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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?

#91

Post by AznHisoka »

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.

This is the only non-vague, useful comment to this thread so far. A specific tactic that can be practically applied.

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

#92

Post by thanksgiving »

nurettin wrote: post #57
e12e wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-)

It is a highly localized radio player. Reduced data usage seems to be highly demanded by customers and other app owners tell users it's impossible. But I know nothing is impossible :-) I am currently experimenting with a streaming proxy that will channel data with 60-70% reduced quality (for customers who aren't audiophiles).

Like everything in engineering, I imagine it is a balancing act.

I'm often amazed how good enough downsampled 480p video can be (e.g. on YouTube). If you're solving a problem for people, +1 to you.

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

#93

Post by pryelluw »

intrasight wrote: post #11
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.

This is bad advice because you are not giving them a reaso to pay you. Volunteering is nice and all but never ever give away your product. Offer something related that you can tie in and convert into a sale.

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

#94

Post by cyberphonze »

Firstly as other have said build something you would use and that interests you. It doesn't have to make money if it adds value to you personally or professionally (technical knowledge and hard life lessons learnt). Secondly just ship it, personal projects can easily become obsessions, always needing one more thing. I did this and even though I hate parts of my apps design it is getting good feedback.

I recently had a quiet period in my freelance work so spent the time learning React Native amongst other things. I applied this to an idea I have had rattling around in my head for a point tracking app for people on Slimming World. I spent 4 weeks developing this and then shipped it to iOS. In under 2 weeks it has grown to almost 10,000 registered users, is number 4 in the UK Lifestyle Free Apps chart (ahead of Slimming World's own app) and has made enough ad revenue to cover the only costs I have had (App Store membership costs). It is never going to bring in big money but the lessons I have learnt are priceless.

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

#95

Post by joeyspn »

Start looking for people that complements your skills! I've just created a "HN Side Project Partner Search" google stylesheet for people seeking team mates or help building their side projects:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fDNE2O862oLmlojAPDXd...

IMO building a team (2 or 3) is the best way to go...

Hopefully you'll find the idea useful (ideally this should be a website but I'm testing the waters with a simple stylesheet...)

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

#97

Post by antoaravinth »

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 is very true. I had my friends, who built a simple application for a Medical shop in Chennai,India. The medical shop has around 10+ branches around the city. The application helps them to print the invoice, find medicine across branches, raise for new medicine etc!

It all started when my friends went to each Medical shop and talked about the idea and one of the medical shop clicked.

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

#98

Post by patio11 »

What are some simple things I can build by myself?

You're already successful at selling enterprise services to at least one company in management and backend data processing. Have you considered selling management and backend data processing advise, perhaps delivered in the form of a PDF or series of videos? This is stupendously valuable to tech companies if you meaningfully improve on what they have already and would allow you to sell to people who have expense accounts tied to, to steal a friend's phrase, the economic engine of the planet.

You don't need a commandingly high bar of programming sophistication to sell books. There exist services that can do all the heavy lifting for you. If you prefer knocking together a site to sell your own books, it is essentially an hour to get the minimum thing to charge money and ~2 days to get something which could plausibly be the kernel of an ongoing business.

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

#99

Post by j_s »

iman453 wrote: post #24
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…

Any resources you'd recommend for learning online marketing?

FWIW: If you're asking about marketing after you've built a product, you're doing things in the wrong order. That's why I've included Rob's Start Small, Stay Small as one of core ideas is market validation. From a review: "not about coding but about [finding] a great niche, building a product that executes at a plateau and make it run automatically"

"The other resource I'd recommend is the one I'm releasing in ~3 weeks :)" https://www.julian.com/learn/growth/intro -- julianshapiro | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14026863

Secret Sauce: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Guide "the only actionable Internet marketing guide out there" (2017) $40 https://www.secretsaucenow.com/ -- austenallred | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13807171

Marketing for Developers "Don’t build another software product no one uses. Discover what people will pay for before you start coding." (2015) $39 https://gumroad.com/l/devmarketingbook -- mijustin | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034104

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth "I started doing a series of interviews on my blog with successful founders about how they got traction" (2015, 2nd ed.) $15 https://amzn.com/dp/B00TY3ZOMS -- epi0Bauqu / yegg | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10346268

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup "The book is approaching 11,000 copies sold to date, so it's obviously filled a need." (2010) $10 https://amzn.com/dp/B003YH9MMI -- rwalling | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5361601

These guys all use their own techniques so they love bundling additional stuff besides the ebooks.

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

#100

Post by ecaradec »

daliwali wrote: post #78
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…

To me this sounds boring, it may turn into a profitable business but it's nothing innovative. If you limit yourself to what you currently use and try to incrementally improve it, new ideas will rarely come out of that unless you approach the problem from a radically different angle. Good ideas are underrated in this regard.

Stackoverflow definitly fit that description, I wouldn't call it uninovative. Incremental changes often make all the difference.
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