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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?

#331

Post by grogenaut »

gottebp wrote: post #284
grogenaut wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you concerned about the low amounts of ground nylon that your customers (or really the original customers) were ingesting if this part does wear down over time?

PA2200 Nylon is not water soluble so any particles would stay with the discarded grounds. It’s pretty harmless stuff anyway. Breville’s version wears fast but the ShapeWays one has held up really well. Check out the two year wear study on the ShapeWays shop page; I am really happy with how minimal it is.

Aah I wasn't thinking it through. I guess as long as the fragments are caught in the filter during the coffee making it's likely fine. And for some reason I forgot that coffee is essentially strained/filtered. I have a jura and so I just press a button and it goooooess.

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

#332

Post by paulgb »

Max-20 wrote: post #216
paulgb wrote: post #78

Betting on politics on PredictIt. I wouldn’t recommend it as an income stream, but having an interest in probability, markets, and international politics, it has taught me to read the news more objectively.

That looks like an interesting side hustle, would you mind to elaborate a bit on it? How much does it make you in profit per month?

To be honest, I’m still down from the 2016 election. After taking a break from it, I’ve started to recover since taking the time to sit down and understand the rules, fee structure, and betting tactically at the beginning of this year. Even if I were to attribute all my luck this year to skill and I could keep it up, I wouldn’t be able to make a minimum wage at it. I was particularly leaning on OP’s word possibly :)

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

#333

Post by heywire »

HenryBemis wrote: post #323
heywire wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a super cheap hand grinder I bought off amazon (the stainless steel one that there are 100 different variations of on amazon). There is a plastic part that breaks after about 6 months of usage. Someone modeled and uploaded a replacement piece to Thingiverse. The grinder is cheap enough that it is disposable, but since it is so easy to print a replacement piece with my $179 3D printer, I haven’t needed to throw…

Who you mind sharing what printer make and model you are using?

Creality Ender-3, ordered from Banggood.

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

#334

Post by symlinkk »

malwarebytess wrote: post #330

This is inspirationally depressing. Really makes you realize what a shit human being you are when everyone is doing so many interesting things -- on the side.

I barely have enough time to work, go to the gym, and socialize. I don't know how anyone has enough time to add side projects on top of that.

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

#335

Post by ynac »

tcmb wrote: post #287
ynac wrote: post #109

* Act as a standby for dish pits at the local restaurants - filling in only when someone doesn't show since I don't want to take what could be a lifeline job for someone AND having a standby like me means they can keep their job instead of just being a no-show * Write articles for other people - usually on topics I really don't have a lot of knowledge or feeling about to start. * Mow lawns - I'm allergic to grass. Bu…

> Write articles for other people That sounds interesting. What kind of people, and how do they find you? Where are the articles published? How much time do you usually have for writing them (days, weeks, months?) Do they get published under your name or the buyer's name?

As far as I can tell, there is no gold standard for text brokering, including TextBroker.com, but start with Textbroker Alternatives and you'll see lots, and plenty of reviews to find something you like.

After that, get old school and check out the Writer's Market Guide 2019 (or anything from the last couple of years). Keep in mind, all the magazines and industry publications out there need a ton of content every month. What are YOUR favorite places to read? Heck, it can be poetry, fiction, DIY, anything.

Timeline, word count, style, pay and all the other tidbits are almost always agreed upon prior to your efforts. Unless you want to pitch a story. Which can be super fun! And these can be blogs, industry rags, magazines, newspapers, and so on.

Enjoy!

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

#336

Post by ynac »

georgeburdell wrote: post #235
ynac wrote: post #109

* Act as a standby for dish pits at the local restaurants - filling in only when someone doesn't show since I don't want to take what could be a lifeline job for someone AND having a standby like me means they can keep their job instead of just being a no-show * Write articles for other people - usually on topics I really don't have a lot of knowledge or feeling about to start. * Mow lawns - I'm allergic to grass. Bu…

> Sell plant starts - a little late for this year, but it's one of those things you can save seeds from your regular groceries / food prep at home and early Spring...ba-da-bing ba-da-bang...kind of almost free plants! Might work with vegetables, but aren't most grocery fruits derived from cuttings?

For selling, you'll want to have starts, from seeds. Peppers, cucumbers and so on. Organic is usually far easier to sprout - especially if they haven't been radiated or whatever they do to things to keep them "fresh".

For eating, it's fun to toss scraps like lettuce feet, scallion spiders, and ginger thumbs and eventually (almost) never buy them again. Potatoes are fun since they grow so fast and just a bucket by the window is enough.

Of course, a trip to a local farmers market and you'll have an even better starting stock.

Farm it!

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

#337

Post by bonestamp2 »

jv22222 wrote: post #281
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…

This is my favorite side project that I've ever heard of. It's so cool how you stumbled into it and there's a lot of scope for other products too!

I know a guy who runs a multi-million dollar business making replacement parts for a particular type of business machine that you find in a lot of places. There are only a few OEMs and they all stopped making a similar (critical) component for their older models.

He was originally in the business of repairing these machines and then discovered he could no longer buy these parts from the OEMs so he learned CAD and CNC and injection molding and started making them a few years ago. He has a 3D printer for prototyping, but he needs to injection mold part of the final product because there is no filament in the particular material that he needs. His business has transitioned from repair to manufacturing and now he mostly sells replacement parts to other repair shops.

I don't want to disturb his business by talking about it in detail, but the point is that I think there are and will be many opportunities around repair parts that manufacturers are unwilling to provide because they'd rather be selling new machines. Aside from the environmental impact, that's fine since there are many people who won't go the repair route, and then there's a secondary market for those who will make parts and repair the machines.

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

#338

Post by grecy »

Insanity wrote: post #283
grecy wrote: post #94

I've written a couple of books that sell on Amazon and Apple iBooks - it takes zero minutes per month work for me, but brings a nice little side income. I won't get rich, but it's nice to have the money come in for doing nothing after I hit the "publish" button. Even the printed books cost nothing. I'm about to hit publish on a photo coffee-table book from my three years around Africa, and I'll write an Africa guide…

Really cool idea! What tools do you use to write the books? And how long did it take for you to write one?

For eBooks you can write it in any editor you want - word, pages, it doesn't really matter. Then just export to ePub and you're done.

For my published books I want ultimate control over the layout, so I write them in LaTeX to get the pdf to go to the printer. To get it into an eBook I use pandoc to convert them. I wrote a script that does it for me, and massages the resulting ePub until it's exactly what I want.

My published books is about 70,000 words. Writing it didn't actually take very long (a few hundred hours I guess), but then I probably spent at least that much time again editing and revising multiple draft rounds.

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

#339

Post by giancarlostoro »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #272
mrfusion wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it make more sense to rent them out rather than sell?

I would then have to deal with finding tenants, property maintenance issues, etc (or pay someone to do this), which is more than I really want to do right now. At that point I would be closer to a full time landlord, not a full-time software engineer who enjoys working on houses on the side!

A coworker found a company that handles most of it, and they call when they're tasked with fixing something, he then figures out if he wants to pay them to fix it or what have you, or if he just wants to do it himself. He says it's basically paying for his rent. Of course it's all about researching the companies. Worse case you sell off the house. Totally worth looking into though.
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