How to Make Money From a Side Project (No Investors Needed)

Short answer: To make money from a side project, charge real users as early as you can, in the model that fits your costs and your audience. Charge a subscription if the project costs you money every month, a one-time price if it does not, sell a digital product or service if you have expertise but little software yet, and turn to sponsorship or ads only once you have real traffic. Pick one model, get a checkout live within 30 days, and treat the first sale (not the launch) as the milestone.

That is the whole idea. The rest of this guide covers the ten main ways makers turn side projects into income, a comparison table with platform fees checked on 8 Nov 2026, a decision flow, a 30/60/90-day plan, the tax and legal basics at a high level, and what real makers did, quoted from their own posts. Every fee and figure links to the page we checked. The advice in between is ours and is marked as such.

TL;DR#

• Charge users directly first. Subscriptions, one-time licences and usage pricing do not need a big audience. Ten paying users is a real business signal; ten thousand free visitors usually is not.
• Use a merchant of record to start. Lemon Squeezy and Paddle both list 5% + 50¢ per transaction and handle sales tax for you. Gumroad is 10% + 50¢ on direct sales and 30% on sales through its Discover marketplace.
• Ads and sponsorship need traffic. EthicalAds looks for developer sites doing "50k+ pageviews per month"; Carbon starts at 10,000 pageviews a month.
• Open source can pay, slowly. GitHub Sponsors takes no fee on sponsorships from personal accounts.
• Your project is an asset. You can sell it on Acquire.com or Microns, which charge only when a sale closes.
• Tax kicks in early. The UK trading allowance is £1,000 a year; the US self-employment tax threshold is $400 of net earnings. Not advice, but worth knowing on day one.

Disclosure: ZeroRaised publishes this guide and runs a launch site for products built without venture capital. ZeroRaised has no commercial relationship with any platform named here, and no links in this post are affiliate links. Fees and quotes come from the linked pages as checked on 8 Nov 2026.

What counts as "making money" from a side project?#

A side project makes money when someone outside your circle of friends pays for it, through a checkout you control, more than once. That definition rules out a few things that feel like progress but are not income yet: upvotes, waitlist signups, GitHub stars and "I'd pay for this" comments.

It also helps to be honest about which of three goals you have, because they lead to different models:

1. Pocket money. A few hundred dollars a month that pays for the hosting and a few dinners. Almost any model can get you here.
2. A second salary. Enough to cover rent or a meaningful share of your living costs. This usually needs direct charging (subscription, licence or service), because ad and sponsorship income per visitor is small.
3. An exit or a full-time business. Revenue that is predictable enough to quit your job on, or to sell. This needs recurring revenue, low upkeep and clean books.

Our read: decide which one you are aiming for before you pick a model. A lot of side projects stall because the maker is quietly hoping for goal three while choosing a model (display ads, a tip jar) that only ever reaches goal one.

The 10 ways to make money from a side project#

Below is the full map. Most successful projects combine two or three of these, but they almost always start with one.

1. Charge a subscription#

You charge monthly or yearly for continued access. It suits anything that costs you money for every active user (servers, storage, sync, AI calls) or that delivers new value every week, such as data, reports or monitoring.

The big advantage is that revenue compounds. Each new customer adds to last month's total, as long as churn stays low. The downside is that people think harder before starting a subscription, so you need a clear recurring job the product does.

If you are unsure whether subscription is right for your project, we compared the two models in depth in subscription vs one-time purchase for indie apps, including a worked churn example.

2. Sell a one-time licence#

The user pays once and owns the version they bought. This suits desktop apps, Mac utilities, browser extensions, CLI tools and self-hosted software, where your cost per user after the sale is close to zero.

One-time pricing is easier to sell, especially to developers who are tired of subscriptions. The catch is that you have to keep finding new buyers every month, because last month's customers do not pay again. Many makers add a paid upgrade path, a "pay once, get a year of updates" licence, or a subscription add-on for features that do cost money.

