Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2022 – Show and tell

540 points by deadcoder0904 ↗ HN
Previously asked on 2020 → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24947167

626 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 404 ms ] thread
https://bruzu.com

API to generate images on the fly.

Sample https://img.bruzu.com/?a.text=HN3

> I am a developer, Do I need this API? No, if you can build your own rendering system with all these features and able to make it run this fast. You don't need this API.

Your FAQ is great hahaha!

Yes, every developer thinks the same about almost every API/service, that they could build it over weekend.
And in some cases, they probably can. But reliability, scalability and most importantly quality is harder.
I like how you addressed this in the FAQ, because this is such a classic take by some users of HN. It's fine if you don't want to use it, but a lot of people would love to. Nice product by the way.
Building it is one thing. It's not even uncommon for people to be right about that part.

It's the maintenance, support, training, operations, and documentation that will kill you, if you think you can "just" write some service and then move on to other tasks.

For the curious like me:

Q: I am a developer, Do I need this API?

A: No, if you can build your own rendering system with all these features and able to make it run this fast. You don't need this API.

Can this be done in Pure JS solution within browser? Why need backend?
An API allows you to create images from things that are not browsers.
The product is an "API to generate images on the fly". How would you create an API with no backend?
Not the API, I meant this functionality of rendering text on image, can this be done in JS only?
Yes its way easier in browser on front-end.

But you need API for the things that happens off browser. Like if you want to create images inside your code.

It can be done, but this is already done, so you can just pay with money instead of dev time.
Sure it can, and I'd say it's much cheaper to do it in JS than using API (with quite small quota, even for paid plans)
Yes, HTML5 Canvas. ctx.drawImage() ctx.fillText()
Yes but then you can't post it to social media as easily. Unless you export it as an image from JavaScript.

This is good for social media managers that want to automate a lot of account posts.

Very nice. Noticed a small typo - the footer link to Pinterest is misspelled.
I wont use bruzu till you're one billion MRR. haha jus jokes. I've been following Bruzu since the start. Great product, great dev who is open minded for feedback, etc.
So small small world. Thanks
I've been thinking of building something similar in the past. Did you use Imagemagick or similar for the backend or is it AI based?
Its server side HTML5 canvas.
What's your revenue like?
Its $185 MRR currently, Hit hard by churn this month.
I have done this before, a bare bones example can be done easily in Lambda with GraphicsMagick and ImageMagick for node https://www.npmjs.com/package/gm see "annotate an image" example.

I understand your service does more that this. I map the POST JSON to GM params to allow the caller to do nearly anything GM CLI can do.

Yes its very easy to build.
did you built the editor, it must have taken 2 months at least
Yes, using fabricjs for that, we are improving it everyday but yes, it took few days to make the MVP of the editor.
I run a robotics newsletter: https://weeklyrobotics.com/
Which is a good read if anyone is interested in robotics/ros/drone stuff
It depends what you are interested in. My latest find from this week is the Introduction to Autonomous Robots open source book: https://github.com/Introduction-to-Autonomous-Robots/Introdu....

If you were looking for news then sUASnews is great for some catching up on drones. For robotics I often find articles on IEEE Spectrum and The Robot Report interesting.

Sorry I meant I'm a subscriber and it's a great newsletter!
How do you promote a newsletter to become profitable? I have a newsletter, but it's not getting traction.
I’ve been rubbing it for over 3 years now and I’m approaching 3k e-mail subscribers. I feature it quite a lot on LinkedIn and Twitter and sometimes I would share some issues on /r/robotics or HN.

So far the best way I’ve found for growing subscribers is trading shoutouts with other newsletters but I didn’t experiment much with paid ads.

https://hoppy.network Hosted WireGuard as a Service with static IP assignment.
What’s your server location?
Only Chicago right now. We'd like to expand when the economics makes sense (there is a bit of a chicken/egg problem there where we definitely lose some potential sales by not providing the region folks want - but we need sufficient saturation to pay for the new deployment).

My advice if you want to use our service but in a region besides Chicago: use our service and email us the region you'd prefer. In the mean time, the extra 20ms round trip latency probably won't bother you and we'll let you know when we expand in the future (and your voice will help decide where!).

