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Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#101

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

umvi wrote: post #91
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #87

Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if it takes off it needs constant marketing. If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll see that marketing costs are way higher than development and mai…

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

You need to know your target audience and needs. Building an app takes time so it's best to start your marketing plan ASAP.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#102

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

Those that will eventually happen:

Turning a Ender 3 3D printer into a belt printer was put on the back burner pending TaxAmmend.com

TaxAmmend.com was put on the back burner pending AmIAccessible.com

AmIAccessible.com was placed on the back burner pending my AWS Certifications.

My AWS Certifications were put on the back burner pending a Computer Forensics research paper into Consumer Grade Forensics.

My research paper was put into the back burner pending an IDE 3.5" hard drive from ebay.

The IDE 3.5" hard drive is coming but I am now 3D printing a cosplay nailgun for going as Kohta Hirano from high school of the dead, rebuilding my Open Media Vault machine (as it has had a critical software failure) and publishing a Computer Networks paper that I had kicking around since 2019.

So I am probably going to be a busy busy boy for the foreseeable future.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#103

Post by NicoJuicy »

redman25 wrote: post #84

https://parepdf.com A web app for comparing PDF files. Figured that a more intuitive comparison experience would be an obvious advantage. It didn’t gain traction although I still use it personally on a weekly basis.

Diffpdf would be a much better name, I think

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#104

Post by Geee »

cdiamand wrote: post #11

I launched, and have now shut down oppsdaily.com. https://oppslist.com is still up as a zombie. We asked people about problems or inefficiencies in their industry that could be solved by Saas products and then sent those ideas out as a daily newsletter. I learned a lot, but had difficulty making money with it. Also, I'm not totally sure my heart was in it. I think about it a lot. I've recently launched a new project…

Looking at the oppslist - I think the larger issue is that lots of people are unaware of software that already exist. The top request for example has been solved multiple times since 60's already. It's basic inventory management.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#105

Post by ufmace »

umvi wrote: post #91
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #87

Given what I've read here, it seems that most people here forget or don't know that most apps need a strong marketing plan from the start to give it a decent chance to succeed. Writing an app that sells itself is very rare and even if it takes off it needs constant marketing. If you read the financials from most software companies that are public you'll see that marketing costs are way higher than development and mai…

Why can't you build it first, and then market it? You can pretend it is still under development if that will convince more people to sign up, but I don't understand why marketing needs to be there from day 1. But also marketing seems like a money black hole to me. I could sink tons of money into marketing and have little to show for it.

I'd say that "marketing" as used here includes a wide variety of activities, much more than actually buying ads and trying to directly sell your product to people.

More like - if you have an idea for a commercial website or app or something, it's best to start by finding potential customers, building relationships with them, and getting to know what they actually need and are willing to pay for. This is much more important than what language and framework to use, how you'll host it, and other technical decisions. Do the research first to figure out if people are willing to pay for your idea in a form that's in your "runway" budget of what you can afford to build and run before you get money coming in.

It's also perfectly fine to build something without that to try out a new tech you think is interesting, or to scratch a personal itch, etc. Just don't expect to bring in any money with it without doing that research.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#106

Post by gherkinnn »

bko wrote: post #86
impostervt wrote: post #74

https://www.sprinterval.com/ It's like Couch-2-5k for sprint intervals. I think that not a lot of people are into sprint intervals, or understand why they should be. Got around 70 users of the app per day on ios&android combined, but just couldn't get it to get any more traction. Pretty much mothballed now, removed from app stores.

Fitness apps are brutal. I have my failed fitness side project [0]. I thought a killer feature would be to have the popular 7-minute workout free with nice images, and customizable intervals. I even paid for some adwords and facebook but the market it brutal. The funny thing is alternatives were at the time (IMO) not better. They were corny, had ads or crazy permissions. I also made a free calculator as I was frustra…

Thanks for making OpenCalc.

I can’t explain why Apple doesn’t add a calc app to iPad OS. And the amount of shitty, ad-infested alternatives borders on horrifying.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#107

Post by karatestomp »

benibela wrote: post #100

My library app ( http://www.videlibri.de ) is failing since 2006 It reminds the users when they need to return books borrowed from public libraries to protect them from paying late fees. It is extremely useful for library users, but they do not know that it exists. First I wrote it for Windows and Linux, told the librarians about it and they said, we do not want any apps. Now the libraries have Android apps, so I por…

Do German libraries not email reminders? Also I usually shy away from projects that can be replaced with a “hey Siri”—if people aren’t already taking the 5 seconds to set a reminder, they probably don’t care that much.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#108

Post by jamil7 »

Offline article reader for scraping, tagging and playing articles as audio. I built it mostly for fun and to use myself but released it anyway, I failed to market it as I don't really know how to and I it doesn't work as well as the existing solutions. So it remains basically something for me and some users who found it organically.

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#109

Post by Edmond »

hermitcrab wrote: post #75

Launched https://www.easydatatransform.com earlier this year. It has sold some licenses and I wouldn't call it a failure yet, but the visit to download ratio is low compared to my other 2 commercial products. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure the traffic is targeted, I am solving a real problem and the website explains what it does. Any feedback would be welcome!

I am looking at this and thinking, how many times would a typical user need this? I occasionally find myself needing to manipulate excel documents but not enough to want to invest in dedicated software.

Is this meant to support ETL workflows?

Is it possible to create transform recipe packs as part of the product offering? Basically pre-built configuration instead of users doing this. Maybe provide the software for free and sell the recipes?

Is this something you can package as a component that other ETL products could plug into? This can be either native plugins or some kind of web API front-end.

Just spitballing :)

Re: Ask HN: What's your latest failed side project and why?

#110

Post by ron22 »

edwinwee wrote: post #55
ron22 wrote: post #6

A crowdfunding site for product feature requests. Stripe closed my account before I was able to launch as it was "unable to accept payments for crowdfunding"..... Their marketing doesn't match their policies.

Stripe supports crowdfunding sites. I’d be happy to take a second look if you email me at edwin@stripe.com.

Awesome, email sent!
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