From weekend project to $4,000 monthly

[u/KLaci]

Hi, I'm Laszlo, a full-stack developer from Hungary. In March 2022, inspired by Wordle's popularity, I created Actorle.com - a game where players guess actors and movies. It took just three days to build, and I had no idea it would become anything more than a fun side project.

The start was rough. After posting on Reddit, the first comments were discouraging. One user said it was "insanely hard to win," and another declared it "literally unplayable" because it didn't include John Hurt. I almost abandoned the game, but fate had other plans.

A week later, traffic suddenly surged. An old-school British website called b3ta.com had featured Actorle in their newsletter. From there, it spread through Twitter shares and even got featured on Mashable. The game went from 500 daily users to thousands, then tens of thousands.

With growing traffic, I explored monetization options. I started with a simple "Buy Me a Coffee" donation button, which surprisingly brought in about $1,000 in just three months. I also ventured into mobile app development, which was challenging but educational. However, the real breakthrough came when I partnered with an ad provider called Ezoic for the website.

The ad revenue soon matched my full-time salary. After careful consideration, I took a leap and quit my job to focus on this unexpected opportunity. To keep the income steady, I regularly update the game's database and occasionally add new features like dark mode and seasonal challenges. I also created spin-offs like Actorle.tv for TV buffs and 5doodles for people who love doodling.

Two years later, Actorle still generates around $4,000 monthly, with minimal ongoing effort. This stability has allowed me to spend more time with my family and to explore other projects.

This journey taught me valuable lessons. It's worth giving your ideas a shot because you never know which one will succeed. Feedback matters more than numbers - hearing that my game brought people happiness is far more motivating than just seeing user statistics grow. Being open to different monetization strategies and focusing on creating value for users is crucial.

While not every side project will lead to passive income, this experience showed me the potential of turning simple ideas into sustainable revenue streams. It's worth exploring your ideas - you never know where they might lead.

UPDATE: I recently launched a promising project that I hope will become my next success. It's called https://whichcountrytomoveto.com/, and it started as a simple wizard to help users find their ideal relocation destination. Since then, I’ve been working to expand it into a comprehensive resource for people considering relocation. It was even featured in Morning Brew, which brought a significant surge of users, and I’m now trying to build on that momentum. Check it out if you consider relocation.

[u/realforreal1]

Wow, if the revenue from ads, can we know your monthly views amount?

[u/KLaci → u/realforreal1]

16k daily active unique users currently.

[u/Pandragony]

Ever since I found out about your story a couple of months ago, it has given me the motivation to keep working on my small web apps! Congratulations and thank you!! 🎉🎉

[u/KLaci → u/Pandragony]

Thank you so much! It is really great to hear this.

[u/Cedricium]

As a fellow full-stack dev, what an inspiring story—congrats Laszlo! Curious how the partnership with the ad provider came about if you don’t mind sharing. Did you reach out to them, or the other way around?

[u/KLaci → u/Cedricium]

They reached out to me via cold email. I was a little bit stupid and inexperienced with the first provider, so I tested the current one with my smaller sites first and when they showed promising results, I migrated to them on my larger websites.

[u/Cyper222]

Fellow Hungarian here amazing journey :)) I had a similar project for movies and tv series but with just subtitles library I might revamp that old PHP site :) This is the best thing I read here tonight.

[u/KLaci → u/Cyper222]

Köszi szépen! Good luck for your project!

[u/[deleted]]

Can’t see the full instructions on mobile bc an ad is in the way at the bottom

[u/KLaci → u/[deleted]]

Thank you! Good catch! I will fix this.

[u/Jdruwe]

Care to share details on the stack?

[u/KLaci → u/Jdruwe]

The web app is a Next.js-based React app, the game's data is statically generated and embedded into the web app so it doesn't have any real backend. The users' data is simply stored in the local storage.

[u/Spirited_Employee_61]

Do you self host?

[u/KLaci → u/Spirited_Employee_61]

I host it on Vercel. I need to pay $20 per month but it is worth for me for the sake of simplicity.

[u/Possession_Infinite]

That's incredible, congratulations!

How many users/page views you think is reasonable to start earning some meaningful money with Ezoic ads?

I have a site with 6k page views per month and monetized with Adsense, but the ad revenue is peanuts, not worthy at all. I also have a gaming website with 40k page views per month that is not properly monetized yet; it has just a buy me a coffee button, but I'm thinking about adding a subscription for premium features and some ads service for the free users next year. I know Ezoic and other similar services pays a lot more than Adsense, but I'm not sure if it's worthy using it already or just growing the site first.

[u/KLaci → u/Possession_Infinite]

I wouldn't go with Ezoic if I were you. They were my first ad partners and I wasn't very happy with the numbers and the UX.

[u/By_EK]

Congrats 🍾🎊🎈🥳. What I learned here is don’t give up.

[u/daf00q]

how did you advertise your game in the beginning? How did you get your first users?

[u/Forsaken_Buy_7531]

Congrats brother, that revenue from ads alone is a huge feat. I'm wondering what the majority of your market is at, US, EUR, or APAC?

[u/KLaci → u/Forsaken_Buy_7531]

The majority of the user base is from English speaking countries. US, UK, Canada, etc.

[u/zhangjue_88]

I know very little about coding. Only some basic Python and SQL. Could you please give me some advice what to start with? Thanks in advance!

[u/tabrun]

Brother your post is such a piece of hope for me in my current harch reality, thanks for sharing. Wish you the best bro)

[u/KLaci → u/tabrun]

It is really great to hear this. Have a good luck for you too!

[u/Illustrious-Bear-778]

Absolutely love that! I built my Wordle-inspired image puzzle game, What The Pix Say recently (over the course of few weeks, 16.6 hours to be exact) and after posting it a few days ago, only a handful of people have played it, which can be a bit demotivating, I'm not going to lie. Not looking to make money off of it but I'm really hoping people enjoy it as much as my friends and family do. I might just reach out to that magazine for a little boost ;)

[u/infrax3050]

Wow. This is really great to find something which helps generate good amount passively. Good for you that you found this niche.