Is this a VPN? How does it compare to, say, NordVPN?
Yes and no.

It is more like we provide you a network interface that, instead of being plugged into your modem for Comcast/AT&T/etc, it's plugged into a datacenter.

You get a public static IPv4/IPv6 connection with Reverse DNS - just located somewhere else.

Making your machine publicly routable is the primary use case (e.g., for email, web, whatever you want if you have trouble with NAT/CGNAT or simply don't want your home IP associated with the service), but it also encrypts your traffic between your PC and our datacenter such that your ISP can't snoop - which is not to say we're a good privacy solution - that is not what our product is designed to do.

Thanks! I’ll keep you in mind if I need such a service!
I make this e-paper calendar: https://shop.invisible-computers.com/products/invisible-cale...

It syncs with Google Calendar.

To be fair, I currently does > 500$/month in revenue not earnings.

If it doesn't count let me know and I will delete my comment.

EDIT: I am currently out of stock sadly. If you want to be notified when I am back in stock, you can leave your email here: https://forms.gle/tNcCcYrNBu5nWKgJ9

This is pretty cool, though it would be nice if it worked with caldav instead of just google calendar :)
I think so too :D

It's definitely something I am having in the backlog, but I cannot promise if and when it will be implemented.

I wanted to let you know that I find your approach to future features refreshing, in contrast to the typical over-promising you typically see.
Yes, and also honest.
If you are okay with gpl software/backend, you could reuse some code of one of my side project: https://apps.kde.org/kalendar/ (support google api, caldav, etesync and Outlook calendars)
Nice!! How big are those displays, and if you don't mind sharing, how much do those displays cost from your supplier? Last time I checked, e-paper displays were pretty pricey on their own.
The display is 7.5 inches, from Waveshare. I pay retail.
That's pretty cool. Love to see a hardware project.

What's the profit margin like?

E-ink displays are expensive. That price point seems not enough to generate decent income.

I read somewhere that the e-ink expense is because the company which controls the intellectual property chooses to make it a low volume, high cost product. Not that it is inherently expensive, and I am surprised they don't try the opposite strategy, make it cheap and everywhere.
Would love a link/source for this if you have one.
I was under the impression that standard black/white e-ink is no longer patent encumbered, could totally be wrong tho
> I read somewhere that the e-ink expense is because the company which controls the intellectual property chooses to make it a low volume, high cost product.

I've only read that here (repeatedly!) on HN and blogs that then cited throwaway HN posts which never respond to my requests for at least some verifiable evidence. Have a look through my comment history.

> E-ink displays are expensive.

I was curious... from what I can find online the wholesale price of an e-ink display is not that much cheaper (if any) than buying an equivalently sized Kindle. What is the viability of a business model that involves rooting a Kindle, loading whatever calendar display software you need, and shipping it inside a pretty wooden frame?

That's what I thought this was on first look. That's a Kindle in a frame!
I was curious about this too. From the dimensions listed on the website, it looks like the screen is about 6.3×3.7 inches, or about 7.3 inches diagonal.

There seem to be 8-inch e-ink displays for sale on AliExpress for $20-$40, actually much cheaper than I expected. No idea about the quality though.

Oh man I love this! Definitely keeping my eye on it. Any chance at Outlook integration?
I can say it's in the backlog, but I can't say if and when.
have you thoughts about offering this as software service for something like the Remarkable?
(comment deleted)
I haven't thought about it, no. Not sure if that would be a good spot to be in, as a business.
Oh my gosh, I love this. I even love the name. My fiancé and I were even talking about how we wanted to move the house towards more "invisible technology" (magic mirrors, things like this, maybe the Frame TV if we get a good deal and figure out a good spot for it, etc)
Recheck the frame tv. I wanted one until I realized it's just a thin tv thats motion activated to stay on/turn on and show a static image.
How does that differ from what it is advertised as, or from what you expected?
I assumed it used some technology that made it look less like a digital display and more like a analog object. Also, I (stupidly) assumed that it was similar to an e-ink display I that it could display images when it was powered off.
It does more than just static images, it can play videos/gifs as well. I just bought one for our living room a month ago and love it. Its a good QLed TV, not as great as an OLED but that’s not why I bought it. It’s great for it is and you can buy custom made frames too. We have the 65” definitely recommend
I like how minimalistic it looks. Families might want a larger sized one to hang somewhere prominent in their home hah.
Yea, I keep eying bigger displays but they are $$$$$
Hi man, beautiful product, if this were an external monitor, or at least a website kiosk, I would buy it in a heartbeat. :D
This is awesome. I would 100% buy a battery operated version
100% I agree. Makes non-sense the eInk (low consumption) but power cord.
In defense of cord, I find battery powered (and wireless) things a a lot less "magical" than their alternatives for long lived devices.

