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53 Comments

I'm taking 8 weeks off work to monetize my side-project

Starting tomorrow, I'm taking a leave of absence from work to develop my side-project Keepthescore.co. I am super pumped about it 🤩.

Keepthescore already has around 40k visitors a month, but I'm not making money -- just paying server costs. My main goal for the next 8 weeks is to add monetisation so that I get an idea of whether I should invest more time in it.

If it turns out that I can make a little money, then I don't expect to be able to quit my day job. However, I hope that I can reduce my working hours to spend more time developing my project even further.

In 8 weeks I will know more!

  1. 6

    good luck and godspeed! i'm excited for you — you got this!

  2. 3

    Good luck! I would try something like this:

    Free features

    • public boards
    • max 10 players (or some other cutoff number based on stats)
    • limited scoreboard types

    Premium features

    • more than 10 players
    • Private scoreboard
    • Enable discussion
    • specialty scoreboard types
    1. 2

      Thanks! Your guess is pretty close to what I'm planning 😉

  3. 3

    40k visitors sounds like an amazing baseline, you have any specific plans on how to monetize it? what are your server costs?

    it's always amazing to me with what kind of ideas people come up with. I would have never thought about something like this

    edit: finally someone from berlin^^

    1. 1

      Thanks!

      I'm going to add premium features and banner ads. The poster down below has taken a pretty good guess at what the premium features will be.

      If you don't have ideas, ask your friends, family and colleagues what problems they have that they think could be solved by software!

    2. 1

      Same here, and I had to build a simple little scoreboard as a short contract for a gaming company!

  4. 3

    Congrats! I recently turned down a large client project to focus on my side project. It feels awesome.

    1. 1

      Good for you! 🚀

  5. 1

    Hmmmmm stay working

  6. 1

    best of luck!
    following to know the progress :)

    how did you come up with the idea of Keep the score?

    1. 1

      Thnx! It started off as a very simple toy project (applying some lessons learned from Kittysplit, another thing I made). Then I got customer feedback and iterated.

  7. 1

    Outstanding! I'm jealous of the dedicated time off, and hope you make the most of it. Cool product!

  8. 1

    Congratulations!! With 40k visitors a month I'm sure there are ways you can add enough value to those visitors that they'll pay you for that added value! Cheers!

  9. 1

    That’s great, I wish you success!

  10. 1

    decrease font size

  11. 1

    Nice, best of luck! keep us posted

  12. 1

    40K a month is amazing! Are you advertising on Facebook?

    1. 2

      Nope! It's all viral and SEO. In both of these categories dumb luck played a big part

  13. 1

    This is amazing. Good luck Caspii!

  14. 1

    This is awesome! Good luck, I think you have a great start.

  15. 1

    One little advice: Stick to it, like your regular day job working hours, will help being productive. If this is your first time working full-time on a side hustle, you will be learning about maintaining discipline as well.

    Good luck!

  16. 1

    40k a month is huge, sir. I wish the break proves beneficial to you. All the best wishes!

  17. 1

    Congrats and best of luck to you! I'm hoping to be able to do the same thing with my own project soon!

    1. 1

      Thanks and good luck!

  18. 1

    Congrats and good luck!

  19. 1

    Hi @Caspii! I'd love to chat with you about this. Can you share your email?

      1. 1

        Sent you an email!

  20. 1

    That is awesome, congrats! I've thought about taking a week off to focus but 8! That sounds nice. You will probably be able to really get into it with that much time.

    1. 1

      Thanks! I hope to make a lot of progress ... but we'll see.

  21. 1

    Looks like you are on the right path. Good luck!

  22. 1

    Huge congrats. You'll have a great time and learn a lot. Keep us posted!

    1. 1

      Thanks and will do!

  23. 1

    This comment was deleted a year ago.

  24. 2

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 1

      One of the strengths of the product is that there is NO registration.

      I have Google Analytics installed. What else would you recommend?

      1. 1

        Where are those 40k monthly users coming from?

      2. 1

        I heard Google Tag Manager is good tool for monitoring user beahviour.

      3. 1

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

        1. 1

          "Echo chamber of yes men" 😀. This tickled me. I think you are being harsh on the community. It's not like I made a statement and everyone agreed with me. Instead I posted some news and people were excited by that. I think it's cool.

          I will add registration, maybe in the next 2 months. I will also check out Amplitude and Hotjar.

          Cheers, Caspar

          1. 2

            This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

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