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Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it makes money because you shamelessly advertise in response to completely unrelated questions.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize my side-project was unrelated to a question about side-projects. But you are correct, advertising things means they make money. That's why nobody has ever heard of Juicero.

The thread is explicitly about side projects that don't make money

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#42
I'm currently taking stab #4 at an ebook writing app.

My first couple attempts sucked and never saw the light of day.

My 3rd attempt launched and was called Paperback Writer. No one was remotely interested in using it, so I eventually shuttered it. (Didn't even have any free users to be worried about.)

That was a few years ago, and my conviction about what would make for a good ebook writing app have only grown stronger. There are glaring shortcomings in all of the existing solutions: Scrivener, Vellum, Sigil, iBooks Author, Calibre... they all kinda suck for writing and publishing novels in particular.

So I'm now working on version 4 of the idea, this time rechristened as PaperbackAuthor: http://paperbackauthor.com

(I still like the name "Paperback Writer" better, but it's a nightmare SEO-wise. When you google "PaperbackAuthor", my twitter handle comes up first. So I consider that an early win.)

I have no idea if this one will attract any users, but I'm passionate about it and need to get it out there. If only so that I can stop thinking about it.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#43
post #37

I turned part of my personal site into a membership site for aspiring remote workers. On the membership landing page is a free signup. You get access to a 12-lesson course with tutorials and tactics I’ve used to land three FT remote jobs in my career. The upsell was group coaching. Some people got excited about this. Only a few people paid. I learned that unemployed people are not usually willing to pay for a service…

This business sounds like it would lend itself well to an ISA model.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realize my side-project was unrelated to a question about side-projects. But you are correct, advertising things means they make money. That's why nobody has ever heard of Juicero.

The thread is explicitly about side projects that don't make money

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#47
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a project that would benefit from some kind of clustering algorithm using machine learning. Is that how you did it?

It sounds like a project someone would use a clustering algorithm for, where a moderated user submission would be better.

Perhaps, but it's not so easy to generate user submissions. Scraping would quickly get you a lot more data to work with.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I'm glad!

Lol, I love your sense of humor, Stavros. Just riding the ragged edge of believability.

Thank you! I'm just worried this thing is going to take off and then nobody will believe this isn't an angle.

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#49
post #45

I spent $1.4 million of my own money attempting to dethrone Craigslist in 2007. Didn't work.

Would you mind elaborating on that; besides running out of money, what were the things that went wrong? Or the things that didn't happen when needed to?

Re: Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money that hasn't?

#50
More than 6 years back, I left my job without any idea of what I'd do. I just couldn't work anymore and leaving was the priority.

After months of doing nothing much, I decided to implement a game (which I came up with in school, and had also created a basic version in college). I had an electronics background, so I did know programming basics and had to write Perl scripts at work. However, I didn't know much of Java (had a course in school) and Android. Somehow, over the course of a year, I made the app.

The main game idea I had in school was simple inspiration from tic-tac-toe. Make squares instead of lines on a 4x4 board. While writing the code, I was ever trying to make it impressive. So, I came up lots of choices - larger board sizes (up to 12x12) for both tic-tac-toe and the square ones, with blocking moves.

To monetize, I added ads. After release, I got about 0.12 dollars or something over few months. I just removed the ads instead of trying to salvage it. I had bought a domain/hosting, so financially, it was a loss.

In hindsight, biggest issue was UI/UX and not knowing how to promote. I'm still proud of the code I implemented for computer moves.

App is no longer on play store (because it stopped working on newer versions), but you can still see screenshots here: https://github.com/learnbyexample/squaretictactoe

I wanted to re-implement in Python later, started it but never finished. May be next year ;)

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