Tony Dinh's Typing Mind is a good sourced example. He wrote that "In the beginning, Typing Mind started with a one-time purchase" and that because the core app "costs me almost nothing to host and run", he could "afford to sell the license as a one-time purchase", later adding subscription sources such as cloud sync (Tony Dinh, Feb 2024).

3. Charge by usage#

You charge per unit: per API call, per credit, per document processed, per image generated. It suits developer tools and AI products where costs scale with use and where users vary widely, from a hobbyist making ten calls to a company making ten million.

Usage pricing is fair but unpredictable, for you and the buyer. Our read: for a side project, a simple hybrid usually works better than pure metering. Charge a small monthly plan that includes a generous allowance, then sell credit top-ups.

4. Sell digital products and templates#

Templates, boilerplates, UI kits, Notion systems, spreadsheets, ebooks, icon sets, presets and starter code. These are often the fastest software-adjacent products to ship, because you are packaging something you already built or know.

The risk is that digital products are easy to copy and hard to differentiate. What sells is specificity: a template for one job, one stack or one audience.

5. Sell a course or paid tutorial#

If your side project taught you something other people want to learn, the knowledge can be worth more than the code. Courses take longer to make than templates, but they can sell at a much higher price.

Josh W. Comeau's CSS course is the best-known pre-sale example in this space. In his Failory interview he said: "I decided to open pre-orders for 1 week, with the goal of selling $50k." He added: "I wound up hitting that mark in about 10 minutes." The interview headline puts the week's total at $550k (Failory interview, 31 Aug 2021). To be clear, this was not a side project: he says he "left my job at Gatsby Inc. and started work on CSS for JavaScript Developers". The lesson that transfers is the pre-sale. He sold the course when it was about halfway done, which tested demand before he spent another year on it.

6. Offer a service or productised service#

Sell your time around the project: setup, customisation, migration, done-for-you reports, audits, consulting. A productised service puts a fixed price and a fixed scope on it ("I will set up X for your team in five days for $Y").

Services are the fastest way to first dollars for most people, because you can sell to people who already know you and you need almost no software. They do not scale like software, but they fund the project and tell you exactly what customers struggle with. Plenty of products started as the tool a consultant built to do a service faster.

7. Sponsorship and newsletter ads#

If your project has an audience (a newsletter, a directory, a popular blog, a podcast, an open-source README), companies may pay to be in front of it. Sponsorship is usually sold directly as a flat fee per slot.

Sacha Greif's Sidebar.io is a clear public example of pricing. Its sponsor page says "Sponsored links cost $950 per sponsorship", for one edition of a newsletter it lists at about 40k subscribers (Sidebar.io sponsor page).

Our read: sponsorship pays far better than ad networks for a niche audience, because a sponsor buys attention from a specific group (designers, Rails developers, indie founders) rather than impressions. But it needs an audience first, and it takes time to sell.

8. Display ads through an ad network#

Ad networks place ads automatically and pay you per thousand views (CPM). For developer and design sites, two common privacy-friendly options are EthicalAds and Carbon.

• EthicalAds says publishers "generally" see "around $2.50 per 1,000 pageviews (CPM), assuming most of your traffic is from the EU & North America", looks for "developer-focused sites doing 50k+ pageviews per month", and has a minimum payout of $50 (EthicalAds publishers).
• Carbon says "We start at 10,000 pageviews a month" and lists a typical CPM of $1.50 to $2.30, "Mostly set by your readers' countries" (Carbon join page).

Example maths (ours, illustrative): a site with 50,000 pageviews a month at a $2.50 CPM earns about 50 × $2.50 = $125 a month, before any fill rate or payout timing. That is pleasant, but a single $10/month subscription customer is worth the same as 4,000 pageviews of ads. For most side projects, ads are a bonus on top of a content site, not a business model.

