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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

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Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#142
post #122

I work ~4 hours a week making aircraft add-ons for X-Plane, releasing one product every 3 months, net profit ~$5k a month total. It's fairly simple: 1) Commission Russian 3D artist to make model of aircraft -$1000 2) Commission Audio Engineer to do sound - $500 3) Tweak model to work well with simulator + animation - 12 hours 4) Paint model in Substance - 12 hours 5) Set up flight model in X-Plane's "Plane Maker" - 8…

So cool. How do you even think of an idea like this?

Before I started out I was already a pilot, X-Plane user, and software developer so the market was obvious; looking at other add-on planes I realized with a little learning I could make better products with less work by limiting scope to simple GA aircraft and working smart.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#143
My work place (startup) uses Google Spreadsheets as our weekly metrics dashboard. I'm the person who has run a ruby script to generate the data and copy them into the spreadsheet. I finally got around to building a simple API that would allow me to send it directly to the spreadsheet. Now tthe data gets updated automatically with Cron.

Its a very narrow use case, maybe others will find it useful. I'm no designer. Would love some feedback.

https://sheetsapi.co/

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#144

I sell prints of public domain artwork on Etsy [0]. I’ve automated the print production and fulfillment, so all I need to do is set up the artwork and maintain the product listings. It consistently brings in around £100-300 per month and if I put any time at all into marketing it could probably do a lot better. I also maintain a directory of UX tools, resources and information [1]. It currently doesn’t bring in anyth…

The uxlift directory is pretty cool. Any way to submit more tools/articles to it? I am working on a side-project that's like a self-hosted hotjar ( https://www.usertrack.net ), which might be helpful for the readers.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#145

I made almost 6 figures a year on an affiliate website promoting natural health products, when they were extremely popular back in 2006. I would stay awake some nights and jot down every product mentioned in overnight infomercials (before I knew what TiVo was). then write a review on them the next day. Thousands of people would search for “X review” in the days after watching those infomercials and I would rank #1 be…

Sounds unethical

Google Search should be smarter about these kinds of practices.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#146
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds unethical

Isn't this what this post is all about?

How did you reach this conclusion? OP never asked for unethical ideas. I interpreted "but you'd not talk about them" as "not to attract competition", not "unethical or illegal"

BTW, writing fictional reviews for money is not only unethical, it can be illegal too

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#147

In this virus season alone I've made $8000 in sales. You'll find various subreddits where people are buying around 5-10spools a month. Imagine how much virgin plastic is being added like that to the environment. I've been creating filament and selling it: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho... This activity also help recycle waste plastic. Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filam…

Wow awesome idea. How many rolls do you produce a day? How about recycling plastic waste ground on the beach?

I make 15-20 rolls a day. I'll be adding few more extruders soon - waiting for shipping of additional parts to start building new machines on weekend.

Well, picking up beach plastic is too much work - I am not that involved, I need easy automated work haha.

There are already companies who pick and sort, shred and wash plastic for you and even convert it into granules - so it's much better to give them more business so the are able to pick more of the waste.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#149
post #72
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincere question—how do you handle legal, especially with consumables?

I wonder if the FDA (or equivalent in awillen's jurisdiction) would care about non-human consumables.

I'd hope they care at least some. Little kids love to eat dog/cat food and treats, and it's hard to keep them out of it. At least enough to make sure it's not, like, full of lead or something.

Re: Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

#150
post #146
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this what this post is all about?

How did you reach this conclusion? OP never asked for unethical ideas. I interpreted "but you'd not talk about them" as "not to attract competition", not "unethical or illegal" BTW, writing fictional reviews for money is not only unethical, it can be illegal too

I decided to put it out there because it was exactly what the OP asked. It’s something I would rather not talk about. Whether you think it’s unethical/illegal is up to you of course.

For what it’s worth, i am no longer involved with this today.

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