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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?

#661

Post by tiberiade »

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…

This is awesome! My co-founder actually did something similar last year: http://www.businessinsider.com/i-live-and-work-in-my-car-her... (he did it in a Landy though!)

Would love to help in any way we can on your next book (I'm the founder of Reedsy, https://reedsy.com)

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

#662

Post by nigealj »

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…

I'd add trading Futures to the mix too or Options on Futures. The beauty with the Futures market is it's open 24/7(though liquidity might be a problem in the night) and there are only a limited number of futures markets/commodities you need to keep track of. Just stick to the S&P, Nasdaq, Treasury, Crude Oil & Gold. You can do some currencies if you like. Yes it's highly leveraged so more risky but that's why you make risk management front and center of any strategy you end up using to enter a trade.

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

#663

Post by daotoad »

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?

For most things scanning works pretty poorly. IME, you are better off you use some calipers and a free to use tool like Fusion 360 or TinkerCAD, or a really free tool like OpenSCAD to generate the model.

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

#664

Post by IanCal »

kitten_smuggler wrote: post #464
IanCal wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal was the unique design, but they were cheap too for wedding rings. I recorded each of us saying something to the other, then took the waveforms and made a ring from each one. Printing came to about £40 for each ring. https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMECi57zKtD6arv_-sL83gp...

That's really cool, is there any way to scan it from your phone and hear it?

Thanks! I'm pretty happy with them.

> is there any way to scan it from your phone and hear it?

It's not detailed enough for that, though you can tell the cadence and reliably guess at the number of words. If you know what we said, and only we do, then you can see it.

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

#665

Post by abakker »

utahcon wrote: post #617
abakker wrote: post #169

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 res…

What is special about a tabletop for festool products?

Take a look at Festool’s MFT 3 table system. It is a grid of 20mm holes, spaced at 96mm on center. There are many time saving and convenient tools made to take advantage of them, and many more custom stuff that craftsmen build to make things easier.

Without a CNC it is frustrating to drill those holes reliably square enough to use them in downstream operations like squaring cuts or aligning/spacing.

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

#666

Post by pmorici »

em-bee wrote: post #537
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?

I found some old photos, the maker space I was using to cut them went out of business so I haven't made any recently.

https://imgur.com/a/necYS83

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

#667

Post by dharmab »

SegFaultCDumped wrote: post #95
MrFoof wrote: post #84

I 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…

Can you make YouTube videos about it? I watch Chris Fix all the time, not for educational purpose (I don't own a car), but because they are so freaking satisfying to watch. Seeing things go from 'meh' to 'wow.'

The next time you watch one of Chris' videos, try to figure out how much prep is required for every single shot and edit. He works without a cameraman, so figure out where the camera is mounted and how it was mounted there. (hint: it's usually mounted _inside_ the car, somewhere harder to get to than the part he's accessing in the shot!)

It quickly adds up to an insane amount of effort. (Which is why he's got the best auto repair tutorials in human history!)

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

#668

Post by rayraegah »

tchock23 wrote: post #627
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…

How do you convince founders, small businesses and startups to pursue this kind of ethno work? In my experience only big companies with dedicated consumer insight teams have the budgets and patience to do this kind of exploratory qualitative research. Just curious as to how you’ve ‘sold’ this service in to smaller organizations...

I did not market or sell this service. Back when I did this free, I worked closely with my mentor who had a startup (which later was acquired by a publicly listed company). I helped his company a lot. They were building an BI platform for big data.

That success gave me wings for a while. Word of mouth referring helped and I only took on clients who were recommended to me (i.e. they were aware of it)

Sometimes I meet business owners and founders at meetups or for lunch and we organically start talking about what we do (with no intention to sell). I always try to make the other person curious and then feed their curiosity. Also, I do an initial consultation for free.

The motivation is not money and my rates are pretty compelling (low) for the ROI I promise. Not every small business takes the opportunity but some did.

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

#669

Post by jmcqk6 »

jawns wrote: post #282

I write nonfiction books. I used to be a magazine/newspaper editor. About eight years ago, I made a career change and became a full-time programmer. But I wanted to continue to write. So I wrote a book proposal, found an agent who loved it, found some publishers who were interested, and went with a publisher who offered a two-book deal. My first book, "Experimenting With Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Pe…

O bought your 'experimenting with babies' book for my sister when she had her first child. It's been a blast, thanks!

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

#670

Post by tonetheman »

iamleppert wrote: post #468

Probably going to be downvoted, but I do adult webcam stuff, mostly with private already established regular clients. My net profit can be as high as $1200 per week, $800 on the low side, for a few hours of “work”. I generally use it as a fall-back income when I’m in-between tech jobs but I do it if I’m employed or not to keep my paying client list fresh for when I need it. I could make a lot more, I have a “cam frie…

I have been watching your thread and saw your addition.

That crazy and cool and good money. And something surprising to see on HNews.

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