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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?

#211

Post by mailinatorguy »

http://clickrouter.com

I built it because of a need and it's worked fabulously. It's hands down doubled my monthly affiliate revenue (i.e. to be clear, that's in the 4 figures).

I think where it failed however is that it's really hard to explain and I sure haven't cracked it. I get a few signups a day, few use it at all.

It's not for everyone - but it definitely works for me and it would work for anyone in the same boat (someone who needs to affiliatize hundreds/thousands of outgoing links)

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

#212

Post by djstein »

westoncb wrote: post #139

I've maxed out a couple credit cards and spent all my severance pay etc. trying to finish building this '3D abstract visual debugger,' which I'm calling Lucidity [video]: http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd I started working on it in 2014 and it's been on my mind ever since. I applied to YC with it a long time ago (was not accepted, and I can see so much wrong with the application I sent now...) I was laid off in Nove…

While I watched the videos I could not help but be impressed, it looks really great. Just letting you know!

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

#213

Post by devopsproject »

Mz wrote: post #202

I have had a bunch of little websites that didn't do much of anything. Some problems that have plagued my projects (especially health-related ones): 1) Credibility. I am getting well when the world says that cannot be done. Most people don't want to believe this at all. So I get called crazy, a charlatan, etc. 2) Inherent monetization challenges in the problem space. I am convinced that part of what is wrong with mod…

> I am getting well when the world says that cannot be done

No one is saying this. The "Health and Wellness" industry is booming

> I am convinced that part of what is wrong with modern medicine is that money gets made off of treatment, not off of positive health outcomes

Crazy charlatans want treatment, preferably expensive and\or ongoing

> I'm a woman ... I don't know how to do business ... I'm very eye catching

I'd start by scrubbing your profiles. The first thing I read about you was about being homeless, peeing on a tree, and unicorn farts. Maybe it is satire but you should make it easy for the people doing business with you sort fact from fiction.

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

#214

Post by lalo2302 »

ianleeclark wrote: post #4

I have a project which may never generate revenue, despite the fact I spent 2 months after hours working on it. I did a dumb thing and dove directly into the project without first finding a fit or customer base for it. More or less, it's a scheduling application that allows a user to set when they're open and allow anyone to book that time for however much the original scheduler valued that slot of their schedule. It…

You have a huge market for this. Doctors, accountants, barbers, hairstylers, every occupation that needs an appointment could use this. This replaces the person whom answers the phone so the business can keep rolling.

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

#215

Post by jlev »

mod wrote: post #198

I built a SMS marketing web-app. It's basically a contact-management and mass messenger, nothing fancy. Heroku/django/twilio/stripe stack. People can sign up for your list, and you send them deals or events or whatever as regularly as you feel like. I built it for a niche that is not very tech-savvy, and largely couldn't be targeted by SEO, because my partner was going to handle sales. The partner faded away almost i…

There's a need in the non-profit space for something that does this well and is relatively cheap per-message. Big players like MobileCommons and RevolutionMessaging charge 1k+ per month for SMS blast capabilities based on list size. If you have an API or the ability to import/export CSVs you could probably compete at the low end of the market.

Or make it open source?

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

#216

Post by weaksauce »

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…

I could see that being pretty successful if you finish it. good luck!

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

#217

Post by snowwrestler »

hendzen wrote: post #181
tomschlick wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right. What would you see as fair pricing for say the large plan which is currently $10/mo?

I would potentially consider per-domain pricing. $5 dollar/month/domain for under 100 domains, $2.5 dollar/month/domain for under 1000 domains, and if people want to use more than 1000 domains they should contact you and work out a deal specific to them.

Price tranches are good because they make expenses easily predictable while still providing some operational flexibility. That's especially good for enterprise customers with finance teams.

They can also make good money if you set the boundaries right. If a lot of your customers have ~30 domains, a boundary at 25 might make you more money than per-domain pricing.

I would also look to see if you can add failover as a feature. With the recent DDOS attacks against DNS providers, a lot of companies are considering failover planning for DNS who previously ignored that. To really hit big bucks with this, you will need to integrate with bigger DNS providers like Dyn, UltraDNS, etc.

I agree that you're not charging enough. Keep the free level but then I would charge at least a dollar per domain.

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

#218

Post by kennycarruthers »

KingMob wrote: post #154
kennycarruthers wrote: post #65

Fileloupe for Mac ( https://www.fileloupe.com ) Videoloupe for Mac ( https://www.videoloupe.com ) These are both macOS applications that have yet to reach enough in sales to be sustainable. However, I work on them full-time in hopes of reaching sustainability in the near future. "Why do you think it hasn't been as successful as you thought it would be..." Exposure and importance. Getting exposure for a macOS applicat…

I can see how the issue of importance would be relevant. Is there some feature you can add, and then advertise, that would solve a burning pain for your target audience?

I believe so, which is why I'm working on a version 2.0 of each application.

In the case of Fileloupe, version 1.0 is "just" a file viewer at the end of the day. It's a really fast file viewer with some neat features, but it's still just a file viewer and thus it has to compete against everything from the macOS Finder to Adobe Bridge and Lightroom.

Fileloupe 2.0 adds the ability to create libraries that are persistent across app launches. Photographers have a dozen applications out there that let them organize their photos but there aren't many applications for organizing other types of media that use a similar system of albums, ratings, color labels and flags.

For example, videographers have few options for cataloguing and organizing their raw footage outside of the Finder and professional media suites. Fileloupe 2.0 will allow them to organize their video files in a similar way to how a photographer might organize their photos. (And it's not just applicable to videos. You could organize graphics, PDFs, documents and just about anything else.)

I've never really had a macOS user tell me they were desperately in need of a fast file viewer, but I have had many tell me that they want a better way to organize their files and media. I'm hoping to solve "that problem" with Fileloupe 2.0 and thus make it a much more essential application for a set of users.

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

#219

Post by kjksf »

ghettosoak wrote: post #106

http://lickth.is/new I built the first version of LICK in 2015 because I was frustrated with the (then) state of distributed note taking. And because I wanted Sublime Text-like editing capabilities. I... didn't really have a business plan, but I guess I had hoped to retrofit features into later versions. Being a (not) starving bootstrapping developer filled a fun space in my life, but then life got in the way. I made…

As a fellow note-taking application maker (https://quicknotes.io), a friendly advice: you need a better landing page.

Show me how it looks before asking for signing up (screenshots).

Better yet, have a demo with publicly visible notes.

Reduce signing up friction by allowing twitter/google/github/facebook logins.

In "what is this" you talk a lot about you and technologies used. People don't care about that. Write about how lickth.is is better/unique than other options.

Read https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/landing-pages for short yet comprehensive tutorial on good landing pages.

Also the name is bad and tagline both icky and not making much sense.

I'm not saying that will change much. As I've learned the hard way, note taking apps without clear unique selling point are a hard sell those days.

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

#220

Post by lalo2302 »

jesses wrote: post #182

https://www.gigalixir.com is a platform-as-a-service for Elixir apps. It only just launched a few months ago, but so far hasn't generated a profit. I spent 6 months building it and still hope it may take off as Elixir gains in popularity.

This looks awesome. I found the pricing confusing tho, it is hard to estimate how much it will cost me.
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