I took a side project that I built for my own needs (ArchiveBox) and just built it up as an open source project until it was useful to other people too.
At first it seemed like a trivial tool that was just a thin wrapper around wget, so I didn't think anyone else would want to use it, but as I started adding features traction grew and random contributors came out of the woodwork and started helping.
Monetized through consulting, and the consulting money is paying enough to scale the buiness a bit. Next step is releasing a "Pro" version as a SaaS with some fo the features that I cant open source anyway (e.g. CAPTCHA-solving, bot-detection avoidance, etc.).
At first it seemed like a trivial tool that was just a thin wrapper around wget, so I didn't think anyone else would want to use it, but as I started adding features traction grew and random contributors came out of the woodwork and started helping.
Monetized through consulting, and the consulting money is paying enough to scale the buiness a bit. Next step is releasing a "Pro" version as a SaaS with some fo the features that I cant open source anyway (e.g. CAPTCHA-solving, bot-detection avoidance, etc.).