I'm an Airbnb host in my spare bedrooms.
As a software engineer by day, I find it quite pleasant to be a host and have a more direct human connection with my customers.
Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
81–90 of 744 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#82Index fund
Could you elaborate? (Please :)
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#83Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders. The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I co…
My wife bought your part and it worked perfectly. She was really happy when she found it. Thanks for making this part available.
This makes my day. Full circle to Hacker News. Enjoy your espresso.
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#84I buy cars, repair them and recondition them to my level of satisfaction, and send them back out the door, typically targeting 55-65 year olds. I focus mostly on entry level luxury crossovers around 7 to 10 years old, though starting to also do hybrids since there’s more profit in it since everyone is seemingly allergic to batteries and pack replacement/rebuilds.
Parts are cheap, I listen to music or a podcast, I do all the “PITA” repairs (replacing wheel bearings, ball joints, tie rods, full brake service) that are really just labor in terms of professional repair cost, perform additional rust prevention, and for sale it goes when I feel a new grandma or grandpa would never give a hesitation to load it up with all their grandkids. They also see a very thorough interior cleaning, and a full exterior detail (including paint correction when required).
It has bought every very nice tool I could ever want, most are 20-30 hours of labor including acquisition, and I’m at the point where I have repeat customers (the put a 2nd alongside the first) and have direct referrals. Now the profit mostly goes towards putting a 2nd interesting car in the garage, and some towards moving up the ladder to try to earn more per vehicle.
Selling cars isn’t bad when you don’t have employees to pay, and it lets you sell really high quality stuff. I keep thinking of how much I couldn’t justify doing, and how much my product standards would suffer if I had to pay help.
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#85I do electronics repair for cars. For many older and rare cars it's usually no longer possible (or desired) to replace broken electronic components such as the engine or transmission controller. So owners contact me to have the part repaired instead of replacing it. The repairs are usually not that challenging for me, and it won't make me rich, but it's a great way for me to clear my head from challenges with my tech…
That sounds really interesting. By repairs do you mean mostly board level type stuff? How do you handle all of the encryption and road blocks OEMs like to put on the software? Doesn’t that make it challenging to get a board diagnosed or operating properly again?
Mostly board repairs, but also wiring on the cars itself.
Like I said, I mostly work on older cars, since those are the ones where it makes economic sense to do this kind of repairs. Those cars are usually from the era where ECU's had little to no encryption, or even no software at all (pure electronic based ECU's).
Stuff like early Bosh and Lucas, Porsche CDi.
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#86I have craft cocktail catering business with a couple other cocktail lovers who work technical jobs
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#87Poker. I'm not able to make enough for it to be a full time job, but it's more pleasant than driving an Uber. Sometimes makes for good networking too.
I had a coworker who literally did a rant, slammed the door of the conference room and quit. He was earning some side money playing online poker then made a go of it full time. His conclusion: This is a lot less fun when it's your sole source of income.
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#88Breville coffee grinders are impossible to get internal parts for. I designed a 3D printed upgrade for the main wear-part in their BCG800XL and BCG600SIL Grinders. The storefront is through ShapeWays[1] and I use iFixit[2],[3] to drive the traffic. It passively makes enough to cover my own coffee needs forever. I spend about 20 minutes per month fielding questions. This all happened because my grinder failed and I co…
Clever. Do you have the intention to make more replacement parts for other products?
The hard part is finding appliances that need fixing. This is super easy if you happen to own a lot do things that break. If not, it becomes quite boring and tedious to scout out things that are breaking for other people, that you have no personal motivation to fix, to get the broken appliance and then figure out the 3d model for the bad part.
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#89I buy cars, repair them and recondition them to my level of satisfaction, and send them back out the door, typically targeting 55-65 year olds. I focus mostly on entry level luxury crossovers around 7 to 10 years old, though starting to also do hybrids since there’s more profit in it since everyone is seemingly allergic to batteries and pack replacement/rebuilds. Parts are cheap, I listen to music or a podcast, I do…
You must have fixed up cars when you were a kid? How do you handle paint matching?
Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?
#90For the past few years I've been buying, renovating, and selling small-ish houses. My dad was a contractor growing up so I picked up most of the necessary skills helping him out during middle and high school. I mostly work on weekends and holidays which makes it a bit slow going, but I've made a reasonable amount of money. Even if the money was worse I would still probably do it, I really enjoy both the physical aspe…
Do you have any before and after shots you can share?