"Oh, that's not working today. I guess I need to charge it."

Corded seems a good fit for a static location device.

I agree, very cool. Here what I do not like so much:

a) the wood frame seems to be too large (probably there is a technical reason for this), but still. Not much too large though, just maybe 25%?

b) the wood (at least from the pictures) looks cheap (plywood?)

It's multiplex. The device in the last picture has plywood but it's an older version.

Multiplex is actually nice since it's cross laminated and thus retains its shape. I experimented with solid wood and it started arching after a few weeks.

Wow, this is great! I was actually just thinking about hacking something like this together on my own, but $200 seems really reasonable for a pre-built product, and it looks much nicer than it would if I built it! :) Any plans to support non-Google calendar accounts?
I would like to support other formats, caldev, outlook etc. I am limited by time and money, not imagination :D
Just a heads up: my company blocks this site as malware
I wonder if there is a service that (somehow) detects your site has been flagged in various categories by big company firewalls, and alerts you. Wild guess: whatever system feeds into the lists that get blocked in this way probably has a lot of false positives.
shop.invisible-computers.com?

Any idea what could be causing this? I am at a loss.

Wild guess, but perhaps it's the - (dash)?
I have an extension called FakeSpot that I use to detect fake Amazon reviews. To my surprise, it flagged your site as well with the following note: "Please research the seller because: * Limited Internet presence * Website is missing common professional website attributes * Limited Internet presence and history"

It doesn't expand on any of those points, that's all it says.

It is blocked on OpenDNS as well.
does this connect directly to google or is there a proxy?
It goes through a proxy that handles the authentication towards Google.
I am curious: as a HW project how did you go through the CE / FCC certification process and production 0-series batch? Did you have some investor or paid from your own pocket?

Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.

Also curious about this.

I’ve done a lot of research on CE/FCC and while it seems possible to do CE yourself (since you can self-certify) you are on the hook if you miss something, like certain required tests (and doing some tests can be very expensive).

I think if you self-certify you have all the responsibility. (I do not know you as person or you as an organization.)

But if this thing just emit in a wrong RF band, it could mean insane fine fine from the local-frequency-band-office. And this is a very likely scenario (not like what happens if it catches fire and kill somebody...).

Anyway, I heard you should aim (at least) to the US market, which needs FCC. (eg. 300+ million people with one language vs. 30+ language in Europe.)

The answer is a big "it depends", but there are ways to get basic FCC certification done for as little as $1K-$2K if you contact enough labs and your engineers are reasonably good at adhering to proper design practices (minimize respins and testing repeats).

CE mark isn't actually required in the US, but you'd need it for Europe and other locations. It's more involved, but all-in testing can be done for <$5K for EU if you're careful.

> Did you have some investor or paid from your own pocket?

> Asking as somebody who thought making some embedded / HW projects, but the initial cost seems to much to be paid by myself.

Crowdfunding is how it's done for HW products. Investors aren't going to be interested in anything small time (less than $10-100mm potential revenue + recurring subscriptions) unless they're friends and family or something like that.

It's a lot of money, but it's not out of reach for someone with a tech job who uses crowdfunding for the major production push.

My understanding as someone who works with embedded RF, is that if you use a SoC that is already FCC certified you don’t need additional certification, as long as you don’t do anything stupid like modifying chip registers that effect signal strength. This is a reason espressif chipsets are very popular in consumer electronics that require RF.
At least for CE it is not so easy, the "whole product" has to meet the requirements. Using an certified chip / module lowers the risk of failing, but you have to pay for the measurements and certification anyway. (Which here, as I heard, can be about 6 months engineering salary.)

