This article is based on a video by Patrick Shyu (www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4o…) Patrick Shyu has his own YouTube channel, Tech Lead, which has around 430,000 subscribers. Former Google engineer, software engineer, digital nomad. The video content is mainly technology, personal experience sharing and other related content.
Here’s how a former Google engineer made $40,000 a year in passive income, almost making at least $100 a day. He didn’t have to do anything for a year, just put the project on the site and generate a continuous income. He talked about his four small projects and detailed how he thinks and works. This introduction provides an insight into how software engineers work on their side projects.
None of this will necessarily lead you to replicate success, but the experience may inspire you to come up with ideas for your own projects.
1, elapsed360
www.panolapse360.com/
Time-lapse photography effect processing client software, this is a very niche demand, people want to add some special effects to time-lapse photography. There is no particularly good software on the market to support, there is a software cost $200, Patrick Shyu thought he can do it, and can do it better, two main features added
- Time delay increases dynamic efficiency, using prospective mathematical algorithms. Do this using Adobe ActionScript, which is not a very popular language but can be used across Windows and Mac platforms on the desktop. It took about two weeks to make. For photographers to achieve the same effect, they need a lot of hardware support, rotating equipment and so on. This can be achieved through software, but requires some math and image distortion. I’m in a photography community and I know there’s a need, and if I do well, I can spread the word in the community. For the first day or two he would earn about $500 a day,
- Another big feature is the ability to create sunrise or sunset effects through exposure. This is based on aperture ISO and shutter speed, also using mathematical algorithms. Fisheye function, this took about a month to study the fisheye algorithm. In this process it is very interesting to understand the use of GPU shaders.
Make each one $80 instead of $5 for the App on your phone. This also keeps them selling about one copy a day.
2, the Human Pets
This is a social networking site, almost 10 years old, where everyone is an animal and can be fed, dressed, taken on trips, etc. It already has 2 million users and makes money from subscriptions. At its peak, it was making $2,000 a day. Now it’s making almost $100 a month. I put Adsense ads on it.
3, the RPG Games
It’s a game app for the iPhone, a role-playing game where users can play characters with story lines and earn income by charging membership fees.
The top 10% of users account for almost 90% of the revenue, and the membership threshold could be optimized to be higher. The current low is $6/ month.
4. Photography material website
This is a material photo video site. A photo of the Brooklyn Bridge received 1,500 bids for about $1 each. Videos can sell for $50 each. Now people prefer high-definition 4K videos, which sell very well. There are more videos of scenery around the world that they shot themselves, such as scenic spots in Japan, Iceland’s ice cave videos, northern lights and so on. Each of these videos can be charged nearly 1000 DOLLARS. Over the past four years, the video has grossed almost $20,000.
Because of the photography work, there are also sponsors who sponsor local boats and equipment for free, like in the Bahamas, Phuket, and these boats can go for a week of photography and take better pictures.
That adds up to almost $40,000 a year.
Finally, some summary from Patrick Shyu
- They don’t open source their projects because they are commercialized.
- Living with your parents saves you $3,000 a month
- Timing is important, and when you decide what to do, it should be when the technology and users have reached a certain trend, and you do what meets the needs, and your project will be more likely to succeed.
- Do something that multiplies. You can’t scale a restaurant easily, but you can scale it cheaply through the Internet.
- Automate things with programming, you don’t have to be on duty, the system runs automatically.
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