News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by prezjordan on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:17AM (#15483772)
Inspired by previous "passive income" posts, I decided to ship something small [0] after quitting my job earlier this year.

It only makes me ~$100/mo, which is enough to cover my PC gaming addiction. Super fun experience, amazing how much you learn from building such a small piece of software.

[0]: http://shade.cool

Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by mstade on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:26AM (#15483852)
That's remarkably useful actually, cool project! Funny release notes too:

> # What's New in Version 1.0.3

> "Hey Jordan, this app looks great but unfortunately crashes when I mouse over to my second monitor while selecting a color"

> "That's impossible, I fixed that! Are you sure you're using the latest version?"

> "Yes I'm positive. Just put your primary display on the right and mouse over to the left screen"

> "Hmm... works on my machine."

> "Your other right"

> "...Oh."

> · This version fixes a bug with the color picker when your primary display is to the right of another display.

Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by vivan on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:29AM (#15483876)
Reminds me of an anecdote from The Pragmatic Programmer:

Andy once worked on a large graphics application. Nearing release, the testers reported that the application crashed every time they painted a stroke with a particular brush. The programmer responsible argued that there was nothing wrong with it; he had tried painting with it, and it worked just fine. This dialog went back and forth for several days, with tempers rapidly rising. Finally, we got them together in the same room. The tester selected the brush tool and painted a stroke from the upper right corner to the lower left corner. The application exploded. "Oh," said the programmer, in a small voice, who then sheepishly admitted that he had made test strokes only from the lower left to the upper right, which did not expose the bug.

Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by prezjordan on Monday October 16, 2017 @06:09PM (#15487051)
Loosely based on a real story in which my roommate discovered the bug because his work monitor was on the other side of mine :) Glad you enjoyed though.
Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by CamTin on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:59AM (#15484170)
Do/did you do any marketing for it, or that $100/mo is just from being in the app store?
Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by prezjordan on Monday October 16, 2017 @06:08PM (#15487042)
Some marketing in the form of a blog post [0] talking about the first week of sales.

Other than that just word of mouth from social media. I've also linked to it from my other Medium articles which get a couple thousand reads per week, but haven't converted many of those to sales.

[0]: https://hackernoon.com/20-hours-of-work-258-in-sales-the-fir...

Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by CamTin on Monday October 16, 2017 @08:12PM (#15487704)
How much of your sales are "walk-in" from the app store versus buzz/referrals from your (not small) network?
Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by alexval on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:26AM (#15483851)
wow that's a cool and simple idea. I work on a cocoa app so I will find that valueable for meeting accessibility standards. Do you have a windows version?
Re:Ask HN: What is your yearly passive income? by prezjordan on Monday October 16, 2017 @11:55AM (#15484124)
Not yet, but there does seem to be enough interest for me to sit down and build one!