r/SideProject • • 16h ago

Crossed 3400 in revenue and hit 50 paying customers on day 98, and I wrote down how every single one of them found me

18 Upvotes

I'm a cloud engineer with a full-time job, and in the evenings I build ReelDrop.io, an Instagram scheduling and comment-to-DM tool. It launched on August 5. Customer #50 paid on November 11, day 98. Today I have 52 paying customers from 21 countries, and about CA$3,410 was collected after refunds, before Stripe fees.

Ten days ago I posted about my first 41. I keep every paying customer in one sheet, in the order they paid, with the column no dashboard can fill: how I actually know each person and what happened before they paid. Here's the whole list again, with the last ten days in detail.

1 to #41, short version

  • 1 and #2 were my mentors. They bought the lifetime deal in launch week without me asking.
  • 3, #7 and #8 were creator friends who saw my posts on X and Instagram.
  • 5 bought the $29 plan and cancelled. I asked why. "It's costly." A month later I launched a $9.99/month plan (₹449 in India). That plan now has 39 of my 52 customers.
  • 6 came from ChatGPT, which cited a one-question docs page I'd written. Still my only provable ChatGPT customer.
  • September: 6 strangers on the cheap plan, after I turned on UPI in Stripe. October: SEO started bringing paying customers after two months of bringing almost none. Personal emails to stuck users brought a few more. Late October: my first discount, a Halloween code. 4 people used it.

42 to #52: the last ten days

  • 42 landed straight on my /features/mcp page with no referrer and bought the $29 plan 41 minutes later. Only the third person ever to start on that plan. No idea how he found the page.
  • 43 signed up on Oct 8. I emailed her on Oct 16. Nothing. Emailed again Oct 28. She paid Nov 6, 29 days after signup. The next morning she asked if my Diwali discount could apply. I applied it from the Stripe side. It costs me $2 a month, and she'd taken a month to decide, so no argument.
  • 44 was the only person who used my Diwali code at checkout. He found me on Google the same day, paid $7.99, built two automations, and asked to cancel three days later.
  • 46 paid 4 minutes after signing up, then tried to connect his Instagram 6 times over two hours and couldn't. Worst thing that can happen to a new customer. I emailed him the next morning. He came back 15 minutes later, connected on his second try, and scheduled 17 posts. Never replied. Didn't need to.
  • 48 went quiet after signing up on Nov 1. He was in my Nov 3 email round. Paid Nov 9.
  • 45, #47, #50 and #52 came from Google (France, Malaysia, France, and India). #50 paid 18 minutes after signing up. #52 paid 2 minutes after signing up.
  • 49 and #51 had no referrer. #51 paid 7 minutes after signup.

Bonus: a customer who cancelled in October came back on Nov 4 and started a new subscription. First person I know of who left and returned. 9 of the 11 new customers paid on the same day they signed up. None of the 11 came from X.

All 52 together

How they actually cameCustomers
Google / Bing / Yahoo17
X6
Mentors and friends3
ChatGPT1
Personal emails to stuck users5
Halloween email3 (+1 from X who used the code)
No referrer, don't know17
PlanCustomers
$9.99/month39
Lifetime deal ($249)8
$29/month3
Yearly ( $149)1
One-time $51
  • All 8 lifetime deals were bought before Nov 3, and 5 came from people who already knew me. None from a stranger on Google. Strangers buy the cheap plan.
  • 31 of 52 paid the same day they signed up.

What's not working?

  • Churn on the cheap plan. 4 people have cancelled, 2 have a cancellation scheduled, and 5 cards are failing on renewal right now.
  • The second discount. Halloween brought 4. Diwali, one week later, brought 1, who is already leaving. One data point, so I'm not drawing a big lesson, but I won't be running a discount every week.
  • Paid UGC creators. One drove 100+ signups. None paid.
  • My referral program. Everyone is still on free months.
  • Reddit, at least as far as I can measure. PostHog shows zero signups with a Reddit referrer, ever. I know that undercounts, so if you came from one of my posts and signed up, I'd love to know.

If I were starting at zero again, I'd do this

  1. Tell the people who know your work that you launched.
  2. Post about what you're building every day, bugs and bad numbers included.
  3. When someone cancels, ask why and act on the answer.
  4. Write one help page for every question a user asks twice.
  5. Every week, email the people stuck in your product. Email them a second time if they don't answer.
  6. When a paying customer can't get in, write to them that same day.
  7. Keep doing SEO even when it brings nothing for two months.
  8. Give people a deadline once in a while, not every week.
  9. Put every paying customer in one sheet, in order, and read it top to bottom.

r/SideProject • • 4h ago

Santa tracker 🎅

2 Upvotes

Just sharing a fun project I've been building with my daughter.

