This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Built in a weekend used by thousands. That's what we're going to title today's throwback Thursday episode. And maybe by way of introduction, I could say sometimes it pays to build something that is just barely good enough. It doesn't have to be perfect or amazing. This story comes from a developer in Seattle, Washington who had an itch to scratch. He wanted a better way to highlight
and save notes from online articles. There were a number of tools out there, but he didn't like them for whatever reason. They didn't have the features he wanted or they were expensive or just not quite right. So he built his own Chrome extension. And if you're not familiar, a Chrome extension is like a little tool you can add to your browser that can do different things. There are
tools to help you find coupons. There are tools to help you schedule. And in this case, Brian built this tool to help save online articles or quotes and such. And it wasn't elegant, it wasn't pretty, but it worked and it saved people time. So he uploaded it without much of a plan. And within
a few months, he had thousands of users. Even better, a small number of those users started paying for a premium version. So let's hear more about how this came to be and what we might take from it. A side project built over a single weekend turned into a surprisingly steady income stream. I'm going to pass the mic to Brian. I'll be back at the end with a quick wrap up.
I am Brian and I live in Seattle. I'm a front end developer by day, but I've always loved building weird little tools on nights and weekends. A couple of years ago, I was deep in the productivity rabbit hole and reading a ton of long form articles, blog posts, research, stuff like that. I wanted an easy way to highlight text, save it and revisit later. But the options out there either required a subscription or came with 10 features I didn't need. So I built my own Chrome extension. It took one weekend. It was ugly. I called it
quick highlight and used bright yellow, just like old school highlighters. The core feature was dead simple. Highlight any text on a webpage, right click to save it. It automatically stored your highlights in a Google sheet. That's it. No fancy interface, no account setup, but it worked.
I posted about it on a Reddit thread and dropped the link in a productivity Slack group I was in. A few hundred people installed it that week. Over the next few months, the user base kept growing. One thousand, then two thousand, then five thousand. I think people liked how lightweight it was. I get emails like this is Jakey as hell, but exactly what I needed.
Once it crossed 3000 users, I added a premium version for $4 a month or $25 a year. That unlocked a few bonus features, tagging and categorizing highlights, exporting to Notion or Obsidian in dark mode. Most people are happy with the free version, but about one to two percent of users convert to the paid plan. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it's consistent, and after stripe fees and taxes, I'm pulling in 400 to 600 dollars a month from it. I still don't advertise it. I've posted in a few productivity newsletters and forums, but it mostly grows through
word of mouth and the Chrome Web Store. I've also had a couple of inbound emails from EdTech companies and solo newsletter writers asking for white label versions. I haven't said yes yet, but it might be down the line. Here's the thing. I never expected this to make money. I just wanted
it to exist, and even though the code is messy and the UI still looks like 2014, people keep using it. I'll probably rebuild it someday, but until then, the janky version is doing just fine. Hey, thanks, Brian. I love the story. I love the illustration as well of saying you don't have to build a perfect product. You built something useful. In fact, something useful is probably better
than something that's really fancy and has nice graphics and just feels really great but doesn't actually solve a problem or isn't actually something that people really want. I think it's so important to understand what people are looking for and how you can make their lives better or easier or simpler in some way and then focus entirely on that or at least focus 80 percent on that. Listeners, let me know what you think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of thousands of episodes. This was episode 3211, 3,211. You can download or stream every single episode from the complete archives eight years so far at sidehustleschool.com or subscribe or follow wherever you get your shows, also completely free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening
to Side Hustle School from the Onward Project.
