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Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#161

Post by clubm8 »

throwawayman194 wrote: post #128

Throwaway because I don't want to risk losing my job for asking this. Is all the comments here only from men, or are there any women here who make money from side projects?

> Throwaway because I don't want to risk losing my job for asking this.

Do you often have issues at work when you feel you're "just asking questions"?

I haven't seen a single person mention their gender yet. For all we know everyone who has replied is female.

Maybe don't assume someone's gender based on data like hobbies?

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#162

Post by Kasoha »

throwawayman194 wrote: post #128

Throwaway because I don't want to risk losing my job for asking this. Is all the comments here only from men, or are there any women here who make money from side projects?

site is called hacker news. guess the number of females here.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#163

Post by xiphias2 »

ww520 wrote: post #121
xiphias2 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going long term, the platform doesn't matter at all. With short-term trading quants have a huge advantage (I went through an interview at a hedge fund, I know how smart they are, but their downside is that they have to have high sharp ratio to attract investment). I'm always looking at 5 year+ investments only

What's their typical threshold for Sharpe ratio?

I've got accepted, but at the end I decided to go back to work at Google for personal reasons, so I don't know that much of the inner workings of the criterion.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#164

Post by michaelscott »

rayraegah wrote: post #13

Launched in 2016 for free. Started making money in 2018 with $3,000+ MMR. Referral only (side) business. I work full-time as an engineer/principal in growth. I conduct a form of ethnography, embedding myself in the lives of consumers the way Margaret Mead did among Samoans. I interviews my subjects and the people around them, itemizing the contents of their home (photographing and videotaping), and accompany them as…

As others have mentioned this is a very interesting side gig. How did you find leads on these companies to turn this profitable though? I imagine any company that does this sort of research would have to be relatively forward thinking.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#165

Post by wjossey »

While I don’t directly make money from it, my free mentoring program has actually generated some side income as a nice benefit.

I help mentor managers, leaders, and founders, totally for free. I’ve worked with dozens so far and I’m always taking new mentees!

You can sign up for a slot in seconds, as I do sessions five days a week:

https://freemanagermentors.com

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#166

Post by tonyarkles »

truckerbill wrote: post #10
rossenberg79 wrote: post #3

I woodwork at a local makershop, I started out making random things for my home and when I no longer had ideas for other stuff I wanted I’d make things and give them away for free to friends. Eventually other people wanted to know if I can make them custom pieces so I began doing it for money, mostly to cover cost of materials and a bit of time for labor. Not making big money from it but it’s fulfilling work and good…

What would you say the commonality is?

The thing I love about woodworking (I’m not the op) is the upfront planning and design process, the immaculate attention to detail (an 1/8” off is often a big deal), and then the satisfaction at the end of being able to physically hold the finished product.

For commonality with software, personally, I like to do a fair bit of up-front design work before building something. Not days worth for most stuff, but hours worth. Scribble ideas, riff on them, iterate to a design I like before building it. And then during the build process, you’ll probably discover something you missed in the design process and have to improvise a bit; software is generally more forgiving in this regard, but it’s the same shape of process.

I find that when I’ve been doing more hands on stuff (small woodworking, welding, car repair, bigger construction), I get better at doing the software design stuff. My brain gets better at thinking through the consequences of design decisions and picking out small details that can have significant implications.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#167

Post by vorpalhex »

pettycashstash2 wrote: post #137
gottebp wrote: post #32

Breville 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…

I recently ordered a part for my daughters dresser drawer - the Kenlin Rite-TrackII, and paid $12 for four including shipping. 6 to 7 years ago I paid $68 for a single part. To my surprise when I opened my recent plastic mailer envelope, I discovered it was a 3D printed piece. Any idea how one can 3d scan a part for exact copy?

They make full on 3d scanners but most parts do not need "3d scanning" so much as they need a few minutes in the hand of someone with a caliper and a sketch pad.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#168

Post by aaronmiler »

mparr4 wrote: post #141
aaronmiler wrote: post #122

I licensed my house as a winery, and run a hard cider company with my girlfriend. We sell to some stores in our area, and do our local Farmer's Market during the summer. It's been very satisfying making and selling a physical product. The profitability part isn't quite there yet. But we're working on that.

What’s your cider company? Where are you based out of?

We are Hood View Ciderworks (hoodviewcider.com), based out of Gresham, OR (suburb of Portland)

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#169

Post by abakker »

I make and sell custom tabletops compatible with the festool woodworking products. I cut them locally on my CNC router and advertise exclusively through craigslist. I do 3-5 per month of those, and another 10 projects / month that come from repeat customers - mostly hobbiests and contractors.

Through craigslist, I’ve ended up making components used in the Apple campus, and service pieces used in a 3 Michelin star restaraunt.

Re: Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside programming?

#170

Post by nlh »

pmorici wrote: post #41

I taught myself circuit board design and found a niche market that I designed a few products for that sold like gangbusters with zero marketing for a few years until the market cooled off and low cost knock offs started entering the market. I also found that you could use the same CAD program that I learned to design PCB's to draw outlines to cut out on the laser CNC machine at the local maker space. I ended up findi…

This is super cool!

> I taught myself circuit board design and found a niche market that I designed a few products for that sold like gangbusters with zero marketing for a few years until the market cooled off and low cost knock offs started entering the market.

Can you elaborate a bit? Did you teach yourself literal circuit board design (but already had a background in electronics/hardware)? Or did you start from scratch and learn how to design an electronic circuit?

What was the niche (broadly?)

> In hind sight the best way to find these kinds of opportunities is not to be looking for them. You really just need to get a really deep understanding of a hobby or industry or market that interests you in some way and once you have that then these sorts of things kind of pop out of the woodwork.

1000% agree. The single best way to find an idea is to be seriously and deeply involved in a hobby/area of interest. There are so many ideas out there screaming you in the face.

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