9. Open-source sponsorship and donations#

If your side project is open source, users and companies can sponsor you. The main platforms:

• GitHub Sponsors: "GitHub Sponsors does not charge any fees for sponsorships from personal accounts, so 100% of these sponsorships go to the sponsored developer or organization." For sponsorships from organisation accounts, it charges "a fee of up to 6%", split between a 3% credit card processing fee and a 3% GitHub service fee, and organisations can avoid the card fee with invoiced billing (GitHub Docs).
• Open Collective via Open Source Collective: a fiscal host that holds money on behalf of projects. It "charges a fixed 10% host fee on incoming funds", with "no setup fees, minimum balances, or recurring charges", and payment processors apply their own fees (OSC fees). Open Collective itself describes crowdfunding contributions as "Free with Platform Tips activated", or an optional "simple 5% Crowdfunding Fee" instead of tips (Open Collective pricing).
• Buy Me a Coffee: "We charge a 5% transaction fee, and creators keep 95% of the earnings", with no monthly fee (Buy Me a Coffee FAQ).
• Patreon: 10% "of the income you earn on Patreon", "Plus payment processing, currency conversion, and payout fees, and applicable taxes" (Patreon pricing).

Caleb Porzio, creator of the Laravel library Livewire, wrote a detailed post about reaching six figures on GitHub Sponsors: "as of this writing, I've grown my annual GitHub sponsors revenue to $112,680/yr." He credits a sponsor-only screencast series: "It raised my annual revenue by ~$80k in 90 days" (Caleb Porzio, June 2020). He had left his job by then, so it is not a side-project number, but the tactic of giving sponsors something exclusive (videos, early access, priority issues) transfers to projects of any size.

Our read: plain donations rarely grow past pocket money on their own. Sponsorship works when sponsors get something: a logo in the README for companies, sponsor-only content, or a paid "pro" tier alongside the free core.

10. Sell the project itself#

A side project with revenue is an asset you can sell. Buyers look for verifiable revenue, low upkeep and a clean handover. We cover marketplaces, valuations and the sale process in our guide on where to sell a SaaS business, so here are only the headline fees we checked today:

• Acquire.com: for asking prices below $250k, an 8% closing fee "Plus $25/mo to list"; "You only pay the closing fee if you sell your business" (Acquire.com seller pricing).
• Microns: "No listing fees"; a success fee of 10% for projects from $1K, falling to 8% from $10k and 6% from $100k (Microns pricing).
• Flippa: its pricing page lists a "10% success fee" alongside paid listing plans (Flippa pricing).

Two sourced examples show that small products do sell. Tony Dinh wrote that "One of my products - Xnapper - has been acquired for $150,000", and described it as "a one-time purchase product with only ~$4K/month revenue" (Tony Dinh, Mar 2024). And FeedbackPanda, which Arvid Kahl started as a weekend prototype, was sold two years later "to SureSwift Capital for a life-changing amount of money" (The Bootstrapped Founder).

Monetisation models compared#

Fees below are the platform's own published rates as checked on 8 Nov 2026. "Time to first dollar" is our editorial estimate for a maker working evenings and weekends, not a measured figure.

Sources: Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Polar fees, Gumroad, Stripe UK pricing, EthicalAds, Carbon, GitHub Docs, OSC fees, Acquire.com, Microns.

Where to take payments: merchant of record vs payment processor#

Before you pick a model, decide how money will reach you, because it shapes your fees and your tax admin.

A payment processor such as Stripe charges cards on your behalf, but you are the seller. You are responsible for collecting and filing sales tax and VAT wherever it applies. Stripe's UK page, for example, lists "1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards", "3.15% + 20p for international cards" and "+ 2% if currency conversion is required", with a £20.00 fee for each dispute you receive (Stripe UK pricing). Rates differ by country, so check the page for yours.

A merchant of record (MoR) resells your product to the customer, so it handles sales tax, VAT, invoicing and often chargebacks. You pay a higher percentage in exchange for far less admin. For a side project, where your time is the scarce resource, that trade is often worth it.

What the main MoR platforms list today:

Sources: Lemon Squeezy pricing, Lemon Squeezy 2026 update, Paddle pricing, Gumroad pricing, Polar fees.

