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Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#291

Post by heywire »

gottebp wrote: post #32

Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders. The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I co…

I use a super cheap hand grinder I bought off amazon (the stainless steel one that there are 100 different variations of on amazon). There is a plastic part that breaks after about 6 months of usage. Someone modeled and uploaded a replacement piece to Thingiverse. The grinder is cheap enough that it is disposable, but since it is so easy to print a replacement piece with my $179 3D printer, I haven’t needed to throw it away. I hope that at some point 3D printing becomes more accessible and affordable, and with more materials, that more and more products are repaired instead of replaced.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#293

Post by Sileni »

jlmendezbonini wrote: post #92
josephmxm wrote: post #63

Back in college I started Alphalux, A men’s accessories mostly bracelets business. I was a full time college student and was working at a pharmaceutical company full time. I would custom order bracelets at Alibaba with my logo on it. Would pay wholesale price of $0.75 per bracelet and would sell it for $10-$30 dollars on Etsy and my website. It was fun while it lasted. I was making $3-4K a month until dropshipers rui…

Would you mind sharing how dropshipers ruined it? I’m not a dropshipper myself, but I know a couple of people who have gotten into it.

Not OP, but I've done some work in the space. The market is just saturated now. It takes such little effort to start a dropshipping "business" that unless you have a really unique angle or spend absurd amounts on marketing, you'll probably make somewhere in the range of peanuts to beer money.

Even if you do find a successful niche market, it won't take long for a low budget clone to jump in, which invalidates a lot of the up front work in marketing and product validation.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#294

Post by jsf01 »

asciident wrote: post #270
fabricexpert wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems a tad unethical

I was actually thinking about ethics a lot while I was doing this little project. By ethics do you mean morals or something different? What framework would you suggest for determining the ethics/morals of doing something like this, where we're playing by the legal rules by trying to optimize for our own benefit?

Think about it like this. The logical conclusion of people acting like you did is that credit card issuers increase interest rates to make up for their losses. That makes life worse for everyone but the people exploiting the loophole. You’re no different from the people who exaggerate their losses to insurance companies in order to claim extra insurance money. Because of them, premiums have gone up. You might see yourself as some kind of Robinhood figure, but ultimately it’s going to be the other people participating in your network that suffer.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#295

Post by kbenson »

tyingq wrote: post #245
holoduke wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am into older Maserati's. Own a couple of them. I do a lot of manufacturing myself. 3d printing, cncing. The problem is that whenever I design a replacement panel, wishbones or various other stuff and try to sell them commercialy I will get sued by the original Maserati company. On a low scale it's fine, but you will never get a living out of it. The only parts which are in a gray area are rims, exhausts, filters,…

Interesting. I suppose you could stick with manufacturers that either don't care, or are long defunct.

If we had a right to repair law, presumably it would allow third parties to make replacements when the original manufacturer lo linger was.

Even without that, I'm kind of surprised they sue. Are they patenting each part? Is there case law that covers this? Or is it just a case of bringing a suit to scare people I sto stopping? I wonder.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#296

Post by clubm8 »

Kasoha wrote: post #162
throwawayman194 wrote: post #128

Throwaway because I don't want to risk losing my job for asking this. Is all the comments here only from men, or are there any women here who make money from side projects?

site is called hacker news. guess the number of females here.

With such a warm welcome, I'm shocked more "females" don't post herel

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#297

Post by pletnes »

gottebp wrote: post #46
october_sky wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clever. Do you have the intention to make more replacement parts for other products?

I would like to if time permits. There is a huge untapped market here. The difficulty is in locating the parts that are both unavailable and 3D printable. I keep it in the back of my head as I repair other items. So much expensive stuff ends up in a landfill over a tiny part. I could see someday having a github project for replacement parts, each one iterating and getting better an better -- far beyond the original.

Did you check out grabcad? Kinda sorta like github, but for things rather than code.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#298

Post by AlchemistCamp »

I've got a few:

- I've made stickers for the LINE chat app

- I have various affiliate links in my old blog

- I have some ebooks that I wrote years ago

- I currently make screencasts to teach people the Elixir programming language (https://alchemist.camp)

The revenue on all of these things except for the screencasts is gradually falling to zero. The screecasting revenue has roughly quadrupled from October through March (~6.8)% weekly growth rate), but still not quite up to $1k/month.

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