Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 256 posts

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

#33

Post by jonasae »

Forget about technology and focus on business.

First do what @roycehaynes says: Identify needs. I add: Choose something you can actually do/sell.

And then validate the model with cheap tech: fire some emails, contact your potential customers by phone, use a spreadsheet as CRM, use paypal to charge them.

Unless you are providing IT services, technology shouldn't be your main concern.

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

#34

Post by enraged_camel »

yodon wrote: post #10

If your goal is to make money, don't allow yourself to write a single line of code until you have talked to people not related to you (and not close friends with you), heard at least two of them independently describe facing the same business problem, and heard both of them say "yes, that would help!" (or better "yes, I would buy that!") in response to your proposed solution. Finding a real business problem and a rea…

On the other hand, I've had a lot of success showing people proofs of concept as a way to get the conversation going about various ideas I have. Sometimes people don't know what they want/need until they actually see a pre-alpha version in action.

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

#36

Post by gsylvie »

Here's what I did: at work I needed something. (A git commit graph). But the one I found was #1. buggy, and #2. too expensive. It wasn't my money, but I just couldn't allow my company to pay that much.

So I made my own, and fixed the bug: http://bit-booster.com/best.html

And then I realized I needed a rebase button on the pull-request screen... and so it continues to evolve.

Here's the thing: I've always known I'm a good maintenance programmer. I've always preferred working on existing software instead of making new software from scratch. And writing add-ons for Bitbucket is basically just another form of maintenance programming: reading Bitbucket's code, noticing its flaws and shortcomings, and fixing them.

Also, I love git, and I love going very deep into git (e.g., https://github.com/gsylvie/git-reverse.sh). So this is my dream job.

I've only made $7,000 USD after 1 year on this side project. But $1 of those dollars feels better than $10,000 from my day job.

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

#38

Post by arikr »

nurettin wrote: post #30

Not sure if I should share this, as it is a trivial and obvious thing to do. Recently I created a ramen-profitable on google play with currently a couple of thousand users. The idea is to look for apps that have low ratings, high downloads and lots of recent comments, then make them better. You can use synonyms and the same niche category to increase visibility on google play. This is where the money is.

Ad supported or paid?

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

#39

Post by maaaats »

bikamonki wrote: post #23

List down 25 products/services you consume regularly. For each, ask whether a better version could be done. Yes? Do it. Here's one case: the local/popular site to search for used cars sucks. It is slow, hard to see/compare all options, silly reloads the page on each added filter, filled with outdated listings, flooded with ads, and pic slides take forever (all of this on my slow phone over a slow 3g which is how most…

It's not passive just because it's a side business.
Post reply on HN