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https://blog.cloudflare.com/zero-trust-warp-with-a-masque/
1•sawoo•4m ago•0 comments

$Lei – Aesthetic Computer

https://prompt.ac/$lei
1•justanothersys•16m ago•1 comments

Verify Identities During Self-Service Registration

https://fusionauth.io/blog/identity-verification-before-registration
1•mooreds•19m ago•0 comments

Fast and cheap bulk storage: using LVM to cache HDDs on SSDs

https://quantum5.ca/2025/05/11/fast-cheap-bulk-storage-using-lvm-to-cache-hdds-on-ssds/
2•todsacerdoti•19m ago•0 comments

Measuring Engineering

https://fffej.substack.com/p/measuring-engineering
1•mooreds•20m ago•0 comments

The Electron E1 Processor

https://www.efficient.computer/announcing-electron-e1-processor
1•bane•20m ago•1 comments

Smallest particulate matter sensor revolutionizes air quality measurement

https://www.bosch-sensortec.com/news/worlds-smallest-particulate-matter-sensor-bmv080.html
1•Liftyee•23m ago•0 comments

An Interview with Alex Ward

https://ciamweekly.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-alex-ward
1•mooreds•24m ago•0 comments

eSports for Engineers: course syllabus bridging gaming and STEM education [pdf]

https://github.com/sim-museum/esports-for-engineers/blob/master/files/syllabusFor_eSportsForEngineers.pdf
1•fifteenth•25m ago•0 comments

Voice AI for medical/premed students

https://www.codyliu.com/blog/rt-anki-voice-flashcards
1•codexliu•46m ago•0 comments

The Sputnik vs. Deep Seek Moment: The Answers

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/07/the-sputnik-vs-deep-seek-moment-the-answers.html
1•ksec•50m ago•0 comments

Yixiang 16kWh Battery for $1,899? What in the world [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bShGUPU3TQ
3•xbmcuser•55m ago•1 comments

Chat Test Reporter – Google Chat Alerts for Test Runs in CI

https://chat-test-reporter.vercel.app/
1•jjuliobit•56m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Open-source "God mode killer" IGA in Keycloak

https://github.com/tide-foundation/keycloak-IGA
2•SaltNHash•58m ago•3 comments

Exosphere: A simple centralized patch management and reporting tool for Unix sy

https://github.com/mrdaemon/exosphere
1•todsacerdoti•1h ago•0 comments

Thinking of an Animal: the classic guessing game

https://thepottshouse.org/paul/portfolio/Thinking_of_an_Animal.html
1•vitalnodo•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Claude Sub Agents with powerful orchestration

https://github.com/vijaythecoder/awesome-claude-agents
1•vijaytupakula•1h ago•1 comments

Doge uses AI tool aiming to cut 50% of federal regulations under Trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/07/26/doge-ai-tool-cut-regulations-trump/
2•trauco•1h ago•0 comments

New AI architecture is 100x faster in reasoning with just 1k training examples

https://venturebeat.com/ai/new-ai-architecture-delivers-100x-faster-reasoning-than-llms-with-just-1000-training-examples/
2•handfuloflight•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: The Aria Programming Language

https://github.com/egranata/aria
2•egranata_aria•1h ago•2 comments

Shelter VR Club

https://www.twitch.tv/sheltervrclub
1•hnuser123456•1h ago•1 comments

Exploiting Zapier's Gmail auto-reply agent for data exfiltration

https://repello.ai/blog/exploiting-zapier-s-gmail-auto-reply-agent-for-data-exfiltration
1•birdculture•1h ago•0 comments

Hunyan World 1.0 – The First Open-Source 3D World Generation Model

https://3d-models.hunyuan.tencent.com/world/
2•hnhn34•1h ago•0 comments

Radxa Launches M.2 AI Accelerator with Axera AX8850 and 24 Tops NPU

https://linuxgizmos.com/radxa-launches-m-2-ai-accelerator-with-axera-ax8850-and-24-tops-npu/
4•xxkimirkn•1h ago•0 comments

Anti-obesity medications can normalize testosterone levels in men

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-07-anti-obesity-medications-testosterone-men.html
3•PaulHoule•1h ago•0 comments

