! Happy to hear it's been helpful :)
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| Wow this is so cool - I haven't read your book but I probably
| will after seeing this comment. Keep making cool stuff!
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've got your book sitting on my coffee table right now.
|
| My primary reason for picking it up was to get my head around
| writing a triangle rasterizer from scratch. I found it to be a
| really good reference that addresses some of the nastier things
| like clipping, which most other tutorials happily omit.
|
| At some point, I will probably end up writing my own book about
| all of this as well. I don't know that any 2 people can ever
| have the same trip through this jungle.
| ggambetta wrote:
| The more, the merrier! Everyone understands and explains
| things in their own unique way, so there's no perfect book
| for everyone - but each book might be a perfect fit for
| someone!
| Kye wrote:
| I suspect some of the people who've contributed to my Ko-fi (and
| Patreon before that) came through HN due to the short gap between
| a post and the event.
| gregdoesit wrote:
| Seven years ago, I started a blog called The Pragmatic Engineer.
| For three months, I wrote a post every two-three weeks. But no
| one really read them. So I took a short break, which break turned
| into a month, then another, another... and I did not have
| motivation to write. Barely anyone read it, after all.
|
| A few months after starting the blog, I saw a small traffic spike
| - maybe 30 visitors - from this site called Hacker News after a
| submission [1]. I never heard about HN before but it looked
| interesting so I started to visit it, and eventually registered
| to upvote stories I like.
|
| Then, another few months later - when I had not published
| anything for 3-4 months - as I was checking out HN, I could not
| believe what I saw: a months-old post of mine was on the front
| page titled "Move Fast Without Breaking Things". Traffic was so
| high, my site could barely keep up on shared hosting with
| MediaTemple, my blog running Wordpress.
|
| There were 50+ comments discussing my post, versus the 2 that
| were on the blog itself (it had a commenting system). The
| comments were more insightful than I've ever seen for any of my
| blog posts. This was the HN post [2].
|
| Now, this post did not "make me money". But it WAS a turning
| point where I got validation that strangers on the internet find
| what I wrote interesting. And it gave me a motivation to write
| when no one read it, knowing that just because people are not
| interested in what I wrote today, people might find it
| interesting months or years later.
|
| I kept writing my blog for years. Eventually, this blog served as
| the basis of The Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter which I launched a
| year ago, and which is my new fulltime job and one of the most
| popular technology newsletters with over 120,000 people reading
| it. More than enough people chose to pay for it to make this a a
| viable fulltime career on the long run.
|
| Thank you, Hacker News, for those first two submissions, all the
| comments, and the motivation it gave to keep writing. It was a
| turning point. I still remember how I could barely believe in
| March 2016 that so many people I never met can be interested in
| reading thoughts I put in writing.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10692734
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11374221
| brightball wrote:
| Similar. People actually reading and discussing your work is
| highly motivating to keep doing it.
|
| I'm in the middle of a security and antifraud series now,
| motivated entirely by Brian Krebs [1] retweeting me after the
| Experian breach. The articles have gotten essentially zero
| traction on HN, but I'm having fun writing them and seeing them
| get attention on other avenues.
|
| I've been writing off an on for years now, thanks largely to
| the motivation that getting on the HN front page [2] gave me
| back in 2014.
|
| At some point, I think I would like to attempt to monetize my
| writing but I get enough enjoyment from doing it that I haven't
| ever bothered.
|
| [1] https://www.brightball.com/articles/automatically-
| reversing-...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371249
| taylodl wrote:
| I've experienced the same thing. Blog posts I wrote almost 10
| years ago are still getting traffic to this day. Sure, it's
| only 4-10 views per day (which is still _thousands_ of views
| per year!) but sometimes it 'll get referred by someone else's
| blog and there will be thousands of views over the course of a
| week or so. It's been fascinating watching this process over
| the years.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the part of evergreen content that is often lost in
| the hustle and bustle of "latest posts" - I have a _very_
| crappy blog I mainly used as notes to myself on certain
| things, but posts still get hits _and comments_ literally
| decades later.
|
| And that's with nearly no effort!
| agileAlligator wrote:
| > I have a very crappy blog
|
| Drop the link mate
| bombcar wrote:
| Here's an example post:
| http://blog.bombcar.com/2009/02/diablo-ii-on-vista.html
|
| Man it's been 12 years since I bothered posting, I
| probably should follow my own advice lol
| PigiVinci83 wrote:
| Oh, i read your substack and find it brilliant!
