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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?

#201

Post by pesfandiar »

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…

You argue that time is the limiting factor, and I tend to agree with that. However, you advice against spending any money, which can potentially buy you much time if spent properly.

Paying for some of the grunt work or tasks that require learning new skills will free you up to do the more exciting tasks. Not only will this save you time, it also keeps you motivated and helps you keep up your daily cadence.

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

#202

Post by gsylvie »

danielsamuels wrote: post #77
gsylvie wrote: post #36

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…

Have you considered simplifying your pricing structure? ;)

I've set 25-user at $112 and 50-user at $225 for a specific reason. Atlassian pays us add-on vendors monthly, but only once we've done $666.67 in sales since the previous remittance.

Atlassian dictates the maintenance renewal price: 50% of initial price for customer to extend maintenance by 1-year.

I've only been at this 1-year, so I don't know what the renewal scene is like. But I suspect renewals are good in this market, since enterprise customers often have policy requiring all their software be supported.

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

#203

Post by gschier »

alphydan wrote: post #179
gschier wrote: post #176

As someone with many failed side projects, I can tell you that having a goal of making money is usually a bad thing. Like many other people have said, you can learn the skills. The hardest part of building a side project is finding the time and staying motivated for more than a few months. So, pick something _you_ will use and, if you enjoy building/using it, so will others. Obviously think about ways to monetize it,…

I find the font colour/weight of "Available for free on Mac, Windows, and Linux" almost impossible to read. http://imgur.com/a/AUVxr

Oh my, that is awful. What OS are you running?

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

#205

Post by davidw »

j_s wrote: post #99
iman453 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wee…

Rob's book is a bit old at this point, but I'd heartily recommend it just the same.

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

#206

Post by kureikain »

I think the easiest thing is build what you need. So that if it failed to make money, you still have the tool you want.

I build https://noty.im that way, an monitoring tool that call me when my site is down.

Then I realized more thing is needed and I started to add more features and plan to publish launch soon.

I will say not to worry about scale and technical first. I learned it the hardway, Just get it out. No one will really care if it's broken or something doesn't owrk when you doesn't have lots of customer.

So to answer your questions:

1. Can you provide some ideas on where to start? Pick a technology stack you familiar with. Apply to Microsft BizSpark to take advantage of $150/monthly credit. Learn FE, it isn't that hard.

2. What are some simple things I can build by myself? Any idea?

I build `https://kolor.ml` in a sunday. It's very simple but I need it. So you can try to build some simple/small utility that helps people with their daily live such as: a tool to call people up in morning.

A tool to check if my site has expose some particular header such as `nginx`, `php version` etc and if found an old one or vulnerable one, alert.

Of course, lots of people already build those, but the point is just get started, along the way you will realize what you really want to build

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

#209

Post by mponw »

averagewall wrote: post #51

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.

Let me guess: a file converter or a PDF utility?

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

#210

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dpark wrote: post #163
skdotdan wrote: post #161

Instead of building an MVP and then trying to sell it, there are people who suggest: 1-Think of an idea. 2-Make a simple landing page with a mockup or something. 3-Try to sell the product. And by selling the product I mean actually selling it (so people actually transferring you money). If you can achieve a given amount of sells in a given amount of time (important: set concrete goals with concrete timing), then you…

I think what you're describing would be referred to in court as fraud.

This is no different than buying a house that hasn't been built yet. People do it every day.
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