Example maths (ours, illustrative): on a $20 sale, a 5% + 50¢ fee is $1.00 + $0.50 = $1.50, so you keep $18.50 (92.5%). Gumroad's direct rate of 10% + 50¢ is $2.00 + $0.50 = $2.50, so you keep $17.50 (87.5%). On a Gumroad Discover sale at 30%, you keep $14.00. On a $5 sale the fixed 50¢ hurts much more: 5% + 50¢ takes $0.75, or 15% of the price. Our read: avoid prices under about $10 unless you have volume, because fixed fees eat cheap products.

Gumroad's Discover rate is high, but it applies only "when new customers find and buy from you through our discover marketplace", so it is effectively a finder's fee for buyers you would not have reached. Our read: Gumroad suits templates and creator products where Discover might bring sales; Lemon Squeezy, Paddle or Polar suit software with licence keys and subscriptions.

How to choose a model: a decision flow#

Answer these questions in order and stop at the first "yes". This is our editorial flow, not a rule.

1. Do you have a skill people already pay for, and do you need money in the next 30 days? Sell a productised service around the project. Use the cash and the customer conversations to shape the product.
2. Does every active user cost you money each month (servers, storage, AI calls)? Charge a subscription, or a subscription with usage credits. A one-time price will lose money as you grow.
3. Does your cost per user vary by 10x or more between light and heavy users? Add usage pricing (credits or top-ups) on top of a base plan.
4. Does the product run on the user's machine and cost you almost nothing after the sale? Charge a one-time licence, optionally with paid upgrades or a year of updates included.
5. Is the thing you made reusable by others (a template, kit, boilerplate or system)? Sell it as a digital product.
6. Did building it teach you something hard that many people want to learn? Pre-sell a course or guide.
7. Is it open source and used by companies? Set up GitHub Sponsors and a paid tier or support plan for companies.
8. Does it have an audience (newsletter, directory, content site) but no natural thing to charge for? Sell sponsorships directly first; add an ad network once you pass the networks' traffic thresholds.
9. None of the above? It may be a portfolio piece, not a business. That is fine. Ship it, write about it, and use it to win freelance work or a better job.

A shorter version of the same flow as a table:

How to get your first dollar from a side project#

Choosing a model is the easy part. Getting the first stranger to pay is where most side projects stall. These steps work for almost every model.

Put a price on it before it feels ready#

The most common mistake is waiting until the product is "done" to ask for money. Add a pricing page and a working checkout as soon as the product does one useful thing reliably. Josh Comeau pre-sold his course at roughly the halfway point; FeedbackPanda was profitable "within a few weeks after we made it public" (The Bootstrapped Founder). Neither waited for perfection.

Charge more than feels comfortable#

Side project makers almost always underprice, because they compare the price to the effort it took them rather than the value to the buyer. A $9 tool that saves a freelancer two hours a month is underpriced. Start higher than you think and offer a launch discount; it is much easier to discount than to raise prices later.

Sell to one specific group#

"Developers" is not a market. "Freelance Webflow designers who invoice in more than one currency" is. A narrow group is easier to find, easier to write a landing page for, and more likely to pay because the product fits exactly.

Talk to every early user#

For the first 20 users, email every signup personally. Ask what they were trying to do when they found you and what almost stopped them signing up. This is free, it builds loyalty, and it tells you what to build next and what to charge for.

Launch in places your buyers already read#

Launch sites, communities and newsletters can bring your first paying users in a single week. We cover the full process, including where to post and in what order, in how to launch a bootstrapped app. You can also submit your product to ZeroRaised for free; it is a launch site built specifically for products without investors.

Measure revenue, not vanity#

Track three numbers once a week: visitors to the pricing page, checkouts started, and paid customers. If visitors are high and checkouts are low, the pricing page or the price is the problem. If checkouts start but do not finish, look at the checkout itself (currency, payment methods, trust).

The 30/60/90-day plan#

This plan assumes you have a working prototype and about 8 to 10 hours a week. It is our editorial plan, built for evenings and weekends.

