I just got my first ever $5 from a side project!
Yesterday I launched a small side project called Gradient Joy (https://gradientjoy.com/) a website that gives you beautiful gradients to be used as placeholder images.
I had put a donation link on the navigation bar and I just got my first $5 through a side project ever!!
Here it is! https://imgur.com/a/Xul2wyI
It even came with a feature request :)
Reminds me of the brief feeling of elation I had when I thought I received my first payment, only to realize that it was from my own credit card from when I was testing the Stripe intergration
That breaks my heart! But keep at it!
At least you didn't leave Stripe in test mode for the first customer.
😂
Aw congrats! That cross into "I can make money on the Internet" is an awesome feeling.
This is the beginning! It's an addictive feeling. Really happy for you Tekeste. Keep going!
Feels good, doesn't it? :D
Feels good man! 😀
This is really motivating for new comers in the industry.
Congrats!
I saw this on Reddit. Great work. I would suggest that your email capture form be a little more descriptive - it doesn't really tell me what I'm signing up to receive.
You are on point. I will work on clarifying that. But mostly it is for me to let people know when I launch another project.
Great website. Congrats
Huge! Go buy a bottle of champagne.
Inspiring :)
That's great!
Nice job - congrats!!
Congratulation!! You'll remember that feeling forever now :)
This is such a unique and useful tool!
Congrats, first step is the hardest! Onwards and upwards
That's a really cool feature request too! Kudos (does anyone even use the term "kudos" anymore? 🤔 Asking for a friend)
Congrats! Keep it up :)
Great feeling this is. Keep going :)
It is indeed! Thank you.
Great job Tekeste! Onward and upwards =)
Only way to go! Thank you!
Awesome, congrats!!!!! I got my first $5 from Whoopla (bizamo.co/whoopla) but I had to refund it because I didn't meet the "goal" I set out for myself to validate. Maybe I scrapped it too soon?? In any case, super happy for you :)
Congrats Buddy! Inspirational for me!
Honestly, a really solid product. Great work.
Awesome. Congrats!
Congratulations!
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Here you go!
Images are hosted on Cloudinary. This also handles the resizing of images automatically.
The beautiful gradients came from uiGradients.
I used NextJS to build the app, it is a lightweight framework for static and server‑rendered applications.
How do you host it? Which Node.js hosting provider do you use? How much does it cost for a project like this?
I should probably write an article about this but the tldr is I use the cheapest DigitalOcean sever which costs $5 per month and installed Nginx and Node myself. The requests are handled by Nginx which acts as a reverse proxy. Basically it forwards the request to the appropriate Node app that runs on a specific port.
Check out this article to see how to accomplish this. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-node-js-application-for-production-on-ubuntu-16-04
Thanks for answering. I am currently doing research on which provider to use for my SaaS. I try to Serverless + Static Sites as much as possible. I could easily ended up with paying an amount like $50 per month for multiple side projects. Anyone knows good resources on Serverless (backend functionality without owning a full blown server)?
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+1 for that website! Currently following it to build a React Native app with AWS.
Wow, that site is really useful for me. The stack the site teach is very much relevant to me. Big thanks for bringing it up here.
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