(For crowdfunding you need a good campaign and probably some ads / self-promoting which also could be expensive.)

Great job. These look absolutely fantastic and I love the idea. It seems like the perfect use case for e-paper.
Really awesome. I’m working on a hardware project myself, nice to see a success story.

I’m curious about the enclosure, do you cut it out of wood yourself or are you using a supplier for it that cuts it/glues it for you?

Very cool and love the design of the display
https://cronhub.io (a project I just took over). Makes about 1k/month for now.
I use to follow the original creator of this app. Nice to see its still around.
This is cool. What's the story behind taking the project over?
Not much. Original creator just wanted more help on growing it and is busy with a full time job. I on the other hand love the idea of buying SAAS businesses. This is my 2nd one. 1st one I bought has grown to low 7 figures in revenue. Not sure if I can replicate the same success but hopefully that's the idea.
I had a similar idea 2 years ago [1] but haven't been pushing it forward because I thought nobody would need something like this, since it's easy to implement a cronjob in a backend server. Maybe I should revisit this! :)

[1] https://cronbeats.com/

Hi @jventura, I tried to sign up on cronbeats.com but the verification email did not arrive – are your emails working?

About the logo – I'll take it as "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" ;-)

Saw your response just now, sorry! Yeah, something's not working with emails.. I'll check it out, thanks!
Previously from 26 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667095

That said, this seems to be the extent of my marketing desire.

I screen scrape campground registration websites and alert you when someone cancels on a date you want to go camping. Fabulously successful. Now back to my day-job.

https://wanderinglabs.com

This feels like a good balance to me--you're giving people a heads-up that there's an open block that they can book, without doing the "value add" of blocking it off and then scalping the slot. More power to you.
How much do you earn?
the UI is just so nice, it's functional and simple. it's not trying win design awards to point of bein completely insufferable like some sites i see today.
I made a background noise website and app

https://asoftmurmur.com

There are a lot of improvements I want to make, but due to life commitments it has been stuck in maintenance mode for far longer than I'm comfortable with

I use this all the time, and I tell everyone else to as well.
I used your app constantly before I picked up Sonos speakers and had to restort to Spotify playlists!
Do you mind going into where your main revenue stream comes from and how it breaks down? Is it mostly apple users? Google play? Do you get any revenue from the website itself?
The basic model is people pay for access to more sounds. For the last few years this bas been separate transactions on the ios app, android app and for the web version. Ideally I'd move to a single subscription-based account that worked across all devices for extra sounds.

Revenue breakdown is roughly equal between android, ios and web, somewhat surprisingly. Android converts worse but has higher user numbers. Web converts much worse, but converts at a higher price (justified by the fact that hosting/maintaining the web stuff take a lot more time and money)

Thanks, that's pretty interesting to hear!

Can you talk about how you advertise and got traction enough to get to $500/month?

> Can you talk about how you advertise and got traction enough to get to $500/month?

Pure dumb luck. I made the site to scratch my own itch many years ago, and then it took off because there were few similar sites at the time (that let you mix together different sounds). Only promotion I did was mention the site on reddit a few times. Users were prepared to tolerate a lot of rough edges at first.

There has been zero advertising. The site gets a regular influx of new users because it's been featured on a number of discover-interesting-website portals (the modern versions of StumbleUpon). This happened with no input from me. I assume it's a good match for these kinds of portals because it's immediately usable without any kind of instruction, signup etc.

I only made the decision to monetize after a long period of the site getting lots and lots of organic traffic with no input from me.

Amazing, didn't know this existed. This plus my NC headphones, bliss. Enjoying it while I type this. Thank you!!
I'm curious about how much work goes into recording high-quality, looping sounds like this?
> I'm curious about how much work goes into recording high-quality, looping sounds like this?

When I started the site, I mainly used CC0 licensed sounds others had recorded.

