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Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#121

Post by seltzered_ »

Thimble for Mac ( https://thimblemac.com )

It's a plugin to bring gesture-shortcuts to graphic design tools (Sketch, Photoshop, etc.). I've worked on it in bursts of my spare time for a few years, and took a break from development the past several months. At some point I started calling it more of a 'passion project' because I just really wanted to see other forms of UI in the world outside of the sandboxes of gaming, and a hope that it'd maybe serve as some portfolio piece in trying to work as a software developer/designer.

At the moment I'm trying to motivate myself to work on it again, partly because even in a touch-bar age I still find myself using it. Yet at the same time need to figure out how to get it past a beta phase and to a point where I'm more comfortable marketing it.

The hardest thing is trying to find time/motivation, it's easy to endure isolation and keep the day job when you're excited with the product and haven't gotten feedback yet. It gets vastly harder once you start wanting more of a social life again and the numbers so far haven't made it seem like a product worth going full-time on.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#122

Post by tmaly »

I built https://bestfoodnearme.com with the hope of making it easier to decide where to eat. I am still trying to find product market fit and iterate on improvements.

I think it has not found much traction as I have to prime the pump in terms of content. Finding the right audience also would help.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#123

Post by roryisok »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #97
konschubert wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the account you're using is not a throwaway, but you could create an actual throwaway to post it :)

I've been told this before :) My thought was to throw it away initially but I have so much karma on this account I can't bare to part with it.

So don't! If you create a second account for your business identity, nobody will know. Keep business and personal accounts separate. Neither is throwaway!

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#124

Post by jmcphers »

brianolson wrote: post #70

I built a personal data self tracking app (quantified-self stuff) and I still use it but no one was nerdy in quite the way I was to want to track things similarly. https://uyday.com/

You might dig Daytum: https://daytum.com/

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#125

Post by gh1 »

ineptech wrote: post #89

I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form. Lessons learned: * I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design" * Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal…

Congratulations on making this awesome fake website. I had a shit ton of fun going through it. You'd be a rockstar copywriter, if you are not one already.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#126

Post by wunderlust »

Budgeting tips (cash income) back when I was a restaurant server was hard, so I recently built https://www.tipoutapp.com to make this easier.

It works well (I think), but I haven't gotten around to marketing it yet, so no one really knows it exists.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#127

Post by roryisok »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #29

http://lookwork.com is a "visual RSS reader," subscribe to RSS feeds minus the words. Sort of a mood/inspiration feed for artists and graphic designers. First launched free around 2012 I think. Then there was a relaunch where we tried to go subscriber-based. At the time, the only online payment options were Paypal (shudder) and Amazon (a mess to configure). The subscription model flopped, so we relaunched free again.…

Ok that sounds amazing. I'm finding all kinds of treasure in this thread

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#128

Post by corv »

seltzered_ wrote: post #121

Thimble for Mac ( https://thimblemac.com ) It's a plugin to bring gesture-shortcuts to graphic design tools (Sketch, Photoshop, etc.). I've worked on it in bursts of my spare time for a few years, and took a break from development the past several months. At some point I started calling it more of a 'passion project' because I just really wanted to see other forms of UI in the world outside of the sandboxes of gaming…

The way your product is presented on your site is excellent!

Take heed people, this is how you explain a product.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#129

Post by bdukic »

roryisok wrote: post #115
bdukic wrote: post #8

I built Thrail ( https://thrail.io ) 6 months ago wanting to solve my own difficulty to find and book quality outdoors activities in a certain area, especially when coming to a new place (tourism or recent relocation). I think there are multiple reasons why it wasn't successful as I believed it might be, most importantly because I built something without first researching the market enough, and failure to do so got m…

Marketing is hard. Is there some kind of service out there where marketers will help you sell your app for a share of revenue? I'm not trolling here, just in case I've missed a really obvious one

I haven't come across anything similiar to what you're suggesting, although I'd probably be very interested in opportunities like that.

The closest thing I found to something like that was Simbi (https://simbi.com) but I hesitated to make an actual step forward as I never heard or read of anyone going down that route and wasn't sure if that was the "right way" to do it.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#130

Post by scottLobster »

codazoda wrote: post #36

Oh, boy, lots of them!!! I'm good at "releasing". I'm not good at deciding what to build (demand) and I'm not good at the marketing side. My latest project helps you get more followers and increase user engagement on Instagram. It's a Google Chrome extension called Magis. It's currently bringing in $30 per month with $25 per month in fee's for the payment solution. Yay $5 profit; if you don't count my time. https://c…

Yeah I can see fauxbuy losing customers. I'm not going put a "buy" button on a product page that doesn't actually allow people to buy said product... what would I tell them? "Smile you're on candid webpage"? "Thanks for your interest, we look forward to giving you this product in several months!"?

If the product is ready to ship, then ship/market it and see how it does. If it's not ready to ship, then do what research you can to make sure it's not absolutely stupid and then build it and find out. At the end of the day the market is unpredictable past the broad strokes.

Sorry to shit all over your idea, something that would help validate prior to shipment would be nice. I'm not even morally opposed to the idea of pitching people a fake product and seeing if they click, you'd just need a way to separate the fake product from the real thing you're building and hope they come back for the real deal, and that could be tricky.

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