News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017 – Show and tell.

Re:Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017... by geerlingguy on Friday September 01, 2017 @12:13PM (#15149774)
https://hostedapachesolr.com - since 2013, started with intention of just hosting my own search indexes (since cheap shared hosting didn't allow java apps to be installed), then ballooned from there. Minimal maintenance, almost every process is automated with Ansible + Jenkins + tiny bits of PHP glue code.

https://servercheck.in - since 2012, same as Solr, I started it to do SMS messages for my own site outages... then realized I could scale it easily using cheap ~$10/year VPSes and Node.js, currently have a few hundred clients monitoring ~1000 servers and websites.

https://www.ansiblefordevops.com - book I started writing during the process of automating both of the above SaaS products—and now the book generates more monthly revenue than both of the above :)

I've written extensively about all three projects, but continue to devote more time to the Ansible for DevOps book / project. Here are some posts with history/reflection on self-publishing: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/search/self-publishing

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017... by jwitko on Friday September 01, 2017 @12:25PM (#15149908)
Very inspiring. Coming across a "geerlingguy" ansible repo in my searches for pre-existing ansible roles is always a treat as I know it will be solid quality.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017... by zapperdapper on Saturday September 02, 2017 @11:00AM (#15156293)
Very nice! I was just reading your blog post on lessons learned from self-publishing. Your first point is spot on and actually applicable to all side projects, and probably your main job too - be passionate about what you do. There's nothing worse than having to grind something out when you really don't give a hoot about it (I've done it a few times - never again!). Well done on seeing the process through to publishing!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017... by tuananh on Saturday September 02, 2017 @10:42AM (#15156176)
I believe anyone use ansible is probably came across your name once :). Thanks for sharing.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Those making $500+/month on side projects in 2017... by tonetheman on Friday September 01, 2017 @02:44PM (#15151352)
Your book is great!
[ Parent | on HN ]