| nindalf wrote:
| I had a similar experience. I would write whatever I felt like
| writing and put it up on my blog, but the first real
| appreciation I got was on reddit and later HN.
|
| This doesn't make me any money, because I don't monetize my
| blog. But having people read, critique and enjoy my writing has
| given me immense satisfaction over the years. Can't put a price
| on that.
| Nashooo wrote:
| Thank you for your insightful articles and shedding more light
| on compensation data in europe! Your tri-modal article has been
| particularly well received!
| rozenmd wrote:
| Almost any "what are you working on" style thread brings me
| people interested in my side project, and I tend to use their
| feedback to make it even better, some even stick around and
| become paying customers.
|
| (It's an automated status page that integrates uptime monitoring,
| https://onlineornot.com)
| graderjs wrote:
| I like to think it was a Show HN, about a remote isolated browser
| product, but actually I found that spikes in sales came more
| often after I made some random comment that showed I'm an expert
| in that tech, not trying to sell something. What I found is that
| comments, not posts, led more reliably to inbound sales interest
| that converted into revenue.
| ghiculescu wrote:
| Do you have a link to the comment?
| seibelj wrote:
| Learned about Bitcoin here first way way back. Enough said!
| markozivanovic wrote:
| One directly, one indirectly. :)
|
| The article "Screw it, I'll host it myself" was on the first page
| for some time, and the traffic was crazy. Some people used my
| referral link for Vultr, earning me enough hosting credits to
| last me for a year for my little websites and development
| projects. [0]
|
| Later that year, I posted a collection of my favorite
| hacking/coding movies and literature[1], and several people
| bought a book I wrote[2]. I did put a disclaimer for both, being
| a good netizen I am. :)
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725185
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29501157
|
| [2] https://codeofwar.xyz/
| erulabs wrote:
| The few times our hardware had reached the front page have
| basically made our startup viable. It was only two days ago, but
| https://pibox.io
|
| We figure HN is one of the toughest crowds. If we can make a
| hardware product y'all don't _completely_ dislike - we're on to
| something!
| kldx wrote:
| Do you have any benchmarks for how well the CM4 works with
| spinning disks? I briefly skimmed the docs but couldn't find
| it.
| xakahnx wrote:
| HN gets comment threads every month or so with "FAANG engineers
| do in fact make >500k annually". I see commenters doubt this
| every time, but it's true!
| timmahoney wrote:
| I was working at Capital One a while back, and like most larger
| companies, they have a referral bonus and an internal recruitment
| website where you can refer candidates. They also have a personal
| link so that if you share it with a friend, and they apply, you
| get credit and the referral bonus automatically. You might know
| where this is going.
|
| Every month I would post on Hacker News' "Who's Hiring" post with
| a rundown on a few of the positions we were hiring for, and while
| I was there I probably picked up referral bonuses for like 10
| people.
| loh wrote:
| Before I officially had an MVP, I posted about something I was
| working on here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29815771
|
| Made my first sale from it, but I'm still looking for PMF and
| will need to pivot a bit. There's obviously value here, but I
| think the specific problem it solves is too infrequent to create
| a sustainable business from, and developers are a rightfully
| picky bunch.
| rvz wrote:
| I think the founder of Freshworks would know the answer. [0] The
| comment that started it all: [1] from there to IPO [2]
|
| [0] http://blog.freshdesk.com/the-freshdesk-story-how-a-
| simple-c...
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358398
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28625195
| mirchiseth wrote:
| Came to say the same and searched for freshdesk before posting.
| This has to be one of the biggest ones.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Who wants to be hired thread got me a nice little raise and the
| general knowledge/info that I see on HN make a difference in my
| job. I've got my finger on the pulse of the industry and there
| are many languages/frameworks/concepts that I first learned about
| reading HN that I use in my job. Sometimes I spend too much time
| here but overall HN is a net positive for me and introduces me to
| things that I wouldn't see elsewhere, even on the tech-related
| subreddits.
| wannabebarista wrote:
| This one: https://bcmullins.github.io/parsing-json-python/
|
| This post offers a quick solution for extracting values from
| nested JSON in python. After posting on HN, someone submitted it
| to PyCoder's which brought in a lot of traffic. Then I received
| an email asking for my PayPal address to send me a thank you. I
| set up a page on Buy Me a Coffee[0] and have gotten a handful of
| coffees from readers since then.