Days 1 to 30: get one stranger to pay#

Goal: first payment from someone who is not a friend.

• Week 1. Use the decision flow above to pick one model. Write a one-sentence description of who it is for and what it does. Choose a payment platform (a merchant of record if you want tax handled) and create the product.
• Week 2. Build a single landing page: problem, what it does, one screenshot or demo, price, buy button. Put the checkout live, even if the product has rough edges. Turn on a launch discount with an end date.
• Week 3. Post where your buyers already are: one or two communities, your own network and one launch site. Answer every comment. Email every signup.
• Week 4. Review what you learned. If nobody has paid, ask five people who signed up or looked at pricing why not. Change one thing (price, audience or message) and repeat the outreach.

Checkpoint at day 30: at least one payment, and a written list of the top three objections you heard.

Days 31 to 60: find a repeatable channel#

Goal: ten paying customers, and know where they came from.

• Fix the top objection from month one. It is often onboarding, a missing integration, or price framing.
• Add a short "how did you hear about us?" question at checkout or in your welcome email.
• Pick the one channel that brought the most paying customers (not visitors) and double your effort there. Drop channels that brought only browsers.
• Publish one useful piece of content a week aimed at your buyer's problem, not your product.
• Add an annual plan or a higher tier if you run a subscription; add a team licence or bundle if you sell one-time.

Checkpoint at day 60: ten paying customers, one channel that works more than once, and a known cost per customer in time or money.

Days 61 to 90: decide what this project is#

Goal: a clear decision about the project's future, based on numbers.

• Calculate monthly revenue, monthly costs and hours spent. Divide profit by hours for your effective hourly rate.
• Ask the most active customers what they would miss if the product disappeared, and what they would pay more for.
• Raise prices for new customers if conversion is healthy. Keep existing customers on their price.
• Write a short public update about what you built and what you learned. Build-in-public posts bring customers, and they create a track record for any future buyer.
• Decide between four options: grow it (more time, maybe more channels), keep it (maintain, let it earn quietly), sell it (once revenue is steady), or stop it (shut down cleanly, refund fairly, write up the lessons).

Checkpoint at day 90: a written decision and a monthly revenue number you trust.

Sourced maker examples#

Every example below is quoted from the maker's own post or interview, fetched on 8 Nov 2026. We have not added revenue figures that are not on these pages. Only FeedbackPanda is described by its founder as starting on evenings and weekends; the others are included because they show a model clearly.

FeedbackPanda: weekend prototype to subscription SaaS to sale#

Arvid Kahl's story starts with a job and a problem at home: "In 2017, my partner Danielle was teaching English as a Second Language online to Chinese children," while he "was working as a Software Engineer for a German company". They began talking about a small software tool to take over the feedback writing her teaching required. He writes: "And I started working on a prototype on the weekends." The business grew from there: "Combined, this lead to the business being profitable within a few weeks after we made it public." And then the exit: "Two years later, we sold the bootstrapped company that grew out of that tool to SureSwift Capital for a life-changing amount of money" (The Bootstrapped Founder, Nov 2019).

What transfers: they solved a problem one of the founders had every week, they reached a tight community of buyers where they already gathered, and they charged from the start.

Typing Mind and Xnapper: one-time licences, then a sale#

Tony Dinh's posts show two models. Typing Mind began as a one-time purchase, and he wrote in February 2024 that it "reaches $500K in total revenue" and "started out almost exactly one year ago as a simple UI for ChatGPT API" (Tony Dinh, Feb 2024). In November 2024 he wrote that "TypingMind has reached $1M in revenue in the last 12 months" (Tony Dinh, Nov 2024).

His screenshot tool Xnapper went the other way. It "has been acquired for $150,000", despite being "a one-time purchase product with only ~$4K/month revenue" (Tony Dinh, Mar 2024).

What transfers: a one-time price works when your cost per user is near zero, you can add subscriptions only where you have real ongoing costs, and a small product with steady revenue is a sellable asset.