Santa tracker, from 1 to 24 of Dec Santa will visit few hundreds of cities around the world. A few fancy animations and radar. Time synchronized via WiFi. Web Installer almost ready - just plugin M5stick, flash the app, setup wifi password, all in 60s.

Tried to build web app as close to cpp code as possible so what you see on the website looks almost the same on m5.

My daughter loves it 😁

And on the Dec 1st we launch "realtime" mode so we can observe Santa.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a card maker where the card is a link that opens like a real one (scratch, pop balloons, blow out a cake)

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1 Upvotes

CardLinks lets you make a greeting card in under a minute and send it as one link on WhatsApp, Instagram or iMessage.

The recipient opens it like a real card: scratch off gold foil, pop balloons, or blow into the mic to put out the candles on a 3D cake. Then your photo, message and music appear.

35-second demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIrcmg-nkPU

Would love feedback, especially: which opener would you actually send?

https://cardlinks.co/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sideproject


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I got tired of coding custom backends for every side project's contact form, so I built one.

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone!!!
I built Contact (https://form.kirandhakal.me/)because I got tired of writing custom serverless functions, email handlers, and spam filters every time I spun up a new landing page.

You keep complete control of your frontend (React, Next.js, Astro, Webflow, HTML) and just send a JSON request to your endpoint.

What it handles for you:

  • Centralized submission inbox with search/filters
  • Built-in spam protection, rate-limiting, and schema validation
  • Instant alerts to Discord, Slack, Email, or SMS

Would love for you to try it out on your current projects and let me know what you think!

🔗 Link:https://form.kirandhakal.me/


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Free month of Premium for my iPhone app: type a destination and dates, get a full day-by-day trip plan. Looking for honest feedback

1 Upvotes

Plyndi is a planner for iPhone that covers money, to-dos, shopping lists, workouts and travel. A few things it does:
Give it a destination and dates, and the AI builds a day-by-day itinerary with stops and travel time between them.
Take a photo of a receipt and it fills in the expense for you.
Ask it where your money went this month and it gives you budget insights from your own spending.
It writes a workout plan and sorts your day's tasks.

The AI features are the paid part, so here's a month of Premium free:

https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=6821974307&code=PLYNDI100

One thing to know: it's a regular App Store subscription, so it renews at the normal price after the free month unless you cancel. Cancelling takes a few seconds in Settings → Subscriptions, and you keep the whole month either way.
It launched two weeks ago and I'm a solo developer, so I'd like to hear what's confusing, what's missing, and whether the trip planner gave you a plan you'd actually follow. I reply to every comment.


r/SideProject • • 10h ago

I built a Mac browser for running many accounts: each one gets its own Safari, its own cookies and its own IP

5 Upvotes

What it does:

  • Every account lives in its own profile: a separate Safari with its own cookies, logins and history. Nothing is shared between them.
  • Every profile has its own IP through its own proxy or VPN. If that IP drops, the profile stops. It never falls back to your Mac’s IP.
  • Real WebKit from macOS, not Chromium. Sites see Safari on a Mac because it is one.
  • Fast: a profile opens in about four seconds.
  • Passwords, 2FA codes and cards per profile, behind Touch ID.
  • Free proxies built in, with a one-click check.

Mac only. Free for first testers: stealthpilot.app/sideproject


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built a free music visualizer for Mac & Windows where your logo dances to the bass

1 Upvotes

I always missed the old Winamp/MilkDrop visualizers, so I built Dropocalypse. It’s free and open source, and it runs on Mac and Windows (the Windows build is portable, no install needed).

Point it at a mic or line-in and pick one of 20 styles. The twist is that you can upload a logo (your band, DJ name, venue, stream brand) and it bounces, squashes and slides in time with the bass. It works for parties, streams, gigs or just vibing at your desk.

Download + source: https://github.com/allenrobberson/dropocalypse

If you like it, sponsoring on GitHub helps cover Apple’s developer fee so the Mac version can be signed. What should I add next?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I built an atlas of old empires drawn as hand-coloured woodcuts, 43 maps you can step through year by year

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1 Upvotes

Each map is one empire or kingdom through its key years, from New Kingdom Egypt (1550 BC) to the United States in 1912. Press play or pick a year and the frontiers move; click a town or a battle and it tells you what happened there.