|
| Thank you to anyone who sent a few bucks my way! I'm glad I could
| help with this pesky issue!
|
| [0] https://www.buymeacoffee.com
| scubakid wrote:
| A year and a half ago I started building a better personal
| finance simulator / retirement calculator, mainly for myself and
| friends/family to use.
|
| I was about T-minus one week from halting work on it and starting
| something else when I posted to Show HN on a whim:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26969173.
|
| I didn't even think to check back on it until during a meeting I
| noticed my inbox was suddenly filling up :) I was astonished and
| inspired by the response, and haven't stopped working on it
| since!
| timbargo wrote:
| I'm a new grad who's starting his first big boy job tomorrow.
|
| Finding Projection Lab in that first Projectifi post was
| transformative for me! It helped more than anything else to
| understand my potential financial future. I've used it when
| comparing potential jobs, lifestyles, locations. It's been
| incredibly valuable to me.
|
| I have quite a few friends who have become fans of the tool as
| well. And I used it to show some friends that yes they can
| retire with some smart early decisions!
|
| So thank you! I'm glad you posted it on HN and kept up
| development. I plan to keep using Projection Lab indefinitely
| to better understand my finances as they develop.
|
| And I do subscribe to the newsletter as well! :) It serves as a
| nice reminder to check-in.
| scubakid wrote:
| That's awesome. Makes me happy to hear it's helped others
| weigh the same kind of decisions that I have. At this point
| it still feels like a pipe dream to one day be able to go
| full-time on it, but either way the plan is to keep making it
| better and better (no shortage of ideas!). Ironically, I'm
| sure grinding leetcode instead and switching to FAANG would
| result in much better projections in PL for myself; but
| sometimes I think it's more about what keeps you energized
| and passionate than what optimizes total comp.
| pbronez wrote:
| Wow! I have long wanted a tool like this. Will sign up for the
| trial.
| scubakid wrote:
| Before this, that was me. In fact, PL originally started as
| just a spreadsheet I shared around with a few friends, but as
| I added more to that it became exponentially more difficult
| to maintain. All the formulas got really nasty, which made it
| super opaque how everything actually worked. Eventually I
| realized there must be a better way!
| pbronez wrote:
| 100%. I'm at that point where I've got very complex
| spreadsheets and need to make some kind of change.
|
| What's the best place to provide feedback / ask questions?
| Discord?
| scubakid wrote:
| Yep, the PL discord is perfect for that.
| samtimalsina wrote:
| Keep up the good work!
| scubakid wrote:
| Wow, good eye! I see you're one of the OG people who tried it
| out. If there's still a product area you'd like to see
| fleshed out more, do let me know. It's been a whirlwind of a
| year trying to maintain a high development velocity as a solo
| dev working on nights/weekends, but in the grand scheme of
| things it's easy to do when you love what you're building.
| AdamTReineke wrote:
| I don't remember when I signed up, but I'm a fan. Love when the
| emails come with the regular updates. I need to do my monthly
| data update. <3
| scubakid wrote:
| Glad to hear someone likes the email updates! Usually it
| feels like sending those into the void. If you ever want to
| beta test and help shape new features before they make it to
| production, I post to #early-access in the discord fairly
| often during the dev process.
| jonkiddy wrote:
| I have benefited monetarily indirectly by lurking on HN for years
| and reading others' thoughtful comments on a variety of subjects.
| Then apply some of those thoughts to my career as a developer,
| then later a EM. HN has been a gold mine of ideas by reading what
| others on HN post while interacting with each other.
| rukshn wrote:
| Almost all posts related to my blog https://ruky.me where I make
| a small amount by serving ads. It's not a life changing amount,
| but the feedback I get from HN motivates me to write.
| mellowside wrote:
| wow, health informatics.
|
| I'm a biomedical engineer who worked as a BA for EMRs and now
| as a QA with healthcare apps.
|
| I never really found someone else on HN to relate to until now.
| Or who did a MSC in Health Informatics.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Is there a HN post that made you money?"
|
| Nope. I assume very few people made any money from an HN post,
| directly or indirectly.
|
| Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN) are
| just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us money.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN) are
| just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us money.
|
| Probably being downvoted because you have no evidence to back
| this up. HN posts have made people money directly AND
| indirectly.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Everyone is posting anecdotes. My anecdote is that it hasn't
| made me any money. The number of commenters on this post is
| much less than the overall number of users on HN. I see no
| evidence against my statements either.
