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Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

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Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#51

Post by Igelau »

(Twirls moustache)

Microtransactions. "Excavating your hallway. Time Remaining: 90 minutes -- Want it now? Buy TNT for 10 Gems!"

Gems can be bought for cash, or you can have some mined by paying Stars. The mine yield is somewhat random and the dwarfs need frequent breaks, but it sometimes includes loot like stupid hats you can use in the video. You only get Stars by referring people, connecting social media accounts, signing up for mailing lists, etc.

Gotta go now -- I can hear the RCMP riding in and these maidens aren't going to just tie themselves to the railroad tracks. Let me know where to send the bill for consulting!

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#52

Post by movedx »

memn0nis wrote: post #46
movedx wrote: post #44

This is an ad. This isn't a genuine request for help. They have everything in place to monetize this. They've got two massive companies that I know of using their service: Pivotal and Coursera. They've already got a pricing model in place so it's already monetized. This is an add. People up voting this and acting like it's a sincere request for help have had the wool pulled over their eyes. I'm honestly expecting to…

It's not an ad. It's genuinely a hobby project... We have not made any money on it. There are teams at those companies using our app, not the companies themselves. My email address and main job / company are in my profile btw.

Is this you as well? https://mightydash.com/

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#54

Post by quickthrower2 »

I guess you'd need to find companies that care about spending money on this during a tough economic climate. And "making your employees happy" by having them take breaks might be a tough sell (even though I know yes breaks are a good thing for productivity!).

What about this product could motivate someone to buy it?

Maybe target this to "Indie Hackers" rather than companies? They have they own spend decision and might be happy to pay for A. not being lonely and B. the opportunities chatting to a cohort once in a while might give - so there is an opportunity benefit.

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#55

Post by bryanrasmussen »

movedx wrote: post #44

This is an ad. This isn't a genuine request for help. They have everything in place to monetize this. They've got two massive companies that I know of using their service: Pivotal and Coursera. They've already got a pricing model in place so it's already monetized. This is an add. People up voting this and acting like it's a sincere request for help have had the wool pulled over their eyes. I'm honestly expecting to…

I think you're right, probably an ad, but then why didn't they just show Hn?

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#56

Post by lifeisstillgood »

memn0nis wrote: post #32
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #14

- Actually phone up at least one new sign up per day. Ask why they signed up, what they use it for, how it compares the the others they have used and what would they pay for - unlimited time, number participants whatever. They will try to be nice - assume they lie. most importantly how did they hear of you. Pay attention to the vocabulary they use. What you are trying to get here is your elevator pitch - but told to…

Thanks for the advice! We don't store phone numbers, but that's great advice to ask users for language to use. Regarding channels, we posted on product hunt and then I think they are mostly word of mouth

Get some way of reaching the real customer - email, slack channel (!), just hunt them down on linkedin. You have had people who looked at your tiny offering and went -"Yes please I'll have some of that, lovely". You want to understand their brains and their situations inside out.

Find one customer today. Just one. Call her, email her whatever. just one. Today.

As for channels, you need a channel that you can drive - product hunt is a one shot affair. Word of Mouth - you cannot control it. its great. But it is totally passive on your side. If I give you 10 million dollars to exapnd your business how do you spend even one cent on 'word of mouth'?

We love the idea of building great new products that sell themselves. And great products do - once the flywheel is spinning. But you need something where you pay x dollars and that turns into a customer paying you x+y dollars. (And those dollars paid might be your time to write evergreen articles on your website that go viral and sit at top of google page 1. But even so its your time you paid for)

(And no SEO never does that anymore)

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#58

Post by hkiely »

_bxg1 wrote: post #45
afandian wrote: post #16

This isn't the answer you want. But I have a hobby side project that I've kept going for a decade, and which gets high enough use to feel like it's worth keeping going. It costs server money to run, a couple of take-away-coffees per week's worth. In the past I did agonise about putting ads on it, or otherwise monetizing it. But at some point I decided that as I was lucky enough to have a paying job, the marginal retu…

I don't think it's impossible to mix the two successfully, but I think it varies greatly by what the project is. Some things monetize very naturally, other things would completely lose their appeal if you tried to contort them into a product that people pay for. Example: I did a project for a hackathon at UT when I was in college. The idea was that in this day and age it's still hard to get a file or snippet of text…

There always different types of projects. Some are platforms where If you can get multiple thousands of users, you can generate revenue from advertisements. From there you can scale into different business models such as freemium. The key issue is to know what problem you are solving and who you are solving it for.

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#59

Post by margani »

yboris wrote: post #28
yboris wrote: post #25

I have no experience in this other than my app[1]. In my case, I chose a price that was so low that even if a customer encounters a bug, they are still very happy about the software overall. My app is $3.50 and at such a low price, I don't feel obligated to ship many updates - it stays a project I can be passionate about and happy to work on, rather than feeling obligated and indebted. Maybe a good strategy in other…

ps - I also made Video Hub App into MIT open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Can I ask why you did it?

Re: Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?

#60

Post by yboris »

margani wrote: post #59
yboris wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ps - I also made Video Hub App into MIT open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

Can I ask why you did it?

I made the app open source as one customer emailed me asking for the code, hoping to make some changes. When first releasing the app (v1.0.0) I was worried about making it open source (perhaps someone would steal it) but after almost a year 'on the market' it seemed safer. I don't know how common it is for that fear to materialize in reality, but at least in my case it seems like no one made an identical copy (or even a similar copy for that matter) and started distributing it (my other fear was someone creates a virus-ridden copy).

Making the app open source improved it significantly: the customer who asked for is initially contributed some excellent code making screenshot extraction better (and faster). Others have added bugfixes or features. I'm really glad I did it. I also gave a talk touching on the open source question at AngularNYC in February (still waiting for the recording to be put up on YouTube).

PS -- my app is Charityware - I wrote a blog post about that too: https://medium.com/@whyboris/charityware-doing-good-with-pro...

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