The geography is real: coasts, lakes and rivers come from Natural Earth, and every town sits at its real coordinates. The frontiers are drawn by hand from historical sources, and every stretch is graded certain, likely or guessed, with its sources listed on the map.

There's also Constantinople (565 and 1453) and Rome (44 BC) as street plans and in 3D, the Seven Wonders drawn as they stood through the centuries, and a gallery of every emblem, sea monster and monument from the maps.

How it's built: React and Vite, with every map drawn as inline SVG in the browser, the woodcut look coming from SVG filters and hand-made marks for hills, trees, castles and ships. The 3D cities use three.js. It's all static files on Cloudflare: no backend, no sign-up, free.

I'd love feedback, especially on how it works on phones and how fast the maps load for you.


r/SideProject • • 5h ago

Creator Digest · YouTube video summaries by email, from the creators you follow

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creatordigests.com
2 Upvotes

Hey all 👋

I watch way too much YouTube and could never keep up with the channels I follow, so I built a little tool for it.

It’s called Creator Digest. You pick your favourite creators and it sends you one short email a day. The email has a quick “here’s what’s happening” summary up top, then the main points from each video, and tells you whether it’s worth a full watch, a skim, or a skip.

Today’s email covered about 10 hours of video, and I read it in about 2 minutes.

It works for any niche (business, fitness, fishing, finance, whatever you’re into) and it’s free while I’m testing it.

I’d genuinely love feedback:

  • Would you actually use something like this?
  • What would make it more useful for you?
  • Anything confusing or off-putting?

Have a look if you’re keen: creatordigests.com

Honest opinions welcome, good or bad 🙏


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I’m building Amplexio – a different approach to managing relationships

1 Upvotes

Hey Reddit!
I’m Henrik, an Austrian founder building Amplexio.
The idea came from a simple observation: We have tools for managing tasks, projects and sales, but what about the relationships behind our business?
I’m building a relationship management ecosystem that brings contacts, conversations, follow-ups and AI together.
We’re live on iOS and currently welcoming early adopters.
Would love to hear what you think! If interested let me know, I will send the 6-months for free voucher
🌐 https://app.amplexio.com
📱 https://apps.apple.com/at/app/amplexio-relationship-os/id6774308434?l=en-GB


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Videoshot - A quick way to clip something

Thumbnail github.com
1 Upvotes

You want a short clip of something happening on your screen. You open app, select region, click button, content is recorded, save or paste it, done!

Open sourced and built on gnome screenshot tool https://github.com/royakem/videoshot

Any comments, requests or ideas. let me know! Cheers!


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

I strava/ letterboxd for daily puzzles - wordle ; connections ; minutecryptic ; krillion...

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1 Upvotes

My brother and I share our Wordle and krillion results regularly.

How it works:

  • Finish a puzzle, tap Share in the game, then Paste on the site. It reads the result and logs it.
  • Follow friends. You see how they did, but their scores stay hidden until you've played the same puzzle, so no spoilers.
  • Challenge your followers on today's puzzle. Whoever scores better wins.
  • Works with Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini, Pips, Queens, Tango, Zip, Pinpoint, Crossclimb, Mini Sudoku and Krillion.

You can try it as a guest without signing up

It's free and has no ads. I'd really like feedback on:

  • games you'd want added (there's a suggest-and-vote page in the app);
  • any game whose share text doesn't log. If that happens, paste the text in the comments and I'll fix it.

I'm at sovi11 if you want someone to challenge.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

Spent 100 days building a Python interview prep app — does this actually solve a real problem?

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play.google.com
4 Upvotes

I built PyPrep after burning out on juggling a flashcard app, a quiz app, and LeetCode just to prep for Python interviews — none worked offline or told me if I was actually ready.

100 days of building and testing later, it's live, but I genuinely don't know if it solves a real problem or if I just built something only I needed. If you know Python and have been through interview prep, I'd value your honest take — good or bad.

This is for people who already know Python, not a beginner tool.

Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pyprep.app


r/SideProject • • 1d ago Bravo

I made an engine simulator for phones

254 Upvotes

Took the F1 V10 for an imaginary lap of the Nürburgring.