|
| "HN posts have made people money directly AND indirectly."
|
| This doesn't negate my claim. Some people do make money on
| here. I feel that number is very low.
| joshmanders wrote:
| This thread was made 2 hours ago, it's 745AM in silicon
| valley, where majority of people on this site are at...
| Don't expect it to explode so fast with people sharing.
|
| The difference between your anecdotes and everyone else's
| is they aren't saying "Well only 6 people replied to this
| thread in the first hour and a half, therefore I claim
| nobody has made money from HN"
| giantg2 wrote:
| "in silicon valley, where majority of people on this site
| are at"
|
| Do you have a source? I find it hard to believe that even
| 51% are in SV.
|
| The second paragraph is a gross misrepresention of my
| position. And it seems you're implying that as more
| people wake up, this will somehow prove that the majority
| of HN users have made money on posts here... which isn't
| any different the (misrepresented) argument that you were
| just complaining about.
|
| I'll wait for you to provide some actual evidence that
| 51% of users have directly or indirectly made money on
| posts here.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > I'll wait for you to provide some actual evidence that
| 51% of users have directly or indirectly made money on
| posts here.
|
| I'll provide that when you provide evidence that nobody
| has.
|
| Interesting how you can make claims without facts to back
| them up, but demand me to back up my claims against
| yours.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| > " _I 'll provide that when you provide evidence that
| nobody has._"
|
| Where did giantg2 claim that?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Interesting how you can make claims without facts to
| back them up, but demand me to back up my claims against
| yours."
|
| Yep, that's intentional. That's exactly how you started
| attacking me. And now I have you making the
| statement/point about the lack of evidence for me.
| jader201 wrote:
| > _Edit: Why disagree without reply? Most of us (even on HN)
| are just normal devs and nothing we do on here will make us
| money._
|
| Because your personal anecdote of "Nope." doesn't really add
| much value to the thread, and the second sentence is an
| assumption (so it may not even be correct), and either way, it
| also doesn't really contribute to the discussion.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not sure how someone who hasn't had that experience would
| elaborate on it. The point is that not everyone makes money
| on these posts. The way the question was worded indicates
| that those who didn't make money are still welcome to answer.
|
| The fact that it (at least at the time) was the only response
| about not making money does add to the conversation, as prior
| to that the conversation was very one sided. So all you're
| really hearing is how some people made money, but it's not
| accurately representing how many people do or don't make
| money on here. I would like to see responses by other normal
| devs saying they did or did not make money on here since that
| can give insight into the assumption to determine what kinds
| of people benefit. Or perhaps I'm looking for too deep of a
| discussion?
| jader201 wrote:
| I guess, as the title (What HN post made you money?)
| implies, it's looking more for responses from those that
| made money from HN posts, vs. a poll with a title more
| along the lines of "Have you made money from an HN post?".
|
| I'm sure there are several that _haven 't_ made money from
| HN posts, but I'd imagine there's not much to discuss
| around that, other than just collecting raw numbers.
|
| Unless some can offer discussion around how they tried and
| failed to do that, but again, the title doesn't really
| suggest that sort of discussion.
| auxym wrote:
| Not sure if saving money counts here, but several years ago, some
| HN comment linked the MMM blog, from which I learned about the
| importance of investing and specifically index funds.
| bombcar wrote:
| I had a similar experience through the Bogleheads, for which
| I'm still grateful. Haven't entirely succeeded on FIRE, but I'm
| much better off than I could have been.
| jjice wrote:
| Love MMM. Doesn't pop up a lot on HN, but the discussion is
| interesting when it does.
| iasay wrote:
| Many posts aggregated in my case. I'll probably get shot for this
| but I use HN to avoid the costly ramp up of jumping on tech
| industry marketing fads and false promises. About 50% of the
| products and ideas out there burn quickly. 25% of what is left
| are mires of pain. HN is the place to watch people suffer and
| rewrite so I don't have to incur the cost myself.
|
| From the ashes, I can pick out lasting tech to build on. That
| makes me money.
