Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How to find profitable side project idea?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 214 posts

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

#151

Post by jonnyrockit »

RickS wrote: post #33
jonnyrockit wrote: post #30

I was lucky and found a small little gem on 1kprojects.com that turned itself into a nice little profitable side-project in 5 weeks (not linking to it because i don't want to seem like I'm advertising). Making half my monthly salary at my day job from it. Sometimes it's just the simplest, least technical and gimmicky things that make money.

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…

To answer your questions:

- Yes, the domain area was something that I was interested in already, but not necessarily practised. - Quite honest, I chose it purely on price and the design of the items bought. The dev put in effort to get everything designed nicely. - No, not at the time. It was a rails project so quality was not considered since its too easy to add on/rewrite where needed - Got customer lists, source code + design source, social media pages, analytics, payment profiles, domain. - I had a network locally that I knew I could sell to. I sold hard and 3 big agencies are now using it at a decent monthly fee. - Definitely! I'm scouring 1k daily now and have found a few other gems.

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

#152

Post by fierro »

jjeaff wrote: post #122
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I will doubt the supply side. I think it's a simpler assertion, because I know so few nerds.

I think if you live in silicon valley, you have a distorted view of how many people can build software. I grew up in the mid-south and know of literally one or two other people that code. I know live in a major metro area and still only know maybe 3 people that code. It is actually a rare skill. At the same time, I can't even count how many contractors, real estate agents, sales and marketing, and doctors and lawyers…

everyone from high school is a real estate agent

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

#153

Post by fierro »

mittermayr wrote: post #34

Don't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. This is crucial. People completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a runner-up, or even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the products I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the years compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least ten companies I can name at an inst…

see: gitlab

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

#154

Post by zaphirplane »

jakobegger wrote: post #112

Here are two ideas for desktop apps that I think would be worthwhile: 1) A data copy app. I often need to copy data from one place to another (eg. copy data from MS Access to a MySQL server, export data from PostgreSQL to CSV, fetch data from some REST API and insert it into PostgreSQL). There tools for some of those jobs (eg. CSV import / export from PostgreSQL is solved). But there are a lot of jobs where I end up…

Do you really expect IT / tech people to pay?

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

#155

Post by stevematzal »

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.

I checked out your project and it looks pretty good, I like the fact that ideas also have an estimated value attached to them. Would you mind if I included some of your ideas in my own project - Idea Miner (https://ideaminr.com)? Of course, I will mention the source.

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

#157

Post by jakobegger »

zaphirplane wrote: post #154
jakobegger wrote: post #112

Here are two ideas for desktop apps that I think would be worthwhile: 1) A data copy app. I often need to copy data from one place to another (eg. copy data from MS Access to a MySQL server, export data from PostgreSQL to CSV, fetch data from some REST API and insert it into PostgreSQL). There tools for some of those jobs (eg. CSV import / export from PostgreSQL is solved). But there are a lot of jobs where I end up…

Do you really expect IT / tech people to pay?

Yes, of course. I sell a product to a very similar audience, and many people are absolutely happy to pay for a tool that saves them time.

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

#158

Post by mikekchar »

After many decades of coming up with ideas, I have discovered something. Every single one of my good ideas have been ideas that somebody else also had. It shouldn't be surprising because there are something like 7.7 billion people in the world. If you have a good idea that nobody else had, then that's a 1 in 7.7 billion idea ;-) Having realised this, I now use the fact that the idea is already known to be a good test of how good the idea is. If the idea has already been tried then I get an even better idea of how good it was.

Here's the thing: the world is not short on good ideas. Actually, you don't even need to have one to be successful. You just need to be able to recognise a good idea. The rest is execution. You execute better, you will win bigger.

Here's another cool thing I learned in decades of looking at the technology world: name one dominant company whose product was the first to market in its field. I literally can't find one! They probably exist (and this is HN, so there will be someone coming along shortly to point it out to me ;-), but the most important thing to realise is that most (by an incredible margin) successful projects became successful be learning from the previous king in its area. Word processor, spreadsheet, OS, game (of any genre), source control service, etc, etc, etc.

Don't be afraid not to innovate. Learn how to deliver. Learn how to distinguish between good and bad. Learn how to optimise the good. Learn how to please unhappy customers of existing products. Learn how to do all that while making money, not spending it.

Or the other way is just to close your eyes and pretend you invented it. If you become dominant, nobody will realise you weren't the first ;-)

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

#159

Post by mikekchar »

fierro wrote: post #153
mittermayr wrote: post #34

Don't throw away an idea because someone else has already made it. This is crucial. People completely underestimate the amount of money you can make as a runner-up, or even as a 5th or 10th-place service in some markets. Most of the products I'm involved with have made me quite substantial amounts over the years compared to the minimal time required to upkeep them. There's at least ten companies I can name at an inst…

see: gitlab

See: gitHUB. The whole reason git even exists is because Linus wasn't completely happy with the service he was getting from a SaaS source control service! I mean we can go back decades in this field.
Post reply on HN