I created a service for behavioral and cognitive changes (http://willyoudidyou.com). Spent many months working on it, had a handful of beta users, but traction has not been there overall - despite pushing in various marketing efforts.
Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
331–340 of 476 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#332I got fed up with Evernote Web and built my own:
It used to have a payment form but I felt like it wasn't polished enough, so now it just says to email me for a (free) account.
I still use it every day for my own notes, so I suppose it was a success in that regard. I've also got a few friends on it too.
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#333I built https://bugdedupe.com/ last year- the idea was to make it easy to remove duplicate bug reports by using some academic research I worked on involving machine learning. The system worked well, but I struggled to find users, and it died a sad, lonely, death.
Who did you shop it around to? This sounds like a really useful idea; I've seen piles of duplicate bug reports arise when a common issue hits many people at once. One suggestion (if you didn't already try this): you could go to major Linux distributions and projects that get a huge number of bug reports, ask nicely if you could try it over their bug reports, see if you can get good results, and offer to provide it to…
That's a really good idea. I'll try that.
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#334I 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…
For those checking out the ineptech site, please don't miss the poetry compiler joke! It's the bit I'm the most proud of. It's in an unlinkable modal so actually I'll just paste it here: Upon a stack of bits, about so tall, // Boolean[] isprime = new Boolean[n]; just think, O traveller, what we could do // Arrays.fill(isprime, true); if every other bit was set to false // for (int i = 4; i (You may have figured out t…
Hahah ! I am looking to incorporate this in my code now with due credit :P
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#335I'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…
You could make some fun tutorial videos with this; I'm thinking visualizations of how basic data structures work, tree balancing, linked lists, hash tables internals, perhaps sorting algorithms, git commands...
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want me to have a look and get so thoughts out of seo perspective, let me know.
cool, it's http://colormind.io here's what my search console looks like right now: http://imgur.com/a/kWkUJ
Oh cool, you built that? Been in my bookmarks. It's really nice!
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd maybe look at the UI of your website, it looks too boilerplate or wordpress-y. Maybe remove the pink and just make the content fill the rest of the page for a start. I like the premise but the website has a gut "cheap"feeling.
Second this. PLEASE get rid of the pink and just have content fill. That pink is nauseatingly bright and screams "leave now!" Not as bad on mobile because it's so thin, but on a desktop with wide screen it is not ok. I don't usually bikeshed on layout (not a graphic designer), but I am begging you please.
Fair enough, I am not a graphic designer and I am using Angular Material colors in the app - I thought they looked interesting enough that it might get some attention so I used them there - and then carried that over into the landing/help site.
Sounds like I am doing it wrong though :) thanks for the feedback
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#338Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#339I optimize my spending heavily around cashback credit cards. I wanted a way to make it easier for me and my wife to keep track of which cards we should be using, so I built CashbackOptimizer[0] and iOS[1] and Android[2] apps for it.
I've had lots of side projects fail like this one, and I am starting to realize they are all for similar reasons:
1) Too specific of an idea. After I built this, I found that not many people cared about optimizing cashback, or at least not enough to want to invest time in an app or website for tracking it.
2) Poor UI. I'm not great at UI, and I haven't been able to get great results from places like Upwork - I think they do a lot of great design for brochure-type websites, but I've had a hard time finding people good at designing apps. I've also tried to partner with UI people by giving them ownership in the idea, but it always works out the same - they start out excited about the idea, and while I sink a ton of time and money into an idea, they get bored and don't do much.
3) I'm not great at marketing and SEO, and don't have many connections for finding someone good to work with.
I wish I could find a way to find reliable, motivated people to partner with for small app/website ideas, as being able to build things from the software side alone isn't enough.
0. http://www.cashbackoptimizer.com/ 1. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cashback-optimizer/id1198107... 2. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ionicframe...
Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?
#340http://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 b…
This is not a product that I'm interested in, but may I provide some feedback on your website?
It took me a little while to understand what Clickrouter does. The very first line, "Monetize Outbound Clicks", contributed a lot to my confusion. It made me think that maybe you were just a frontend to e.g. Amazon's affiliate program.
It was only when I read Step 4 of "How's it work" that I understood what it did: "Watch ClickRouter route each click to your best (i.e. most profitable) merchant network every time !"
I would've been much happier if the very first line was something like "Maximise your revenue by automatically using the best affiliate links."
Straight away I know _why_ I should be interested in your product, and how it works.