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I've spent a lot of money on several HN posts because I came
| across a service or product that was advertised, so pretty sure
| people on the other end made some money. (And I was happy to do
| so.)
| Ologn wrote:
| This one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16232976
|
| In 2013 I started reading about Bitcoin and became a skeptic as
| to its long-term value, as well as other cryptocoins. In 2014
| Stripe did a free coindrop of thousands of Stellar, if you
| connected with your Facebook account. My friend prompted me to do
| so, so I did. At the time I looked it up and saw it was all worth
| two cents or so. I wrote down my info and forgot about it.
|
| Then I saw this post. I looked it up and my Stellar Lumen were
| now worth a few thousand dollars. To diversify I traded some of
| my Lumen for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Then I cashed out some of my
| Lumen. I sent the HN account a few Lumen in appreciation, and the
| person who prompted me to sign up. I have cashed out almost all
| of my crypto, although I may have some coin in some wallet
| somewhere. I am still a skeptic, although it was an easy couple
| of thousands of dollars.
| wseqyrku wrote:
| Is this the beginning of the end of HN as it becomes a target for
| free advertisement?
| lapcat wrote:
| No, because "Show HN" has existed for a long time.
| wseqyrku wrote:
| With questions like 'What HN post made you money?' being
| tossed around, I'd expect a rapid increase in Show HN. It
| could get out of hand and ruin it for everyone.
| bombcar wrote:
| If you troll through NEW you find tens, hundreds of Show HN
| posts that are low-value and boring; they rarely make it to
| the front page.
| mikedelago wrote:
| I posted a comment in "Who wants to be hired?" and now I have a
| job.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| In early 2007 I started posting here. It was, I think, a large
| part of why we got into YC in summer of '07. It was a much
| smaller community then and PG was still actively engaged with HN,
| so likely this wouldn't work today.
| WA wrote:
| This one by user tempsy about /r/wallstreetbets from January
| 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22186392
|
| This comment made me aware of the whole options market and
| leverage. I didn't know a thing before reading it.
|
| I made EUR500k by betting that the Corona virus will have more
| impact than the market anticipated in February 2020 and got it
| right. Which of course, was kinda naive and quite lucky. I
| totally cannot recommend to play around with options at all.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Puts printed when trump put pence in charge of the covid
| response. given pence let people attacked by another virus die.
| I lol'd and bought puts.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| You're probably going to lose it all by betting incorrectly.
| WA wrote:
| No. To be more specific, I made 750k and lost 250k (note:
| from a German tax perspective, you could subtract the losses
| instantly from the gains, unlike in the US, where losses are
| spread over many years).
|
| I learned my lesson already and pulled the plug. At some
| point I realized that I know nothing and should get back to
| buy and hold.
| frontman1988 wrote:
| How much money did you turn into 500k? Predicting the
| consequences of a once in a lifetime black swan event is surely
| very lucky. But fortune favours the brave as they. You will
| never win a lottery if you dont buy the goddamn ticket!
| WA wrote:
| Initially I put about EUR65k into put options. The crash came
| so fast that it turned into a lot more very quickly. If your
| bet turns green instantly, you don't see the risk. I couldn't
| do the same thing again. I was very naive, but it helped me
| to hold with conviction.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Hn post pointing to git commit where AMD engineer said that
| spectre does not apply to AMD: placed an option against Intel.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| I later repeated it after hearing (again on hn) a rumor of
| another spectre-related Intel bug. This one did not make a
| splash in the markets. As I was ready to give up and pull out
| my options play, I happened to be delayed due to international
| travel, Intels's CEO resigned (due to having sex with his
| wife). The stock tanked even harder, and I made 3x what I made
| off of spectre.
|
| I learned my lesson on market rationality that day. Not a bad
| lesson to learn
| nickkell wrote:
| He resigned due to having sex with his wife? In some
| marriages it may be an unusual occurrence, but I'm not sure
| why you'd have to resign because of it.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| It was worded to be funny. He had had an affair with his
| now wife at a time when she was quasi? (Iirc) under him in
| the chain of command, which was against company policy, so
| yeah a firable offense, if, uh, a bit late.
|
| I think that it is not unreasonable to speculate that was
| the reason they gave and not the "real" reason for firing.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| I did the same thing -- paid for a move but ultimately sold way
| too early. Shame.
| maxcan wrote:
| Long term (10-30 years) buy and hold in publicly listed companies
| who had something about them which I did not believe could be
| accurately reflected in financial statements. Mostly AAPL and
| TSLA.
| tjchear wrote:
| Couple years back I built a service called SheetUI that turns
| your google spreadsheet into a beautiful webpage, and posted it
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23760846
|
| It slowly started racking up votes and made its way to the front
| page, and that's when it really exploded! A few good outcomes
| came out of it: a famous online Japanese publication wrote about
| it, it got featured on Stackshare top five new trending tools,
| and tons of backlinks because a lot of people used it (when I
| still had the free version available). It now generates a small
| amount of passive income for me.
