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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?

#121

Post by ne0free »

ssijak wrote: post #63
mikekchar wrote: post #25

This is going to sounds like crazy advice, but having worked on many side projects in my life the last thing that's going to let you down is your skills. What you really need is time. Let's say it takes you 400 hours to build your project -- in those 400 hours, you will build up enough skills to get you started (not nearly enough to be good at it, but good enough). So you need to work consistently 1-2 hours a day on…

My biggest problem is in "no need to get fancy". Do not know how to overcome that urge to overengineer everything in the start and how to be satisfied with minimal working thing even if it looks like crap.

Same here

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

#122

Post by jononor »

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.

Don't offer to work for free. If a sizable organization really wants to have a problem solved (and they believe you can do it), they will try their best to find money for it. Just go to the next place / next problem.

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

#123

Post by constantinLG »

jjude wrote: post #3

Start to teach. Create a course in udemy on what you know (data processing or management). If creating a video course overwhelms you, create a text based course. I'm using softcover to do that. You can check here: https://www.jjude.com/softcover-in-docker/ Creating a course can get you the momentum. You can start there and branch out to other things.

This is great advice. Turn whatever you know right now into a learning opportunity for others. This is what we do at http://teacherr.com, we help others build an audience around their experience and monetize their following by selling information.

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

#124

Post by akanet »

I gave a talk at Dropbox literally about how to start a small business without quitting your day job. A lot of people have told me it was helpful. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0.

A lot of my focus was boiling down what approaches could plausibly work and what pitfalls to avoid.

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

#125

Post by joe563323 »

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…

What is the website that made 6 figure ?

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

#126

Post by xemdetia »

snarf21 wrote: post #119
mikekchar wrote: post #25

This is going to sounds like crazy advice, but having worked on many side projects in my life the last thing that's going to let you down is your skills. What you really need is time. Let's say it takes you 400 hours to build your project -- in those 400 hours, you will build up enough skills to get you started (not nearly enough to be good at it, but good enough). So you need to work consistently 1-2 hours a day on…

I agree with you that time is the big limiting factor. I think the other trap that people fall into is starting a side project that is too big. If you can't finish it in less than 2 months, odds are that you never will. Focus on something specific enough that it does something after two months. Then do v2.0 or switch to a new project. I've personally found the "don't spend money" part to be demotivating. I have sever…

I think there is a lot of value to what is said here with regard to external expectation. Use the people around you to ask after your side project to make sure you don't stall. If having a recurring bill for a node on EC2 is enough to keep you going then that is good enough.

The other thing I recommend is clock your time and be honest with yourself. It helps you know you actually spent 2 hours working on something and also has a constant action to keep progress going forward. You still need to rest so this has to be part of your clock.

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

#127

Post by j_s »

akanet wrote: post #124

I gave a talk at Dropbox literally about how to start a small business without quitting your day job. A lot of people have told me it was helpful. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0 . A lot of my focus was boiling down what approaches could plausibly work and what pitfalls to avoid.

The "3 ways people usually fuck up" starting at 14:30 was great!

• Be boring

• Make money immediately

• Focus on distribution

+ Charge vs. opportunity cost (not cost to provide service)

That last one is pretty unique and could probably benefit many here with some additional input from you. I've heard that it makes sense to charge based on value added, but not much about how starting a small business needs to compete with the founder's missed alternatives.

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

#128

Post by Opteron67 »

Lot of money is moving around but you need first take a look to other stuff and and activities rather than coding/refcatoring.

Try see other people activities and have a look how much they spend for basic services you could improve. If you suck at UX/UI, give some money to someone else who could do it for you

what matters is how fast you can release something, do not speed time in courses or fancy optimisations

Also do not focus on a side project alone, let create 3 or 4 project a year

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

#130

Post by simonbarker87 »

My side projects always come from personal needs, in each case I built it to solve my own problem before turning it in to a full product (summaries below). If you are going in with the sole intention of making money then make sure you know that there is a need for what you want to make and that you can get your project in front of people.

You don't need to use the latest and greatest tech, in fact, I would urge you don't. For front end you can stick to simple JQuery interactions, bootstrap theme and you'll be fine, depending on the market sector you go for they may not even care about the design, so long as it's functional.

Summary of my project and where they came from:

http://www.oneqstn.com, before launching our company's product I put the question "Where would you expect to buy the Radfan?" on the shop page and then 5 options. I expanded this on its own dedicated domain and 5 years later it's still ticking along. Very popular in the middle east for some reason.

http://www.stockcontrollerapp.com, I manage in-house production of my company's hardware product and after moving from an Excel spreadsheet to a Python script I decided to make a stock management app for small factories. Has made my work life much easier and is more appropriate for me than Unleashed.

http://www.taptimerapp.com, I didn't like any of the timer apps that I had tried so made my own mainly for use in the gym. All the others had too small touch targets, hard to see at a distance/without glasses on, or stopped music playing when the timer finished so I made an app that addressed these.

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