$1000/Month Passive Income From 2 Simple Chrome Extensions

Hacker News has a thread like this every year 👇

• Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2024

💬 One commenter…

I made a couple browser extensions that make over $500/month each.

The key seems to be naming your extension after high-volume search terms and getting good reviews on the chrome store (and obviously having an extension that works well and solves a common problem on major websites).

The commenter is Glen Chiacchieri.

🧐 I found these extensions listed under his name on the Chrome Web Store…

• Delete All Google Photos Chrome Extension
• Bulk Delete Reddit Posts & Comments History
• Autodelete History by Keywords or URL

The first two have a paywall. You get unlimited use of the tool after a one-time payment 💵

Back to Glen’s HN comment…

I’m extremely biased… but I think browser extensions are a pretty neat way to break into indie hacking. They cost nothing to run because they’re hosted by extension stores.

They’re often faster and easier to build than whole apps because you can just use them to fix or modify existing websites rather than create your own from scratch.

They can get organic traffic from extension stores, especially if they’re well-named.

The main piece that was a pain in the ass for me was adding payments, so I made a service to do it (https://extensionpay.com), and now I can just focus on making the extensions work well.

Because of all my previous work I was able to build and submit my last extension (making over $500/month now) to the chrome store in four hours — no joke!

I reckon there’s lots of money to be made with utility tools that people would need once in a while and are happy to pay a small fee for access.

💡 To come up with some ideas…

1. Look for a problem you face regularly while using Chrome.
2. Use keyword tools to find high search, low competition keywords related to that problem.

To actually build the extension, hire a developer on Upwork or use ChatGPT to build it yourself.

For a small extension, there wouldn’t be a lot of code involved.

🤖 I asked ChatGPT to sketch out a plan for building an extension to delete Reddit posts – like the one Glen is earning $500/month from – and it estimated I’d ultimately need 270 to 570 lines of code.

Even $100/month from an extension like that would be a solid ROI 💪

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