How I Got to 300,000 Won a Month with a Side Project (2 Years)
It wasn't anything grand—I started really small, and now it brings in about 300,000 won a month. It's not a lot of money, but I thought documenting the process might help someone, so I'm writing this down.
Step 1 - Finding a Problem (6 months)
It started when I released a tool I'd built for myself. At first, nobody used it. Of course.
Step 2 - Free Release and Feedback (6 months)
I posted it in a few communities and gathered about 200 users. The real lesson here was that the core features I had in mind were completely different from what users actually wanted.
Step 3 - Trying to Monetize (6 months)
After giving everything away for free, I made a paid plan, but the conversion rate was under 1%. When I lowered the price and switched to selling pared-down features, it started to rise little by little.
Step 4 - Now
300,000 won a month. After server costs, about 200,000 won is left. I've decided to think of it as earning coffee money.
The bigger gain than money is that I ran the "build-sell-fix cycle" all the way through once. This experience has been quite helpful for my day job too.
10 answers
Agreed, finding the real problem is the hardest part... I've been doing just that for a year now.
If it's 300,000 won a month, honestly, once you factor in ad spend and time, isn't it a net loss? "Earned coffee money" is just a nice way of putting it, and I'm not sure it's meaningful for two years of time. Of course, the experience will stay with you.
I really relate to the part about not even hitting a 1% conversion rate. I also gave everything away for free, then tried charging, and everyone left lol. In the end, the answer was to gate features.