| alexander_singh wrote:
| Have you thought about updating this to do the same for
| Airtable?
| tjchear wrote:
| Hm I have not. I could certainly look into it.
| atum47 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21923940
|
| Got a Patreon for a year after this project went viral.
| lapcat wrote:
| This post made me money, because it was a link to my product. :-)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31625804
|
| I had no involvement in posting the link though.
| Koshkin wrote:
| You just made a bit more :)
| unixbane wrote:
| None because any such form of making money means developing a web
| app or UN*X junk, for some questionably useful application that
| people are buying for some reason when they could just write it
| themselves or pirate stuff.
| t0mislav wrote:
| It was topic about showing your side projects, or something
| similar.
|
| I had small website just like [1] but with ads (I sold it later).
| It gave me lot of traffic, more visibility, eventually better
| Google rank and more money from ads.
|
| Such small/fun sites can get you real money!
|
| 1: https://randomcountrygenerator.com/
| conqrr wrote:
| Amazing, how much does it net you?
| Havoc wrote:
| What did you use for ads? Adsense?
| t0mislav wrote:
| Correct. It was passive income. Once running, I didn't
| touched it almost at all.
| demonshreder wrote:
| Hi I see that you are serving your own OSM tiles, can you share
| how are you generating them? Especially in webp?
| t0mislav wrote:
| I'm using TileMill to generate tiles. I does not support
| webp. I exported it to png, and then with some one line
| script converted all png's to webp.
| DanHulton wrote:
| When it's relevant to the conversation, I mention and link to my
| side project. I used to just mention it, not wanting to be seen
| as spammy, but I kept getting replies saying I should link, too.
| So I've kind of gotten over that.
|
| And usually when I do so, again, provided it's relevant to the
| conversation, I get a lot of traffic, which sometimes translates
| into a few sales.
|
| I think that, provided you are indeed contributing to the
| conversation, and what you're linking to us genuinely helpful and
| relevant, people on HN are usually pretty accepting of you
| promoting it occasionally.
| techlatest_net wrote:
| For me it was an Ask HN post asking how much one is making on
| their side project. The responses inspired me to start my own
| project which then over a period of time with handwork and
| perseverance turned into a full time entrepreneurial pursuit. So
| thanks for showing the way HN!
| cperciva wrote:
| This one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953
|
| Patrick's rant about all the things he would _change_ in Tarsnap
| continues to be responsible for the largest spike in new accounts
| in Tarsnap history.
| vladstudio wrote:
| I am a UX/UI designer, currently working as a freelanceer. Once I
| got inspired and wrote a somewhat lenghty reply to "Ask HN: how
| to find a good designer for a small project" [0].
|
| Not only have I been working with the post author ever since -
| half a year later, someone else approached me for a design
| project, because they found this post and my reply to it! Thank
| you HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29723734#29724047
| swyx wrote:
| somehow my little book got HN love and that got me started on my
| indiehacking career!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23700486 made 200k so far.
| would recommend.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| The bootstrapping-type posts got me excited to try my hand at it.
| I'm at $5k/month (mostly) passive income right now, while also
| consulting 4 days a week.
|
| Who wants to be hired helped me find my first freelancer gig.
| cinntaile wrote:
| What kind of passive income?
| ronyfadel wrote:
| I make Mac [1] and iOS [2] apps.
|
| [1]: https://fadel.io/
|
| [2]: https://vidcap.app/
| cinntaile wrote:
| The second link doesn't seem to work but the first one
| does, thanks for explaining. Is it just organic growth or
| do you buy ads or something?
| ronyfadel wrote:
| It should be working now? I think it's on Apple,
| itunes.apple.com has been slow for days.
|
| Mac apps == organic. iOS apps == mostly organic, I'm
| testing some ads for VidCap.
| cinntaile wrote:
| It works now indeed.
| [deleted]
| moneywoes wrote:
| How did you determine product demand? Congrats!
| ronyfadel wrote:
| If it takes < 1 month to build, and it fixes an issue you
| encounter every day, then it's worth building an MVP of
| and putting it out there.
| topoftheforts wrote:
| If I can ask, what generates the most income, the Mac apps or
| the iOS one?
| ronyfadel wrote:
| 75% macOS, 25% iOS
|
| macOS sales stable while iOS is growing fast.
| jader201 wrote:
| I started the original "Who wants to be hired?" thread [1], which
| lead to me landing a gig with Kaggle [2] (a scrappy startup, at
| the time, 2014), which ultimately got acquired by Google (this
| was in 2017). I'm still with them to this day, over 8 years later
| [3].
|
| Have always been grateful for the community picking up that
| thread, allowing me to get recognized by a great company!
