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

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 744 posts

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

#531

Post by dplgk »

ausjke wrote: post #527
dplgk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

someone needs to make wheels for those luggage suitcases, some wheels broke while the case is still good.

A lot of them appear to be the same as roller blade wheels

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

#532

Post by wwasilev »

opportune wrote: post #457

In addition to regular index fund investing I trade options sometimes. Been doing it for about 6 months now and I'm up about 90%. I am a lot more conservative than most options gamblers but it's still pretty risky. I put all my gains into high earnings stocks (currently buying STX and LYB) and at this point since I've almost doubled my principal, I could lose basically all my money currently allocated to options and…

What option strategies are you using?

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

#533

Post by thinnerlizzy »

I created ShutterDeck[1], a system for controlling multi-camera arrays. I designed and built the hardware and the iPhone app, which serves as a remote control for the device. I do basically no advertising or I'd probably sell more. The next batch I order will have the boards pre-assembled for me, which I'm really excited about.

Most of my clients have photo booths, but I do have one researcher using it to try to treat scoliosis in children. I'm actively looking for new markets. It barely brings in enough money to make it worth doing, but the system is essential for some users, and I like doing it.

[1] https://shutterdeck.com

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

#534

Post by 1k »

muzani wrote: post #506
cincinnatus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you consider paying more than minimum wage? I wonder if a higher wage would enable you to expand your talent pool to folks who would enjoy slinging coffee a couple days a week on the side to improve their situation while actually finding it fulfilling work. The math does seem fixed, there is only so much time in the day and the inputs have fixed costs, but if you can get it all well tuned to the point where effor…

Our value proposition was that we just provide tasty enough caffeine. It's a psychological boost - first thing on a tough day, end of a tough day, before a class on linear algebra. We weren't competing with other cafes. We were competing with cigarettes. We aimed to be daily, unlike Starbucks. Our key metric was quantity: 1. The more purchases they make, the more the lock themselves into the habit loop. 2. More quant…

I'd love to read more about how you positioned your brand, especially on the design decisions that you made to entice customers come more regularly and how you manage to sell more cups than your competitors.

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

#535

Post by [deleted] »

asciident wrote: post #208

Not really a productive venture, but it was profitable. I used a 3% cashback credit card on a financial company's money sending service with no fees, and sent my sister $3,500 every two days. She'd then eventually pay me back through bank ACH (also free). Then I'd pay off my credit card every week so my credit balance remained low. Made about $1,500 a month for a year, before they stopped giving cashback for transfer…

[deleted]

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

#536

Post by gbin »

Restoring and fixing vintage computers then reselling them on eBay. I am just doing that for fun during weekends and I never expected to be a profitable business. It is very satisfying to buy those old, rusted, dusty, yellowed broken machines and restore them so people can relive the 80s or 90s hay days of the family computers.

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

#537

Post by em-bee »

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…

would you mind linking to your case designs, or give a search keyword to find you on ebay?

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

#538

Post by skypather »

bitfhacker wrote: post #401

My job occupies most of the time. The rest of it I invest it with my children and family. I'm father of 2 twins sisters (11) and a boy of 5 years old. My father have a degenerative disease (fatal but with slow progression), and my mother spends most of her time taking care of him. I put all my energy with my kids and helping my parents. As soon as I realized that I can loose my loved ones, I started making selective…

It is very nice and warm to hear your story.

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

#540

Post by daveslash »

davidjnelson wrote: post #408
scarface74 wrote: post #224

About 10 years ago and ten years into my career, I had been working and stayed at the same job way too long and both my salary and career stagnated. I had two part time money making side projects. I was a part time fitness instructor and had some rental real estate. Teaching fitness classes was fun, I made a lot of friends, and it gave me a release valve from working at a computer all day. Real estate was a headache.…

Thanks, this is insightful. Sounds like the opportunity cost of a side business isn't worth it for you right?

to;dr -- Never devalue your personal time. If you can, monetize your hobbies that you'd be doing anyway.

I don't have a side-hustle yet, but I'm working on one. As you pointed out, there's an opportunity cost to a side-business. I'm working on a scheme to monetize a hobby; make money off something I'd be doing anyway. I'm just over 10 years into my career, recently married with a teenage step-child. My family-time or my "down-time" is very precious to me. During our wedding, we got some beautiful wedding save-the-dates off Etsy. They were water-color paintings. But then we needed additional stationary: invitations, menus, seating charts, table signs, a gobo (wtf is a gobo??), etc.... I ended up using photoshop to make all of the other stationary and graphics myself based off the initial Etsy save-the-dates (it was important to me that the fonts & colors matched on everything). My wife loves to paint water-colors, and I'm into photography & graphic-design. I'm working on a side hustle to do wedding invites and similar stationary on Etsy based off her paintings and my photography & graphic-design skills. These are (mostly) activities we'll do anyway. So... make some stationary templates once, throw them up on Etsy, and if people buy them GREAT, if not then no loss.

Post reply on HN