Then I started recording my own sounds. How much work it is is very situational - if you regularly find yourself in an environment which has the sound you want to record, and not many other sounds around, then it's pretty trivial. For example, you want to record rain in the forest, and you regularly walk in a forest where it rains and there aren't many other noise sources (e.g. other people, planes overhead, singing birds, etc). The actual recording itself doesn't take much work, because I shoot for a level of sound quality that will satisfy 80%-90% of people, rather than a real "audiophile" quality level.

On the other hand, if you want to record something that only happens occasionally and with lots of other noise sources nearby, it can be a ton of work. For example, you want to record the sound of thunder, but you only get occasional storms, you live in a city with lots of other background noise, and it usually rains when it storms and you want rain on the recording. In that scenario, you might have to travel far and burn a ton of time trying to get the right conditions for recording.

I've been using it for hours and hours for the past few years. Thank you!
I use this constantly, oh my gods. Thank you so much for making it!! <3
This is a pleasant surprise. I remember using your app ages ago. I want to say at least 7 years ago when I believe you launched your website first on reddit. My memory is a bit hazy.

I really liked your app. We had a construction project going on for the longest time and I would mix up your rain, storm, sea and the singing bowl sound everything together and blast it on my soundbox!!

Thank you.

Haha thank you for the nice memory! I've been running the site for 8 years, it's crazy that it's been that long
That's awesome! I've had that part of my favourites for years now. Every clean browser install I put your site in my fav bar.
My brother started Podcast Notes in 2015. I help out on the tech side. We now have a growing community of Premium Members, 35k Twitter Followers, 25k email subscribers.

https://podcastnotes.org

I've been writing my own notes for various things including some podcasts. I'm curious who are the writers or note-takers for your website?
I play music in bars. Or busk an accordion. Fun times. Definitely not passive income, but it's work I like.
Hey fellow accordion busker! I find my busking income has diminished vastly with age, despite my skill rising. Everyone wants to toss a coin at the 10 year old playing decent accordion. Not so much the 30 year old playing good accordion.
I realize you can't exactly do exit interviews but have you tried talking to "users"?
Well, I'm 43....

Not to say that this is your issue, but I find it helps if I dress up a lot.

I have nice, embroidered pearl snaps, custom cowboy boots, fancy hats, and a couple nice vests.

That is to say, it's pretty easy for folks to confuse me with panhandlers. I have no problem with folks panhandling, but my tips are way better if I look like a performer.

Are you using Venmo for tips? I used to have an itch for digital tip jars, but never figured out the right set of features to really drive adoption...

This was well before Patreon, and PayPal was pretty much the only API game in town. Since then, I've felt like Venmo handles 9/10ths of the live performance problem (unleash the appreciation (money) locked in digital form).

I never have cash on me and when I see a QR code I usually give 2-5x more than I would if I was carrying cash on me because it feels weird to "drop in" $1-4 on Venmo and I guilt myself into more.

Anyway, accordion OP you should get a QR code for tips :)

Yup ^ that was also the idea. Unlock so much more value for the performer
TBH, I am not super on point about that-- on some level I still rationalize busking as a mode of practice where I don't have to annoy the neighbors in my apartment.

I should probably look into that... it seems like a reasonable idea.

I will say, the one time that someone asked me directly about it, when I told them I didn't have venmo they gave me a $100 bill. Not to say that will ever be repeated.

We're making about $600/mo right now working on Oku, which we're building as a social book tracker (and more) and hoping to replace Goodreads with.

https://oku.club

Here's my profile for example: https://oku.club/user/joe

Do you provide a way to export data in case the site closes down? I don't use any app/site to track what books I read, but I see that it could be interesting.
We do but it's not fully automated just yet, it'd involve sending us an email.

Similar story with csv imports, it's half supported but not in the UI yet.

That is pretty landing page!

Just read that the meaning of oku [1] is 1) private, intimate, and deep; 2) exalted and sacred; and, 3) profound and recondite

anyway, your brazilian users will find this funny since oku has the same sound of "o cu" that literally means "the butt hole".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oku_(theory)#:~:text=3%20Bound....

Not really, because the O is only open when alone, or a longer word. This reads Óku, not Uku. At least that's how I read it being Portuguese.

The defunct social network Orkut is a good example of this. It's Órkut, not Urkut.