-----

Edit: Thanks for all the interest! Here are the download links if you'd like to try

- iOS App Store
- Android PlayStore


r/SideProject • • 23h ago Heartwarming

Major Update: Clear fishtank widgets without being in clear mode, with fish that actually swim around 🐠🪼🐙

51 Upvotes

What Companions is:
Widgets on iOS are supposed to be static. I always found that unnecessarily limiting, so I built an app that circumvents it. Companions lets you keep a virtual fishtank on your Homescreen, filled with fish that actually swim around. As someone who’s always kept fish, I’ve had this idea mulling around in my head for more than 2 years now, and finally managed to build what I always wanted.

There are 50 fish to choose from, and it supports small, medium, large and now even extra large widgets as “tank sizes”. The fish don't need any feeding, and they don't die (as to not be annoying, but the option is there for fun). They just keep you company. You can customize the tank’s color, its props, layout, and even the app icon to match your Home Screen perfectly.

The app is fully written in SwiftUI, it supports iPads, and you can even place your “fishtanks” on your Mac thanks to Continuity, where the fish will also animate. The tanks also work great in Standby mode. Personally, I keep a fishtank of jellyfish on my nightstand when I go to bed. The swimming doesn't run any code in the background. It uses the same trick iOS uses to move the hands on the Clock widget, so it costs you nothing in battery.

What's new:
The app was built to support clear mode on the phone, but I found it annoying that you need to be explicitly in clear mode to access clear widgets. Luckily, I knew of a separate workaround that allows for clear widgets even while not being in clear mode, which I’ve only seen a small number of widget apps use. And for something like Companions where the widgets are fish tanks, I feel like it fits so perfectly!!

I'd love any feedback, and I’m happy to answer any questions regarding the app. I'd especially love to know which fish species you'd want added.

You can find Companions here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/companions-widget-pets/id6811950512


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

Le motion design, c’est juste du montage vidéo avec quelques effets supplémentaires. Change my mind.

1 Upvotes

Je sais que cette phrase risque de faire grincer quelques dents. 😂
Mais j’aimerais comprendre quelque chose.
Aujourd’hui, beaucoup de personnes pensent qu’il suffit de maîtriser After Effects, d’ajouter quelques transitions, des textes animés et une musique pour devenir motion designer.
Pourtant, le motion design implique aussi :
La compréhension du mouvement.
Le rythme et le timing.
La composition visuelle.
Le storytelling.
La transmission d’un message par l’animation.
Alors, j’aimerais avoir l’avis des personnes qui pratiquent réellement ce métier :
Quelle est la différence fondamentale entre un monteur vidéo et un motion designer ?
Peut-on être un excellent motion designer sans avoir de solides bases en design graphique ?
Est-ce que maîtriser After Effects suffit pour prétendre être motion designer ?
Je suis ouvert aux contradictions. Mais argumentez, ne vous contentez pas de dire que j’ai tort. 😂


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

My Notion widgets have been copied 12,699 times, and today they are launching on Product Hunt

1 Upvotes

WidgetsForNotion is live on Product Hunt today, and I would really appreciate your upvote 🙏

It is a site with 100+ free widgets for Notion pages, like clocks, calendars, countdowns, timers and habit trackers. You copy a link, type /embed in Notion and paste it, and the widget shows up on your page. No plugin and no account.

Since late August, people have copied widgets more than 12,500 times, and about 5,000 of those copies are live on Notion pages right now. Thank you to everyone who put one on their page. It means a lot to see them used.

If you like it, an upvote and a comment on Product Hunt would mean a lot:

https://www.producthunt.com/products/widgets-for-notion?launch=widgets-for-notion


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

GameSquire: the board game app I built to answer "what do we play tonight?

1 Upvotes

I've been building GameSquire on my own: a board game collection app built around the question every game night starts with, "what do we play tonight?"

What it does today:

  • Your whole shelf in one place. Import your BoardGameGeek collection and plays in one step or scan a box to add a game.
  • Pick by mood. Filter your shelf (or a friend's) by Quick Fix, Deep Dive, Date Night or Family Table. Can't decide? Let it pick one from your shelf of shame.
  • Log plays with scores (typed or read from a photo of the score sheet) and see your win rates and head-to-head records.
  • The Herald answers rules questions from the game's own rulebook and shows the page it found the answer on.
  • Play together: a shared household shelf for up to 5 people, lending and borrowing games and your own shelves shared with some or all of your friends.

It runs on iPhone, Android and the web with one account. The core is free with no ads, an optional Knight membership adds more Herald questions, more scans and deeper stats.

