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Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

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Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#81

Post by cdiamand »

misiti3780 wrote: post #74
cdiamand wrote: post #46

I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different industries - http://www.oppsdaily.com Here is archive of sorts - http://www.oppslist.com The ideas are of a mediocre quality, but I find they help stimulate thought. Another idea is to go to a place like Fiverr and look at which services are most widely bought. Then build a saas solving one of those problems.

this is a great idea. thank you for making this. -- i just tried to subscribe but your subscription link(s) are hanging. can you add me (email in profile) ?

Thanks for letting me know! Added!

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#82

Post by writepub »

cdiamand wrote: post #46

I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different industries - http://www.oppsdaily.com Here is archive of sorts - http://www.oppslist.com The ideas are of a mediocre quality, but I find they help stimulate thought. Another idea is to go to a place like Fiverr and look at which services are most widely bought. Then build a saas solving one of those problems.

OppsDaily is a brilliant! I'm loving reading real-world problems that people are willing to pay for. Well done.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#83

Post by chvid »

gketuma wrote: post #71
RickS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent you're willing to comment, I'd be interested in knowing about your criteria for selecting such a project. - was the domain related to your expertise, or in a niche that was new to you? - what made this project stand out from others / appear to have potential? - was codebase quality a factor in purchase? - do you inherit things other than software from the seller? EG customers, marketing channels, analyt…

http://arthur-osx.com/

I noticed that one too when I browsed 1k a few days back. It advertised that it was already making money. Congrats on your purchase,

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#84

Post by jakelazaroff »

ronilan wrote: post #20
ageitgey wrote: post #6

The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this, almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas - just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"! The secret is to go out and make frie…

You use “the world is full” twice. First to describe the high supply of software developers looking for projects and second to describe the high demand for said services. So why hasn’t supply met demand? Why isn’t the market working more efficiently? There can be various explanations for that, obviously, including the lack of information you hint at ( “secret” , “have no idea” ), but Occam's Razor would suggest we ex…

Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, it's a good point. The GP includes this quote, echoing many other people I've encountered who build software:

> The business and industrial world largely still runs on excel spreadsheets, emails and word docs. Those are all areas ripe for new products and many of the top companies in those niche areas have no idea how to apply technology to solve their problems more efficiently.

Spreadsheets are incredibly useful tools! They're general-purpose, easy to use and powerful. Millions of people use them for programming without even knowing it.

Email is still great for communicating! It's everywhere, it's easy to use and it's totally interoperable. How many startups are building decentralized communication tools right now? Email has been federated for decades.

The notion that use of these tools is an opportunity for some more efficient proprietary solution is a bad assumption. People use them because they're good and they work. The parent is right: there's less demand than you think.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#85

Post by balls187 »

ageitgey wrote: post #6

The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this, almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas - just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"! The secret is to go out and make frie…

> The secret is to go out and make friends who work in different industries that are totally unrelated to your experience.

I'd slightly rephrase this: make friends who are business owners in different industries.

Having a good idea is only the first step. You need to be able to market it, and ultimately sell it.

Business owners face business problems, will have an idea on how much they're willing to spend on it, and will understand the budgets and where they can be applied. Rank and file employees often do not make purchasing decisions on behalf of their companies. Some may, but most do not.

My personal story:

I became friends with the owner of a nearby gym, and I was immediately impressed with how he ran his business, and more importantly his ability to stay ahead of the curve, learning and adopting new ways to market his business.

For a free membership, I would do one off small projects, that typically string together API's offered by the different services he used (Scheduling, waivers, forms). None was particularly interesting, until he came up with a hodgepodge system for contacting new members.

I helped him build some flexibility, and we both came to the conclusion that if we built a platform that specifically did this, we could market it and sell it.

We boot strapped it and made about $13k in revenue the first year.

Now that we have a viable business, we've shifted to growth: get customers.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#86

Post by cdiamand »

writepub wrote: post #82
cdiamand wrote: post #46

I send out a daily newsletter with short snippets of pain points in different industries - http://www.oppsdaily.com Here is archive of sorts - http://www.oppslist.com The ideas are of a mediocre quality, but I find they help stimulate thought. Another idea is to go to a place like Fiverr and look at which services are most widely bought. Then build a saas solving one of those problems.

OppsDaily is a brilliant! I'm loving reading real-world problems that people are willing to pay for. Well done.

Thanks a bunch! Glad to hear you're enjoying it! Apologies in advance for all the duds I send out :)

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#87

Post by lostgame »

gketuma wrote: post #71
RickS wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the extent you're willing to comment, I'd be interested in knowing about your criteria for selecting such a project. - was the domain related to your expertise, or in a niche that was new to you? - what made this project stand out from others / appear to have potential? - was codebase quality a factor in purchase? - do you inherit things other than software from the seller? EG customers, marketing channels, analyt…

http://arthur-osx.com/

The UI/UX certainly leaves a lot to be desired :3

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#88

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #21
ageitgey wrote: post #6

The world is full of people in your situation who's main area of interest and experience is primarily in software development or start-ups. Because of this, almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times. There's tons of competition even for really bad ideas - just look at how many start-ups in SF tried to offer "laundry as a service"! The secret is to go out and make frie…

> almost every good idea that touches your entire realm of experience been attempted 10 times I strongly disagree with the implied defeatism here. There have been many attempts and many failures with many popular ideas for non-obvious reasons, and it is worth being #11 if you can A) identify why the previous attempts failed, and B) find a different angle that avoids the issues.

the mistake is to think that others have failed because they were not good enough. If 10 people tried before and failed, you can be darn sure that there's a good reason for those failures, and it's not lack of ability. When it comes to online software products, businesses always fail due to 2 problems: #1 no one wanted the product (or not enough) or #2 cost of acquiring customers was too high. These aren't going to be solved with better code.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#89

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

sigfubar wrote: post #3

If you ever find yourself thinking "If only there were a product that solves my problem XYZ? I'd pay money for that!", then you already know what to build. If you haven't had such thoughts yet, I'm sure others around you could make suggestions. You'll make even more money by building for a niche market that has been overlooked or underserved by technology companies. The more specific the market, the better, as these…

unless you're a big wierdo who has problems that few others have. If it's too niche, it won't be able to spread by word of mouth, and it'll be hard to find others with the same problem.

Re: Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

#90

Post by sebslomski »

cdiamand wrote: post #81
misiti3780 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a great idea. thank you for making this. -- i just tried to subscribe but your subscription link(s) are hanging. can you add me (email in profile) ?

Thanks for letting me know! Added!

Same here please
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