Of course, none of this matters :)

Looks neat. Why do you think oku will replace goodreads?
What is the source for book data? I was recently looking for a TMDB equivalent for books but couldn't find a good one. There is OpenLibrary but they don't have covers and only do dumps once a month.
I like the design, but what's would you like to improve over Goodreads?
I believe there is a turkish speaker involved when you are naming the product :)

"Oku" means read (in imperative form)

Things have tapered off quite a bit since 2021, but it's still over the threshold: https://virtualpostersession.org

It's a platform for virtual scientific and research-oriented poster session hosting. Pretty simple but desperately needed when all the conferences were cancelled!

I’m making ~$4k a month, from a small macOS and iOS app portfolio:

- macOS apps: https://fadel.io/

- iOS apps: https://apple.co/3fqcWfO

I bought Batteries For Mac when my mouse died without warning. It's funny how much a simple little widget actually helps out.
Thank you for being a fan of Batteries! :)
This is what I aspire to do. Building small apps that is super specific to solving a problem.
I built an email forwarding service - not for your own domains, a lot of those exist already - instead you can choose an email at any of our 150+ domains and we forward it to your existing account, no migration required. You can even send from this address with many providers.

https://www.mailbox.my

what do you need to learn to run your email servers, im assuming you run your email servers?
Yes I'm running my own servers.

You should know your way around Linux (if you already know Ubuntu, you can use it on the server as well).

You need some software: - For receiving and routing mails: I use postfix - For authenticating: Dovecot - For serving mails via IMAP: Dovecot is a popular choice

There are some good guides on the net how to set up these on Ubuntu or Debian (which is pretty similar), just google for e.g. "postfix ubuntu".

It's critical that the mail you route arrives at the other end, so you must prevent spammers from abusing your systems. Otherwise you get blacklisted. As a start you need to implement state-of-the-art things like: SPF, DKIM, DMARC. MTA-STS, TLS-RPT are also useful. None of these are hard and there are also good tutorials out there, it's just a bit of work.

Is there a site like MDN for these things? how did you learn this?
I created Video Hub App - browse, search, and organize your videos - "like YouTube for videos on your computer".

It's a commercial project / charityware that is turning 4 years old next month. I sell it for $5 per copy and give $3.50 to a cost-effective charity. If you go to the blog you'll see the history of sales. As of now I donated almost $13,000 to charity thanks to this project. It's averaging around 100 sales per month for over a year now.

https://videohubapp.com/en/

Also open source MIT: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Selling perpetual licenses for software that runs on your machine?! How quaint!
Offering perpetual licenses is a huge plus in my book, and often drives my purchasing decision. Thank you.
I recently purchased VHA -- thank you so much for making this!
one customer segment that can reaaaally benefit from this is people who edit videos, they need to have repository of 1000s of sound effects, memes, and clips from general media. There really needs to be a tool to find gifs, images, videos and audios by typing general word and it even should match synonym tags.
I've been making a pretty consistent amount off my open-source side-project Pterodactyl through company sponsorships.

https://pterodactyl.io

I recently got Pterodactyl setup on my home server and I just wanted to say that it's an incredible project and it works great. I run various game servers on a whim and it's been easy to spin them up. Many thanks for your hard work.
I make https://www.savio.io.

We help SaaS CS and Product teams use product feedback from Intercom, Zendesk, Hubspot, Help Scout, etc to understand and build what customers are asking for.

I'm running a website for people learning Japanese and currently making ~$590/month from Patreon donations: https://jpdb.io/

This is an entirely spare-time project on which I've been working publicly for the past year.

Here's some info about the tech stack I'm using: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26693959

Upon initial login I'm definitely impressed by the interface, the existing content, and the potential to finally brush up on my Japanese.

I ended up linking to my Google account, but I spent a long while trying to "sign up" with my email only to be given an message about failing to meet the password requirements (no mention of character limit and no special characters allowed). At first I thought I just needed to adjust my password generator to get a valid password (usually 64 chars with alpha-numerics and special characters), but even the simplest passwords failed with the same error message.

