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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

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Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#281

Post by jordiee »

pknerd wrote: post #201
jordiee wrote: post #160

I always make side projects to learn new things and they periodically make me a small amount of money. From most recent to oldest: Https://brand-kit.net Have not made money yet but just launched last month. Basically it is starter business branding at a very affordable price wrapped into a service. Https://scrape.email Launched at the beginning of the year and making around 100/month now. I used common crawl to index…

Where do you host your sites. Are they on cloud?

DigitalOcean managed kubernetes

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#282

Post by antoniomtz »

dguo wrote: post #273

I got tired of reading bad READMEs and made https://www.makeareadme.com/ on a whim. Over the past few years, it has climbed up the Google search rankings. It's usually in the top three hits for "readme" now. I serve developer-focused ads with CodeFund (and Carbon as a backup when CodeFund doesn't have an ad available). I get about $45 in revenue per month. Hosting costs are $0 because it's just a static site served f…

How many visitors do you have per month?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#283

Post by awillen »

biztos wrote: post #239
awillen wrote: post #2

I really don't like talking about my side projects, so I guess they all qualify, but I'm particularly excited about one at the moment. Right now I'm working on a dog treat business - I make a treat mix that you add water to and freeze for a meat-based frozen treat. I feel really good about the product and the packaging design (and this is the first time I've ever worked on any kind of a physical product, so it's real…

I had a look and this might be a completely ignorant suggestion (I don’t have a dog) but to me it was very surprising that dogs would like frozen food, so maybe you should explain that/why they do. Just seemed counterintuitive, I’ve never seen anybody give anything frozen to their dog.

A lot of dogs (mine included) love to crunch on ice cubes. You can also find a lot of recipes for frozen treats online - I started by looking there first, but they were all heavy on ingredients my dog isn't fond of (he really just likes meat).

Might be a geographical/climate thing. I'm in San Diego, so frozen treats are good year round here.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#284

Post by jcun4128 »

dheera wrote: post #260
jcun4128 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of curious how that works, the url does not match what you land on so I'm guessing something intercepts it but it outputs a unique url? It's not just urlencode anyway. Are they precomputed to save resources or something? Pretty neat

Oh it's just a base64-encoded JSON that contains other parameters like the view limits and such. You can base64 decode itself and see.

Oh yeah that's neat, what does the type: 0 mean?

I guess as an aside did you write the plotting part or used some library?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#286

Post by Melting_Harps »

awillen wrote: post #279
Melting_Harps wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now I'm working on a dog treat business Interesting, I'm a chef (ex?) and a friend of mine wanted to start a dog food company in 2016-17 but never got around to it. Your approach looks pretty straight forward, for some reason I thought you'd have to be at a commissary kitchen and have food handlers paperwork on top off all the stuff you mentioned. I'll share your link with them and maybe they get re-intereste…

Yeah, I also thought there would be a whole lot more red tape to get through before I started looking into it. I can't imagine starting a human food company with everything that's required for that. I'm happy to chat with anybody in the space - I'm very early on, so it may be too early for any kind of collaboration, but definitely never hurts to talk to other folks who are interested in this kind of thing.

Awesome!

I'll see what they say and reach out if they still have the motivation.

I'll refer to this post and drop you a line to your gmail account listed on your site of this materializes an take it from there.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#287

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

awillen wrote: post #2

I really don't like talking about my side projects, so I guess they all qualify, but I'm particularly excited about one at the moment. Right now I'm working on a dog treat business - I make a treat mix that you add water to and freeze for a meat-based frozen treat. I feel really good about the product and the packaging design (and this is the first time I've ever worked on any kind of a physical product, so it's real…

I’m fascinated by people who can turn an idea into a product. Do you mind sharing your process?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#288

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

awillen wrote: post #84
hbarka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincere question—how do you handle legal, especially with consumables?

On the safety side, I've had crude analysis done (which is the standard nutritional testing for pet food in the US and was $250 per flavor), and I've consulted with a couple of vets to make sure the product is safe. On the legal side, I've got business insurance, which thankfully isn't that expensive. I've been holding off on forming an LLC since that's gonna run me about a grand here in CA including the cost of sett…

why not an S-corp over an LLC?

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#289

Post by matt_the_bass »

My side projects are primarily for myself meaning:

- intellectually stimulating

- excuse to acquire toys (cnc, miter saw, linoblocks and inking supplies, etc)

- can be used a fun projects/learning experiences for my kids.

My project that has generated the most revenues has been selling (in very low quantities) a limited edition wordclock that I designed and build. Except for the Qlock2 all the wordclocks I’ve seen are diy or compete on cost. Mine is (imho) a high quality art piece. And I price it similarLy to Qlock2 but with a totally different aesthetic. My wordclock making started as presents for friends and family then evolved to a workshop I taught at a local maker space. Some discussion on my Show HN a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950130

Website: finewordclocks.com

Etsy: finewordclocks.etsy.com

I bought a cnc machine for the clocks but most of my cnc work currently is making projects with the kids. Some of them have been refined into other products (Like custom engraved magic marker holders) on my Etsy site.

Lately As a side project to my side project I’ve been making wooden sneeze guard stands. These started by my neighbor who’s a dentist asking me to help him make some. Then I made a few for friends that own a local bakery. Last week I received an order for $1000 worth from an urgent care provider. Feels good to help small businesses reopen post lockdown. Even cooler if they are willing to pay me to help. It also serves as a teaching moment with my kids.

Next is to figure out how to use my maker skills to help BLM movement. I’m still trying to figure that out. Ideas welcome!

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#290

Post by thanksforfish »

ta17711771 wrote: post #186
wetmore wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds unethical

Why?

A product review for something they only heard about? They didn't actually buy the product, try it out. Its lying and misleading visitors.
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