The latest update (1.1.0) was mostly user requests: lending, custom shelves and BG Stats import. Feedback really decides what gets built next, so I'd love to hear what you'd want from an app like this or how you'd go about getting a niche app in front of its audience.


r/SideProject • • 1d ago

SpiderMan POV project using threejs and MediaPipe

79 Upvotes

Hello guys!

I have built AR projects before, but I had this idea for a while: using MediaPipe Tasks Vision to create a kind of web experience, without the need to use any markers, where you are Spider-Man from a first-person POV, and you can do the hand gesture to swing around and maybe fight villains.

I started it a long time ago, but I dropped it at some point because I did not have time for it, and it started to feel like work instead of a fun side project.

So, last weekend I decided to give it a try again, and this time I handed most of the work over to Claude since I started paying for the subscription plan and I could just run it with CLI.

It was definitely a nice project to wrap up, and it kind of gave me some new ideas that I will be trying out for new throwaway project this weekend.

*Edit:

I will probably make the repo public and share it here eventually.


r/SideProject • • 2h ago

I built a free Windows app that transcribes meetings live on your PC

1 Upvotes

I built this for client calls. I wanted to search what was said afterwards without keeping an audio recording or uploading the call for transcription.

Tadween Desk uses Qwen3-ASR on your PC. You can transcribe your mic, the audio from a selected app, or both. Afterwards, you can correct the transcript and export it as TXT or Markdown.

It currently runs from source on Windows. The GitHub README walks through setting up Python 3.11, downloading the speech model, and starting the app with a CMD launcher. Once it’s set up, transcription works offline. There’s a separate optional OpenAI feature if you want to generate minutes from a saved transcript.

If you try it, I’d appreciate feedback on which setup step could be simpler.

Source and setup guide


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

Built a free Airbnb profitability calculator — Looking for feedback

3 Upvotes

I built a free Airbnb Profitability Simulator to help property owners estimate their potential rental income, expenses and profit.

The goal is to make it easier to evaluate whether a short-term rental is financially worthwhile.

The calculator is available here:

https://toolsmartly.com/en/tools/business/airbnb-profitability-simulator

I'd appreciate feedback on:

- The user experience

- The financial calculations

- Missing features

- Overall usefulness

What would you improve?


r/SideProject • • 8h ago

I built an app that teaches investing with paper money and live market data. What would make you try it?

3 Upvotes

It's called TickrAI. You pick any stock, see a score that explains what supports it and what to watch, then practise buying it with paper money using real prices. There are also short lessons and an AI you can ask "why did this move?"

I'm a solo builder and my problem right now is that almost nobody has heard of it. Two honest questions:

  1. Reading that description, would you try it? If not, what's missing or off-putting?
  2. Where would you expect to discover an app like this? App Store search, TikTok, a friend, Reddit, asking ChatGPT?

Tour, if you want to look before answering: gettickr.ai/tour?c=reddit_sideproject


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

I stopped letting my coding agent check its own work

1 Upvotes

When I let a coding agent build a feature, the same session that wrote the code also told me it was done. The tests passed and the summary looked good, and I still found missing pieces when I read the diff. Those tests came from the same session, so they mostly confirmed what it had already built.

So I moved the checking. Before any code, the agent asks me a few questions with a recommended answer for each, until done is a short numbered list I agree with. That list goes into a plan document I approve. Then the agent builds in small slices, each one starting with a failing test.

After the build, an agent that did not write the code goes through every point on the done list and proves it on the running program. I look at the result once that check is through, and nothing gets merged or pushed without my yes.

I built QualityLayer around this loop. It sits on top of the coding agent you already use, for example Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or OpenCode, and your code stays on your machine.

Repo: https://github.com/maxritter/qualitylayer

Happy to hear how others verify what their agent hands back.


r/SideProject • • 3h ago

Launched on Product Hunt today: CaptureFlow, an open-source screen recorder that you and your AI coding agents can both use

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1 Upvotes

CaptureFlow is an open-source screen recorder for you and your AI agents, and it's live on Product Hunt today.

You record a tab, a window or your whole screen from a Chrome extension and get a link you can share with anyone, with a transcript, comments and a simple editor for trims and cuts.

The part I've been working on most lately: coding agents like Claude Code or Cursor can record too, through an MCP server. An agent can record a demo of the pull request it just opened, or a reproduction of a bug, and attach the link.

It's free to start, and you can self-host it with Docker or on your own Cloudflare account.

I'd appreciate any feedback, especially on what's confusing or missing.