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Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#131

Post by roryisok »

squiggy22 wrote: post #91
mars4rp wrote: post #54

I created https://CoWriteStory.com/ last year, it is a platform for people to cooperatively write stories. I was sending lots of private messages to r/WritingPrompts/ users, and got tons of positive feedback but reddit blocked my account and keep blocking my new accounts. it is a good product but like lots of developers I failed at marketing and attracting users!

Have you heard of http://nanowrimo.org Find out where these people hang out including hashtags etc. Huge community of starter writers.

I'm the developer of a few writing apps, and I've tried this approach, you get shut down really quick if you create an account and advertise your app on most forums. I got banned on a lot of them right out of the gate.

Instead try searching for reddit threads on r/writing looking for writing apps, and reply there.

You can also make a twitter account and follow all the thousands of nanowrimo groups and writers groups on there. Most will follow you back and you'll get some traffic

I haven't bothered with Facebook yet (I suck at self-promo) but I'm sure its similar

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#132

Post by wheresvic1 »

I'm building https://ewolo.fitness/ - it's a no-frills workout tracker that's built from the ground-up to be mobile friendly.

I decided to do it after seeing a total lack of decent workout trackers that work well on mobile and provide a web interface.

It's made using React, Redux and I don't expect it to make any money :)

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#133

Post by spacetimecake »

ineptech wrote: post #89

I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form. Lessons learned: * I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design" * Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal…

The Scrum Master job description totally cracked me up - Champion agile methodologies, hunt down and eliminate remaining waterfall advocates

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#134

Post by rsync »

"Oh By".[1]

I launched this about a year ago and while it has made more than zero dollars (some folks have indeed paid for personalized, editable Oh By Codes) it doesn't really make any money.

I am very busy with rsync.net and much more so these past 12 months so I haven't had the time I would like to invest into Oh By. I continue to believe it's a good idea.

[1] https://0x.co

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#135

Post by roryisok »

I wrote a todo list app for windows phone called listage, which had neat fast entry and auto categorising features. Free with in app purchase to unlock advanced features. I built it for myself but secretly hoped it would take the world by storm, which it did not. I sold 5 copies. That's probably 1/4 of all the windows phone users left out there :)

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#136

Post by ineptech »

gh1 wrote: post #125
ineptech wrote: post #89

I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form. Lessons learned: * I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design" * Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal…

Congratulations on making this awesome fake website. I had a shit ton of fun going through it. You'd be a rockstar copywriter, if you are not one already.

I'm a QA guy, which may come out in some of the jokes, e.g.:

Ineptech CEO Dick Hallerson wishes to apologize for describing the Quality Assurance group as a "necessary evil." Mr. Hallerson did not mean to imply that QA is necessary.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#137

Post by roryisok »

wyldfire wrote: post #117
arcatek wrote: post #25

I built http://start9.io three years ago - the idea was to somehow manage to show video game publishers that a 'professional' vintage gaming platform was something that could attract users. I wanted it to be the Netflix of the retrogaming. Unfortunately, I never managed to find cofounders that were as much motivated as I was - each one I worked with was working on it as a hobby more than anything else, and I usually…

FYI, PICO-8 [1] is a similar commercial project AFAICT. Maybe you're right that there is a market there. [1] https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

PICO8 was my first thought too

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#138

Post by fundamental »

I built the Zyn-Fusion user interface for the ZynAddSubFX ( http://zynaddsubfx.sf.net ) musical software synthesizer. I spent roughly 4 months coding, testing, and (light) marketing the new interface, but sales have been quite modest since it's release. This project was originally motivated by user demand for improvements in the ZynAddSubFX interface, centering around usability concerns. Before building the project I talked with the community and sent out surveys, but unfortunately the prep work overestimated the interest and underestimated the time needed to polish the application. That said, the Zyn-Fusion subproject was targeting relatively short term crowd funding, so I didn't expect it to turn into a huge revenue source.

As per doing things differently, I don't think there was another solution to accomplishing the goal given the complexity/demand and in a few months it will be available for the open source community.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#139

Post by westoncb »

I've maxed out a couple credit cards and spent all my severance pay etc. trying to finish building this '3D abstract visual debugger,' which I'm calling Lucidity [video]: http://symbolflux.com/projects/avd

I started working on it in 2014 and it's been on my mind ever since. I applied to YC with it a long time ago (was not accepted, and I can see so much wrong with the application I sent now...) I was laid off in November so I jumped back into the project and have been working on it since.

The main thing I'm planning on changing up now is: it's too general purpose—closer to a platform than a specific product. So next I'll focus on building one particular product on top of it: something kind of like Chrome's object browser (which you get when using console.log)—but showing dynamic structural changes in time (steppable/reversible), and being multi-language.

The other main issue is that, even though I'm trying to get it into user's hands as soon as possible, it has been a giant task for me to get even an alpha of this thing together on my own,—though I am damn close now. And my sister has been helping a bit recently.

Edit: direct link to video: https://youtu.be/KwZmAgAuIkY (looks much better full size!)

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#140

Post by ineptech »

ineptech wrote: post #89

I made Word Nazi, which is essentially just a dirty version of Taboo (in the same way that Cards Against Humanity is a dirty version of Apples to Apples) in app form. Lessons learned: * I should've paid someone to do some decent graphics, turns out "minimalist aesthetic" is not the same as "no effort put in to design" * Making it a free demo, with the full game available as an in-app-purchase, sounds like a good deal…

For those checking out the ineptech site, please don't miss the poetry compiler joke! It's the bit I'm the most proud of. It's in an unlinkable modal so actually I'll just paste it here:

    Upon a stack of bits, about so tall,           // Boolean[] isprime = new Boolean[n];
    just think, O traveller, what we could do      // Arrays.fill(isprime, true);
    if every other bit was set to false            // for (int i = 4; i
(You may have figured out that I put a lot more time in to the silly programmer jokes in the fake site than in to the app. Wonder why it never took off...)
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