How Much Money I Made From Side Projects In 2010

This is very inspiring! Matt, for your next post(s), in addition to the monetary costs I'd like to hear about how much time you put into maintaining and supporting these projects. I can imagine that with a couple of thousand users you could easily spend a lot of time answering support emails.

Hat's off, that was some fantastic growth last year. If you're ever in the mood for chitchatting, I also sell to your market and know a few things about a few things.

Is that market averse to monthly subscriptions? Charging $5/mo. Could triple your revenue and turn a side biz into the main stage. And 5 bucks is a latte a month.<p>I recall patio11 speaking about marketing to the educational market but not sur if he covered recurring subscription revenue vs. Flat annual rate or not.

Nitpick - I think you mean "revenue" not "earnings". Nice article though - very inspiring.

Nice article Matt.<p>I taught high school CS for ten years and can tell you from personal experience that you are scratching at the surface of a very promising market. Most schools hand out the traditional lesson plan books at the beginning of the year during faculty meetings and in-services. They are a pita to fill out and maintain and frequently change year to year if you are worth your salt<p>However, I believe your sales would increase dramatically were you to target administrators and department chairs instead of individual teachers. $20 per instructor is well within their annual budget and they are very open to ideas that make day-to-day operations smoother.<p>Making it possible for parents to view the lesson plans would enable you to engage entire districts without much difficulty.<p>Well done.

Hey Matt, out of curiosity, why do you want to avoid this blog post showing up in Google searches?<p>Thanks for these posts, by the way--I find them patently inspiring. It's nice to know I'm not the only developer with a million ridiculous project ideas. Keep up the good work!

Thanks for the inspiration. I needed it.

FYI: Matt, your "redacted" links on the 2008 and 2009 versions of this article still link to the site in question. The Twitter link on the 2009 article actually links to the Twitter account in question, too.

Very, very inspiring. I love posts like this (as we all do) because it's a good way to benchmark my own projects and gives me hope for future projects. When I finally round the numbers up (hopefully later this week) I'm going to make a post detailing the financials of my little 4-hour profitable project (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176771" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2176771</a>)

As I see it, both your renewal rate and the number of free users are high enough to launch a promotion (e.g.: $10 instead of $20 for the first 12months).

If you haven't already, I recommend you read what patio11 says here (and on their blog), they are in a very similar market with similar customers.

Great post. Do you have some sort of referral scheme whereby current users can recommend the product to their coworkers and get a discount if someone signs up? I think that could help you grow it if not, your existing users spend all day alongside your target users - give them a reason to talk about it!

nice post. really. I bet if the UI of the sites were refreshed for something more intuitive, easier on the eyes, and a better layout (rsstalker) - i bet you would see an increase in signups.<p><a href="http://planbookedu.com/" rel="nofollow">http://planbookedu.com/</a> - seems to have a better design than the others. The UI of a site really is important to me, and how I perceive the company or outfit, not sure if that is a good thing, but its important. You will attract the more web-savy peeps - IMO

Matt, What caused the signups and new orders to go up compared to an year ago? Other than AdWords, are there any strategies that worked well for you?

So you have spent 100k in adwords and over the years you haven't earned that amount back?<p>Or did I mis something?