How I Got My First Payment from a Side Project in 6 Months (Long Post)
I started a web service last September, building it in my spare time after work, and last week I got my first paid purchase. The amount was only enough for a few cups of coffee, but just reaching the checkout page felt meaningful.
Here are some things I learned while building it.
1. Keep the scope small, no matter what
At first I designed a service with 12 features, but I cut my losses after three weeks. What ultimately survived was a two-feature version. I kept asking, "Would this be totally useless without this?" and most features turned out to be unnecessary.
2. The faster you ship, the better
While it only ran locally, I got zero feedback. After I deployed it and started sharing the link around, reports of weird bugs poured in, and all of that became material for improvements.
3. Marketing is genuinely hard
- Posting in communities: There was some reaction, but almost no conversion
- Search traffic: After about a month, it started to grow little by little
- Sharing with acquaintances: It ended up being one-off
In the end, search traffic works best for me right now. Writing a few blog posts did the most work.
4. Adding payments was the scariest part
I was scared of handling personal information, so it took me two weeks just to integrate a payment gateway (PG). But once I actually did it, the documentation was good, and it wasn't as terrible as I'd first imagined.
My next goal is to generate about 50,000 KRW a month in steady income. I just need five more paying users, but that will probably be the hardest part. If any of you have monetized a side project, I'd love to know which channel was most effective.
7 answers
I totally agree that search traffic is a real lifesaver. I used to post diligently in communities too, but it only brought traffic and zero purchases. But one blog post I wrote by targeting search keywords like “how to use it in this situation” has been pulling in traffic for three months now.
Congrats on your first payment! I started around a similar time, and when the first payment came in, I looked at the notification three times lol. After that, it went from 0 won and slowly started going up. But the real hurdle is what comes next. It’s about how you get the second and third paying customers for a service that got one person to pay... By any chance, what did you send to your first paying customer as a guide/onboarding message? I just sent a thank-you email, but I kind of regret that.