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7685170
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7833251
|
| [3] https://www.kaggle.com/about/team
| victorclf wrote:
| Thanks for that great contribution! Hopefully I can also find a
| good team by posting there. :)
| fuzzieozzie wrote:
| I have hired around 30 people who came from the "Who wants to
| be hired?" thread. Actually sold the company to Google!
| smnscu wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504592
|
| Made about $600, put it toward a treadmill that I then sold
| because it sucked.
| asicsp wrote:
| About 5 years back, I submitted a collection of awk one-liners
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15549318). The response I
| received was one of the reasons I started writing ebooks about a
| year later. Since then I've done Show HN posts for my ebooks and
| many of them reached front page too. I give them away for free
| during release (but readers can still pay) and I've gotten
| significant sales as a result.
|
| And as mentioned by graderjs, I've also had good sales when I
| link to my ebooks in relevant discussions.
| bombcar wrote:
| By the way, for anyone watching, _PLEASE_ do have the "option
| to pay" and various amounts, too! Many free resources I've
| found have helped greatly at work, and work is quite willing to
| pay for them as long as I can generate a reasonable looking
| receipt for it (e.g., $50-100 for a book is fine, $50-100 for
| "PATREON - BIG JOE" is a harder sell).
| tiahura wrote:
| October 2019 someone submitted a story about a new Herpes vaccine
| using new fangled mRNA technology.
|
| After investigating I bought shares of BNTX @ 13. Then, Covid.
| Step 3, profit.
| mellavora wrote:
| I'm really nervous about any attempt to measure the value of HN
| in terms of money.
|
| It could be that HN has made me a lot of money by giving me a
| place to relax and NOT think about money, allowing me to be more
| effective in the areas where I do make money.
| cehrlich wrote:
| I posted in "who wants to be hired?" and got interest from
| several companies. One of them is now my employer.
| NotTameAntelope wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31006354
|
| To take this a bit more literally, these I-Bonds are free money
| that HN told me about.
| joshmanders wrote:
| I've made well over $1M over the years just off the "Who's
| Hiring"/"Who's Freelancing" threads.
|
| People give this place a lot of flack and some of the users can
| be pretty verbose and pedantic, but overall this community has
| been one of the best in my 25 years.
| paulcole wrote:
| If you hadn't made well over $1M over years just off the "Who's
| Hiring"/"Who's Freelancing" threads (let's say you made $0),
| would HN still be one of the best communities in your 25 years?
| If so, why?
| joshmanders wrote:
| Take the money aspect out and yes, I would. I learned a lot
| from people far off into the trenches than I. I get to
| interact with big "famous" people in our world.
|
| And honestly, it's awesome to be apart of a community that
| spawns some of the biggest tech people in the world.
|
| It's insane to be able to tell people outside of my world
| about things in my world and the ridiculous stuff that
| happens and be able to say "I was there", for example the
| infamous HN comment to Drew Houston when he Show HN'd
| Dropbox.
|
| HN is a unique and special community that most industries
| don't get to experience.
| kzrdude wrote:
| (I'm not that person, just another response.)
|
| This is a forum where we see and participate in dicussions
| regularly even if we don't all agree, at least to some
| extent. I like that.
|
| HN also doesn't use an individualized list of stories or
| personalized front page, which is very refreshing. We have a
| shared space here.
| awillen wrote:
| I replied on this post about side hustles, and it led to a number
| of purchases (and that ultimately led me to invest more time into
| the thing, which is now making decent money):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930
| wenbin wrote:
| These two -
|
| 1) The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company
| (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20985875 (Not
| posted by myself :)
|
| 2) Podcast API - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25139833
|
| I've been on Hacker News for over a decade. It's hacker news that
| made me decide to go down the join-a-startup path & later the
| start-my-own-company path, rather than the work-for-FAANG path
| (like what most of my graduate school classmates did back in
| 2010~2012).
|
| I was inspired by posts like
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
| __s wrote:
| Who's Hiring? tripled my salary
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