51–60 of 256 posts
Desktop and Windows might seem like a dying market but that's what people use at work and those are the people who can pay for things.
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…
It's easy to forget the problems non-tech small businesses face when you spend your days on HN. As someone who works at a company that deals with these small businesses I see it everyday. For many of them providing simple solutions that let's them move from pen-and-paper-based solutions to databases and small applications simply feels like the kind of magic we take for granted around here.
I've made a Windows GUI for a powerful command line open source application that was for Linux. It makes a few thousands dollars a month. It did take many years of part time programming along with user feedback to get to that stage though. Desktop and Windows might seem like a dying market but that's what people use at work and those are the people who can pay for things.
You can work with freelance companies [like https://indiez.io/ ] This will mean that you can pair up with someone who has complementary skills + not worry about getting the projects yourself.
Two ideas:
You could build some kind of email integration, or something delivered over, or using, email. The email processing itself would be mostly backend stuff, you could template the emails with Django or even Python triple quote strings.
Or you could build an API of some sort. The only front end really needed for an API company ( such as Stripe or whatever ), is documentation. You can write your docs on one of those doc hosting platforms ( readthedocs might be one? I don't know much about it now ).
For your side project, it's probably important to pick some things you like and start doing them, rather than trying to make certain up front which things are going to make money.
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…
That is pretty awesome. I've done the maths. They say money can't buy you happiness but we all have our number. It looks like your number is around $70,000,000.
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.
Don't worry, I've thought about doing something similar - I'm sure others have too. Still not so many people doing it that your niche will dissappear. Would be interesting if you would plug your app(s) though. Might boost your sales too :-)
I am currently experimenting with a streaming proxy that will channel data with 60-70% reduced quality (for customers who aren't audiophiles).
If you want a stable tech stack that'll stay the same for the new few years then check out Clojure + Clojurescipt. I'm still doing the same since I started a few years ago. Regarding FE dev: I also have a technical Background (EE) and I hated any CSS (HTML isn't so bad). Though, flexbox is a life changer. It's actually enjoyable and I can get stuff done without spending hours on simple layout issues.
I wonder if more programming is going to bring back those creative juices, perhaps you should think about doing something away from the keyboard instead?