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How much does it cost to build and run a profitable side project?

Engin Arslan on December 26, 2024

One of the things that I was curious about when starting to build my SaSS side project was the potential costs involved. I had no idea if it would ...
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Austin

Thank you for sharing such a clear and detailed breakdown! The cost insights are really helpful for anyone considering a similar side project, and the product looks great. It’s always nice to see this level of transparency. Wishing you continued success with Heuristica!

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Engin Arslan

Thanks so much, Austin! Glad you found it helpful.

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Kathan Mehta • Edited

great post dudeee. how many views, active users, paid users you have for Heuristica ?

what's the conversion rate?

other than email + SEO/SMO what marketing channels you played with ? which one worked best ?

i am building Animator Studio - animator.studio/

haven't found PMF yet. would love to know your POV .. haha

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Engin Arslan

numbers I feel comfortable sharing:

  • around 600 daily unique views
  • around 2000 monthly active users
  • no other marketing other than SEO so far
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Engin Arslan

animator studio is looking very nice! I actually recently purchased a similar tool

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Ricky Wanga

I hate to be that guy, but many costs could be easily reduced/optimized by opting for a vps, you could still share some services across many of your apps and retain scalability by using the equivalent open-source and self-hosted technologies.
But I guess this way there is less time spent on setting services up and DX could be initially much faster, and I recognize it also as something of value.

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Engin Arslan

Makes sense! My core competency is in building the product so it isn’t optimal for me to spend time on cost cutting. However, this might start making sense down the line when the product becomes more stable and more costly.

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Luis E. Pison S

Thank you! This is something that has always been on my mind since I started learning. I never thought there would be so much to it.

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Engin Arslan

Yep, some aspects of running a website are not initially obvious, like monitoring or analytics. Hopefully, I was able to shed some light on what is involved with running commercial projects.

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Oscar

Thanks for sharing! I've started hosting my own side project, and it's nice to see that I'm not overpaying for anything.

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Engineering -Tunester

Aws offers $300 in free credits for hobbyist/experimentation

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Stefan Neidig

Very insightful. Thanks for sharing and also thanks for building this. I found discovered heuristica a long while ago and use it on and off ever since.

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Engin Arslan

Awesome, thanks for being a user!

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Rajinder Yadav

This is very timely for me, thanks for sharing Engin!

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Engin Arslan

Glad you like it!

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Adam

Thanks for this breakdown - really helpful! Ahrefs is about 25% of your costs. Is it worth the costs to get more customers?

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Engin Arslan

Honestly, it might not be worth it since it doesn’t exactly translate to paid users. However, SEO is the only marketing channel that I use so I don’t mind spending a bit extra.

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Michael Spragg

Really appreciate you sharing this breakdown, thank you.

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Anna Villarreal

Thanks for sharing! I was wondering what other fees I may bump into.