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Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

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Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#51

Post by ellius »

viridian wrote: post #49

I started a podcast with another Hacker News poster. We have no ads, make no money, but it's great fun just talking about big local events in Columbus Ohio, and also big tech news. It's obviously extremely niche and local, but there's always something new happening in urban development, politics, that sort of thing here. http://columbusthisweek.podbean.com for the RSS feed, or itunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us…

I don't see a lot of Columbus, OH on HN so here's a shout out. I'll definitely try the podcast.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#54

Post by dmitri1981 »

https://www.hnlondon.com - been running it for about seven years and had some amazing speakers give talks. Sets me back a few grand a year in sponsorship shortfalls, but is an amazing experience when a great speaker inspires the whole room.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#55

Post by jasoninprivate »

I started a blog (this week) focusing on how retail investors can get exposure to startups and other private companies, which are normally reserved for VC and institutional investors.

The ultimate goal is how can we, as startup employees and enthusiasts manage our own risk? Since we are heavily exposed to risk in ways other players in this space aren't (because we work for one company at a time, and they invest in many).

Not sure where it's going to take me yet.

https://jasoninprivate.com

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#56

Post by mysterydip »

superasn wrote: post #3

The reason I'm asking this question is because I realized something recently. I've been a programmer all my life. I used to love programming in Delphi, VB :P, Perl, PHP, Javascript, etc since school. I created all sorts of stupid things like Winamp plugins[1], Graphics software[2], Games, etc. It was programming just because i liked making the computer do things for me. But then somewhere along the line my projects s…

On the gamedev subreddit, it seems most questions are around how to market and get exposure for your game, SEO, making a successful kickstarter, etc.

It's great to take a step back and just make something that people enjoy, even if it does not bring any income. Getting "fanmail" or seeing the # of hours someone has put into something you've made is a great feeling.

As long as you have a day job that pays the bills, I say go for it.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#57

Post by mclemme »

Built a few things to teach myself new stuff, the ones that are still online are:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bitmasch.b... - Wanted to learn a cross platform app framework. Built a simple game that would help my niece get better at basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Made with Apache Cordova. She only played it a few times, but her dad (my brother) ended up getting hooked on it for a while, beating other people's high score with 50-100 points every time someone beat his highscore.

http://p2pool.jir.dk - Wanted to get some experience in building a crawler and was interested in p2pool cryptocurrency mining at the time, so I built a p2pool crawler. The site does have adsense, but it doesn't really make any money.

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#58

Post by mosselman »

https://cadodo.nl/en - Create wish lists for your next birthday/wedding/etc

https://bookmarkify.it - Create javascript bookmarklets

https://github.com/abuisman/freudjs - Component library in JS for when view libraries like React are overkill

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#59

Post by StavrosK »

wheresvic1 wrote: post #34
stavros wrote: post #12

Oh man, that describes all of them. http://ipfessay.stavros.io/ - Publish uncensorable essays on IPFS https://www.eternum.io/ - Pin IPFS files with a nice interface https://www.pastery.net/ - The best pastebin https://spa.mnesty.com/ - Fuck with spammers https://www.timetaco.com/ - Easily make nice-looking countdowns And this is just the last two months or so? Also, lots of hardware stuff: https://www.stavros.io/proj…

Spamnesty is dope! How do you avoid getting blacklisted by the spammers though?

I don't, but there are plenty of spammers to go around :P

Re: Ask HN: Projects that don't make you money but you're doing it out of sheer joy?

#60

Post by StavrosK »

kzisme wrote: post #39
stavros wrote: post #12

Oh man, that describes all of them. http://ipfessay.stavros.io/ - Publish uncensorable essays on IPFS https://www.eternum.io/ - Pin IPFS files with a nice interface https://www.pastery.net/ - The best pastebin https://spa.mnesty.com/ - Fuck with spammers https://www.timetaco.com/ - Easily make nice-looking countdowns And this is just the last two months or so? Also, lots of hardware stuff: https://www.stavros.io/proj…

Those are all pretty awesome! Since they don't really make you any money - do people use them often then - if so how do people find them?

Thank you! It depends on what you mean by "often", I guess often enough. I use Pastery all the time (especially the editor plugins), and all my developer friends love it too.

I guess people use some of the other services too, for example I get lots of comments for Spamnesty. I don't really care enough to look, though, as I built them for myself or because I thought they'd be fun, or because I just wanted to make something with a friend.

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