Plausible: slow start, then compounding subscriptions#

Plausible Analytics is now a well-known bootstrapped subscription business, but the start was slow. Its founders wrote: "It took us a year to reach the first $400 MRR and then it took us nine months to go from $400 to $10k MRR", and that ten months after the $10k MRR milestone, "we're at $500,000 annual recurring revenue (ARR)" (Plausible blog, Oct 2021).

What transfers: subscription revenue often looks like nothing for a long time, then compounds. A year at a few hundred dollars a month is not a failure if retention is good.

CSS for JavaScript Developers: the pre-sale#

As quoted above, Josh Comeau opened pre-orders "for 1 week, with the goal of selling $50k" and "wound up hitting that mark in about 10 minutes" (Failory interview). He also opened the pre-sale to people who were already following along with the course's development, so the announcement had somewhere to land.

What transfers: a pre-sale is the cheapest way to test whether a course or product is worth finishing, as long as you have somewhere to announce it.

Livewire: sponsor-only content on GitHub Sponsors#

Caleb Porzio reached "$112,680/yr" on GitHub Sponsors, and wrote that adding sponsor-only screencasts "raised my annual revenue by ~$80k in 90 days" (Caleb Porzio, June 2020).

What transfers: open-source sponsorship grows when sponsors receive something specific, not when you ask for support.

Sidebar.io: a priced sponsorship slot#

Sidebar.io publishes its sponsorship price openly: "Sponsored links cost $950 per sponsorship", with discounts noted for bootstrapped and independent companies (Sidebar.io).

What transfers: publish a sponsor page with a price, an audience size and a booking link. A price on the page turns "interested" sponsors into bookings without a back-and-forth.

Bannerbear: subscription SaaS after a long search#

Jon Yongfook's Bannerbear was not a side project; he writes that "After leaving my job I spent almost a year burning through my savings as I attempted the 12 startups in 12 months challenge". His write-up covers "how I bootstrapped a SaaS product to $10k MRR over the course of 2 years" (Bannerbear).

What transfers: many attempts may come before one sticks. Running small experiments as side projects, while you still have a salary, is a cheaper version of the same search.

Tax and legal basics (high level, not advice)#

The moment a side project takes money, it is usually a business in the eyes of the tax office. This section is general information from official pages, not tax or legal advice. Rules depend on where you live, so check with an accountant.

United Kingdom. HMRC's trading allowance is "a tax exemption of up to £1,000 a year for individuals with trading income". If your gross trading income is £1,000 or less you usually do not need to tell HMRC, subject to exceptions, and "If your gross income for a tax year is more than £1,000, you must register for Self Assessment" (GOV.UK). Note the threshold is on gross income, not profit.

United States. The IRS says self-employment tax applies if "Your net earnings from self-employment (excluding church employee income) were $400 or more", and that "The self-employment tax rate is 15.3%" (IRS). The IRS also distinguishes a hobby from a business: "People operate a business with the intention of making a profit" (IRS tax tip, archived 2022).

Sales tax and VAT. Selling digital products to consumers in other countries can create VAT or sales tax obligations. This is the main reason we suggest a merchant of record for side projects: Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Gumroad and Polar each present themselves as merchant of record and handle tax collection.

Your employment contract. Read it before you launch. Some contracts claim rights to work you create, especially if it is related to your job or built on company equipment or time. Our read: build on your own laptop, in your own time, on your own accounts, and ask HR in writing if your contract is unclear.

Basic hygiene. Use a separate bank account for project income, keep receipts for hosting and tools, write simple terms and a privacy policy before you take payments, and keep a note of every refund. If you ever want to sell, a buyer will ask for exactly these records.

Mistakes that keep side projects at $0#

• Building for months before asking for money. Put a price on it early. The market's answer is more useful than another feature.
• Choosing ads because they feel easy. At the CPMs ad networks publish, you need tens of thousands of monthly pageviews to earn a modest amount.
• Pricing for yourself, not the buyer. You might not pay $29 for it. A business that saves time with it might.
• Too many models at once. A free tier, a tip jar, a course, a template and a SaaS plan on day one confuses buyers and splits your effort.
• Ignoring the fixed part of fees. A 50¢ fixed fee is 10% of a $5 product before the percentage fee.
• No decision point. Without a 90-day review, side projects drift for years at a few dollars a month. Decide to grow, keep, sell or stop.

