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Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

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Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#11

Post by intrasight »

haser_au wrote: post #8

Here's my suggestion. Walk down the road to shops in your area (small, family run businesses) and ask if they have a business problem they think IT can solve. You'd be surprised how little some of these businesses know. I have previously; - Built a travel database in MS Access for a Travel Agent (long time ago) - Ordered and setup ADSL connections and email for a water tank manufacturer and a furniture store - Captur…

This really is an excellent suggestion. I would add on to it to also talk with local governments as they are increasingly wanting to provide mobile digital services to citizens.

Onto this I will add a suggestion to consider volunteering your services. If you do an outstanding job as a volunteer, then when the organization gets some budget, you'll be first in line to do the work.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#12

Post by swalsh »

cheez wrote: post #2

Pick someone else's niche making money, tweak it to make it your own, implement. Rinse, repeat until you achieve success.

There is something to be said for taking this route. Establishing a new market is really hard, expanding an existing market is much easier. I think its fair to say at this point First mover advantage does not necessarily lock up the market. There are just so many examples. The benefit is you can look at their mistakes. Find a small niche they've neglected, and start iterating.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#13

Post by techbubble »

Side projects that also do some public good might be a good avenue for you to consider. I built Walkstarter https://walkstarter.org a free walkathon fundraising platform for public schools as a side project. The experience is fantastic. I continue to develop my skills, e-meet new people, and the platform is on track to raise a very satisfying $1 million for schools.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#14

Post by conorcleary »

superasn wrote: post #9

I think you should start something very very small and forget about the money part for now. For me, my most successful project ideas came from problems that I faced during my own site launches. Since you don't have much knowledge of FE development, I would suggest you keep things Simple Stupid and try to do as much as possible with HTML and jQuery. I have created really complex websites using just PHP and jQuery (sit…

Very helpful, as a geek trying to build a real-world business selling honey.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#16

Post by oldmancoyote »

Before you get deeply into what you are going to sell, consider how you are going to market it. Marketing is a * * *! Successful marketing is harder than programming a product, much harder and more problematic. Just ask the folks trying to sell iOS apps when there are about 2 million apps on the market. Lining up a buyer for a custom product before you begin (as some here have suggested) sounds very attractive to me.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#18

Post by roycehaynes »

Spend a few days identifying problems people pay for, particularly easy problems that you can build yourself. The key is that the solution has to be fairly easy to build since you're not comfortable full-stack. Once you've chose a solution that already makes money solving a problem, build the same solution but position it for either a niche market or make a better product than competitors.

I would at minimum leverage bootstrap or semantic ui as your ui. Otherwise, hire someone to do the web interface for you.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#19

Post by roycehaynes »

roycehaynes wrote: post #18

Spend a few days identifying problems people pay for, particularly easy problems that you can build yourself. The key is that the solution has to be fairly easy to build since you're not comfortable full-stack. Once you've chose a solution that already makes money solving a problem, build the same solution but position it for either a niche market or make a better product than competitors. I would at minimum leverage…

My last advice is pursue traction in addition to building a product.

Re: Ask HN: Building a side project that makes money. Where to start?

#20

Post by wordpressdev »

You can start with what you already know and then build over it, or diversify, with time. The easiest way to monetize your knowledge to create a blog and link it up with social media (twitter, FB, youtube etc).

For example, you can write about management and backend data processing (what you do at work). This way, you don't have to learn something new to start your side project (except maybe how to manage a blog). The blog can be monetized via Ad networks like Adsense and Amazon affiliate program etc. As you grow, you may take in direct advertisers, sponsored content etc.

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