Gulls are intelligent, vital birds that deserve our protection, not scorn (2024)

https://www.salon.com/2024/10/20/gulls-are-intelligent-vital-birds-that-deserve-our-protection-not-scorn/
3•pseudolus•1h ago•0 comments

A Python dict that can report which keys you did not use

https://www.peterbe.com/plog/a-python-dict-that-can-report-which-keys-you-did-not-use
2•gilad•1h ago•0 comments

rqlite – Highly-Available, Distributed Relational Database Built on SQLite

https://rqlite.io/
2•gilad•1h ago•0 comments

Meta AI needs login from now on

1•nothrowaways•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: LunaSVG – C++ Library for Rendering and Manipulating SVG Documents

https://github.com/sammycage/lunasvg/releases/tag/v3.4.0
3•sammycage•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Why did my free tools site with 600 tools make almost $0 after 2 years?

9•KodyBerns99•9h ago
I launched a free tools site called Kody Tools (https://www.kodytools.com/) almost two years ago as a side hustle. It features over 600 tools, a clean and responsive design, and I invested a lot of effort into promotion. I assumed monetizing with ads or selling ad space would be straightforward.

But despite all that, it only pulls in about 7-10k visitors a month, and the revenue is practically zero. Hosting costs me around $20-$40 monthly, making me seriously reconsider my approach.

I’m curious to hear how you’d tackle this kind of situation. What worked for you when monetizing a free tools site without driving away users or ruining the experience?

Any tips or strategies would be hugely appreciated!

Comments

dotcoma•9h ago
What kind of ‘ads’ are you trying to use to monetise it ?
KodyBerns99•9h ago
adsene and affiliate banners
dotcoma•9h ago
That’s why!
dotcoma•9h ago
Have you not learned from Google and Facebook?

You need to sell space as “promoted tool” for a week.

You also need more traffic. Do you have returning users or not ?

AznHisoka•9h ago
Imagine if you owned a business and you had to pay $1000 to advertise on your site. What type of business would you need to own to make it worthwhile for you?
benoau•9h ago
Make an app-version of the website with ads + pay-to-remove-ads and focus the website on promoting that.

Make it easier to share results with people so they visit your website too, this would need presentation changes to emphasize the result like looking at your amortization calculator the answer is just a plain number tucked over to the side of the page even if I could share my calculation with someone I'd probably have to tell them where to look.

KodyBerns99•9h ago
Thanks for that idea, i really appreciate that.
benoau•9h ago
Also allow customization, most people probably want specific tools repeatedly nobody will want everything or to wade through it all. You could do this through browser storage mechanisms pretty easily but it also gives you a reason to provide accounts, then you could offer groups shared space for the tools they need and the answers/results they need, and charge subscriptions too.
747-8F•8h ago
www.kodytools.com is neat. Could you please have a 'daylight' background as well?
lordkrandel•7h ago
1) What kind of business would advertise on your site? What kind of ad would you click if you were a visitor? 2) Are you relying on ad space on a website in 2025? Google and social media own the space. You wanna ad where everybody's at 3) Make premium tools 4) these kind of tools are one off, you almost never come back 5) it's almost as hard to find a tool you need than solving the original problem yourself. Maybe an AI/tags searching tools for problems could help. "Hey, do you have something for x?" "Yes here: y"
tacostakohashi•5h ago
I think online tools is not a bad idea, but a lot of the tools there are low quality and gimmicky, like anything that can be done in your head, or using a pocket calculator / trivial spreadsheet:

https://www.kodytools.com/commission-calculator https://www.kodytools.com/half-your-age-plus-seven-calculato... etc...

Perhaps it would be better to split out the financial tools (bonds, cagr, interest) from the programmer/text tools stuff.

I do actually think online / browser based tools that people hit via search for very occasional / niche uses is a good idea, e.g.:

https://everytimezone.com/ http://gc.kls2.com/

For these, they do non-trivial things, and are also a combination of a tool / logic plus some embedded reference data (timezones / DST, airport locations, etc) - I think that's the key. Maybe try fewer, higher quality tools with dedicated domain names instead of quantity.

bhag2066•2h ago
Cool site. Have you considered building your own paid tools that align with the problem customers are solving with your free tools, and keeping all the advertising slots for yourself?

For example, you would own Focus Flux (the advertiser I see on the site) and use Kody Tools as lead gen for it.