When does a side project become a full-time business?#

There is no single revenue number. Our read: the useful signals are recurring revenue that has grown for several months in a row, a channel that brings customers without you pushing every week, and enough savings to cover the gap if revenue dips. Many makers keep the job until side project profit covers a set share of their essential costs, then quit with a date in the calendar rather than on a good week.

If you need money to build before the project pays for itself, look at funding routes that do not need investors before you consider giving up equity: customer pre-sales, grants, revenue-based options and your own savings. Revenue from customers remains the cheapest capital you can get, because it costs you no ownership and proves demand at the same time.

Frequently asked questions#

What is the fastest way to make money from a side project?#

Usually a paid service or a pre-sale, because you can sell to people you already know without building much. For software, the fastest route is a paid plan or one-time licence live within the first month, sold through a merchant of record such as Lemon Squeezy, Paddle or Gumroad so tax is handled for you. Ads and sponsorship are slow because they need traffic first.

How much traffic do I need before ads or sponsorship pay?#

More than most side projects have. EthicalAds says it looks for developer-focused sites doing 50k+ pageviews per month and that publishers generally see around $2.50 per 1,000 pageviews. Carbon starts at 10,000 pageviews a month with a typical CPM of $1.50 to $2.30. On those numbers, 10,000 pageviews a month earns tens of dollars, not hundreds.

Should I charge a subscription or a one-time price for my side project?#

Charge a subscription if each user costs you money every month (servers, sync, AI usage) or if you ship new value continuously. Charge a one-time price if the product runs on the user's device and costs you almost nothing after the sale. Tony Dinh started Typing Mind as a one-time purchase and later added subscription features with ongoing costs, such as cloud sync.

Do I need to register a business or pay tax on side project income?#

Often yes, depending on where you live. In the UK, HMRC's trading allowance covers up to £1,000 a year of trading income, and above that you must register for Self Assessment. In the US, the IRS says self-employment tax applies if your net earnings from self-employment were $400 or more, at a rate of 15.3%. This is general information, not tax advice; check with an accountant.

Can I sell my side project instead of growing it?#

Yes. Marketplaces such as Acquire.com, Flippa and Microns list small software businesses, and Acquire.com and Microns charge a closing or success fee only when the sale completes. Tony Dinh sold Xnapper, a one-time purchase product, for $150,000. Buyers pay for verifiable revenue and low upkeep, so it helps to make money from the project first.

Launch it, then charge for it#

ZeroRaised is a launch site for products built without institutional VC. When your checkout is live, submit your side project for free and put it in front of makers and early adopters. For more guides on earning from what you build without investors, join the ZeroRaised newsletter.

Sources#

All sources last checked 8 Nov 2026.

• Lemon Squeezy pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Lemon Squeezy 2026 update, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Paddle pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Gumroad pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Polar merchant of record fees, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Stripe UK pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• GitHub Docs: sponsorship fees and taxes, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Open Source Collective fees, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Open Collective pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Buy Me a Coffee FAQ, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Patreon pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• EthicalAds for publishers, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Carbon Ads: join, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Acquire.com seller pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Microns pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Flippa pricing, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• GOV.UK: tax-free allowances on property and trading income, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• IRS: self-employment tax, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• IRS: hobby or business (archived tax tip), last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Arvid Kahl: the FeedbackPanda story, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Tony Dinh: $500K milestone, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Tony Dinh: my first million, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Tony Dinh: another 6-figure exit, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Plausible: how we bootstrapped to $500k ARR, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Failory interview with Josh Comeau, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Caleb Porzio: $100,000/yr on GitHub Sponsors, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Sidebar.io sponsor page, last checked 8 Nov 2026
• Bannerbear: journey to $10k MRR, last checked 8 Nov 2026