Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

news.ycombinator.com

91–100 of 102 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#91
post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

Great advice. This is pretty much what I did when working on https://ipinfo.io on the side (now fulltime). For support tickets I use and highly recommend helpscout - it's cheap, and works well. The android and iOS apps need some work, but it's possible to do basic issue management from mobile.

Yes read about you. Great way to start a business.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#93
post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

exactly this, kinda. https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I make like $100/day and have 1 online dealer who pays me $500/month. I do all the support on FB messenger. I am working on a better FAQ (have to hire a subject matter expert) on used tesla cars. I launched the MVP using WP, now gonna up the product stack to some new VueJS. I fooled a lotta people using WP for validation. I accept Stripe or Paypal. Main thing is im maki…

Currently car shopping. I wish there was a site like yours for non-Tesla cars! Your site design is very clean and navigable.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly this, kinda. https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I make like $100/day and have 1 online dealer who pays me $500/month. I do all the support on FB messenger. I am working on a better FAQ (have to hire a subject matter expert) on used tesla cars. I launched the MVP using WP, now gonna up the product stack to some new VueJS. I fooled a lotta people using WP for validation. I accept Stripe or Paypal. Main thing is im maki…

Currently car shopping. I wish there was a site like yours for non-Tesla cars! Your site design is very clean and navigable.

Thanks! ;-)

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#95
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is everything manually handled at this point? How do you collect $100 at point of sale? I guess specifically, how do you force the seller to give you $100?

Right now i send them a stripe form. Some pay via paypal. Its all manual. I just started testing $150/sold vehicle. I'm just trying to figure all this stuff out. I don't have all the answers. One guy was like, eBay charges $125 if sold then i was kinda shocked he was comparing my site to ebay, I told him we can also do $125/sold vehicle.

How do you know when a car is sold?

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#96
I have a lot of trouble with this too as I work 9-5 and have had a couple side projects with a few customers. I always suck at the sales and marketing bit.

My latest tool has been just building a huge checklist of (mostly) passive things I can do to drum up business and focusing on just two or three of them every week: https://github.com/karllhughes/side-project-marketing

This helps me stay focused.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#97
post #48

I just sold one of my side projects, Ipify ( https://www.ipify.org/ ) for a reasonable amount of money just a month ago. It's something that I built on my free time, and ran for several years successfully. I was contacted with a purchase offer, did some negotiation, and ended up selling it several weeks later. I realize this isn't the sort of sales you were asking about in the title, but figured it might be useful in…

Is it as simple as returning the IP address from the incoming TCP/IP message? If so, damn, why don't I have this kind of ideas! :)

Edit: it seems so - https://github.com/rdegges/ipify-api/blob/master/api/get_ip....

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now i send them a stripe form. Some pay via paypal. Its all manual. I just started testing $150/sold vehicle. I'm just trying to figure all this stuff out. I don't have all the answers. One guy was like, eBay charges $125 if sold then i was kinda shocked he was comparing my site to ebay, I told him we can also do $125/sold vehicle.

How do you know when a car is sold?

Right now honor system ( customer emails me or pings me on FB messenger) "I sold my car can you please delete my ad?" I ask for the money. i have not figured out a way "how to know" I follow up with customer. I do plan to charge up front.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! im working on the design update. Will improve mobile nav button. Goal is to make the site stupid fast. Stupid simple.

Sorting would be nice too! (nearest to me, price low to high, etc...)

Search / filter. Yup. that's like happening today.

Search / filter

pages for Model s, x, 3

New vehicle notification alert

Market comp

Price drop.

Re: Ask HN: How to sell your app/side project while working full-time?

#100
post #7

Automate as much as possible. Payments ? Slap a stripe checkout form (unless you happen to be in a country where Stripe is still not supported) or Paypal for others. Onboarding: Make it as easy and smooth as possible for clients to get started after signinup. Show them exactly where and how to start. Documentation & FAQ: Create tons of it. If a client has a question, thy should be able to resolve it through your docu…

exactly this, kinda. https://onlyusedtesla.com/ I make like $100/day and have 1 online dealer who pays me $500/month. I do all the support on FB messenger. I am working on a better FAQ (have to hire a subject matter expert) on used tesla cars. I launched the MVP using WP, now gonna up the product stack to some new VueJS. I fooled a lotta people using WP for validation. I accept Stripe or Paypal. Main thing is im maki…

The site looks pretty good and it comes up 3rd on Google when I type in "buy used Tesla."

How did you get this off the ground marketing wise?

Post reply on HN