> I ended up linking to my Google account, but I spent a long while trying to "sign up" with my email only to be given an message about failing to meet the password requirements (no mention of character limit and no special characters allowed).

This is strange; I don't really have any special password requirements. What's the exact error message you were getting? The only requirements are that it's at least 6 characters long and different than your username, and in each case it should tell you exactly what's wrong.

Looks fantastic, and I especially love the simple tech stack. How do you handle updates out of curiosity? scp and rerun?
Yep. Copy the executable (plus another file which is a big blob containing the dictionary, examples, etc.), and then just do `systemctl restart`.

There's nothing extra running on the server; no reverse proxy (the app itself automatically fetches/renews the HTTPS cert), no database, nothing. Just the app, the SSH server and the default system services.

This is quite cool. One suggestion would be to have the pronunciation listed in addition to the kanji and audio (at least when I searched I didn't see it, so the only way to learn to pronounce is to use audio). Do you know of something similar for Chinese by any chance?
> One suggestion would be to have the pronunciation listed in addition to the kanji and audio (at least when I searched I didn't see it, so the only way to learn to pronounce is to use audio).

Sorry, I'm a little confused? The pronunciation is listed for every word; that's the hiragana next/on top of the words. (:

> Do you know of something similar for Chinese by any chance?

Alas, I do not. Maybe I'll make something like that in, like, 20 years if I'll ever be able to make a living off of this. (:

Hi, if you're still around:

jpdb looks really cool, but will it work for somebody who is a complete beginner?

I want to learn Japanese, and intend to commit time to doing so sometime in the upcoming 2-3 months. However, right now, I'm literally at zero.

Is there somewhere else I should go to learn things like basic grammar and sentence structure first, or will jpdb help with that sort of thing too?

A complete beginner? Nope. Well, at least not yet!

Eventually I do want to make it a one-stop-shop which will teach you everything and take you from a complete beginner to someone who can immerse in native media as soon as possible. We're not there yet, and the site works best if you're at least an advanced beginner. The bare minimum requirement is that you know hiragana and katakana already.

Your best bet would be to start with a textbook of some kind and/or some actual lessons with real teachers to learn the basics. The more of a beginner you are the more the human touch helps; the more advanced you are the more you can depend on apps.

I'm creating a free Japanese course that ships as a flashcard deck for Anki. It completely starts from zero, maybe it helps you: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782 I guess this format is similar to what jpdb offers, maybe you can even import it there. The deck currently covers most grammar and a little more than 800 words on ~1800 flashcards. It's mostly based on anime though, so at least some interest in this is beneficial ;).
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Wow, that looks great!

My main complaint is that I haven't known about this until now. I frequently search for Japanese resources and specifically did searches to find pre-made decks of Japanese content from Japanese language media, but never encountered your site.

Thank you for the effort to revamp the Heisig kanji keywords - makes me wish I didn't already learn it the RTK way. The way to teach new kanji by introducing the enclosed primitives first is smart - it's a good compromise between "primitive first" and "usage first" approaches.

Thanks!

Yeah, it's still pretty much a very niche resource that many people do not know about. (:

Indeed, Heisig's keywords can be janky. Mine are not perfect, but in general they should be better than Heisig's. Well, at least for most of the really common kanji; I still need to change/improve the keywords for some of the more rare kanji and tweak a few more common ones. (As you can imagine doing that manually for a few thousand characters is a lot of work, so it has been slow going.)

Thumbs up for revising the keywords of remembering the kanji.

I don’t follow his book but I do refer to it when studying and sometimes his keywords really can be far out. If I remember correctly he never clarifies if the kanji for “can” is “can do” or “can of soup”.

Really neat! Business-wise, is it meant to compete with sites like Wanikani and Bunpro, or is it meant to be more complementary?
Eventually it's meant to have enough content/functionality to be a replacement for both.
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We built https://tadum.app, an online meeting agenda that rolls forward incomplete agenda items to the next agenda. This ends up creating a low effort paper trail, saves on meeting prep time, and keeps agendas consistently formatted/organized. It's intended for recurring weekly/monthly/quarterly meetings--we built it based on how we run meetings with our clients and are happy to see other teams jump in and have success with it.