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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?

#401

Post by mindhash »

mpermar wrote: post #270

An app for finding the best hotels for traveling with kids. It was basically crawling the booking.com API and then applying an algorithm to figure out if a property was suitable for families with children or not. It would do the usual. Parse descriptions and try to find keywords there, parse and count the number of comments mentioning family-related topics, up-score hotels with certain facilities and then push the im…

this is a good idea. Keep it up.

People are starting to travel, atleast in India. There will be a surge in tourism as soon as the vaccine reaches its potential.

Most people in my circle are dying to travel. So stick around man

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

#402

Post by statictype »

semireg wrote: post #332
statictype wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar idea for a web based version about 8 years ago. Even ran some Google Ads with a MVP landing page to gauge interest (there was). Finally never got around to building it. Is this a sustainable business for you now? Or just a side project?

Yes, it’s ramen profitable, bootstrapped and growing. It’s just me at the moment and I’m still juggling full-time mobile app and IOT consulting. Since Label LIVE is a React app wrapped in Electron I’ve given a lot of thought to bringing it into a proper SaaS via browser but just don’t have the time.

Nice. Congratulations!

A suspect a browser based SaaS version will knock the socks off of what you have now in terms of conversion.

Try and find some time to build it.

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

#403

Post by milani »

I tried to build the Eventbrite but for Zoom: if you hold online classes, meetings, etc. on zoom and you want people to sign up and receive zoom links periodically, create a page and we help you find audience.

Then I realized there are launched products with the same idea and the bigger problem: what if Zoom tries to do it? So I never completed the app.

Anyway, zoom.page is for sale ;)

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

#405

Post by milani »

shakow wrote: post #55

Hyades ( https://hyades.info/ ) I wanted a not-too-intrusive Github notification system that would give me a broad overview of what happened in my starred repos ( i.e. repos for which I'm only a consumer), as some kind of ‶real-time″ changelog. Indeed, I star quite a lot of e.g. emacs packages and other small utilities, which don't have a strict release schedule/changelog cycle, so it's easy to miss a new feature. So…

I like it and would use it. For paying customers, they probably come from places like github marketplace. I think you should work on getting it out of the door.

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

#406

Post by Aeolun »

CrackpotGonzo wrote: post #114

I built a really simple way to poll 50 random people in the US. It's called This or That and functionality is currently very simple. You submit a question along with two images via SMS and you get your answer back usually within the hour. I've had a few people use to test new logo ideas, to ask which of two TV shows to watch, or which outfit looks best. So far no one has paid for it, only a few hundred free users, bu…

Make it useable by asking people to answer questions in exchange for getting to ask their own question?

Reaching critical mass may be harder, but I think it would be more random than mechanical turk.

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

#407

Post by dr_kiszonka »

seanwilson wrote: post #331
tolbish wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, what a fun game! Projects made for the fun of it tend to have a certain charm to them compared to projects made for profit.

Thanks! Yeah, that's part of what derailed me trying to make a paid upgrade for the old free version. I had to think of what features would be locked away in the paid version, how the player would be nudged to upgrade etc. It's a fair amount of coding work and planning, and it's not fun compared to working on the actual game.

FWIW, personally, I would pay for no ads and maybe brief definitions of the words that I have just crossed out, but I would be turned off by microtransactions like boosts, extra life's or skins.

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

#408

Post by plumeria »

killtimeatwork wrote: post #39
koellewe wrote: post #4

I built a Tinder-like matchmaking app where users log in with their Facebook account and the app then auto-matches users by their FB likes. I thought taking the hassle out of swiping could give my app an edge over Tinder. It was working fine for a week or so before Facebook caught up and revoked my API keys (effectively killing the app). They didn't give any reason besides some vague recommendation to review their Te…

I've heard that it's a good rule of thumb to not develop something that is just an extra feature of an existing behemoth (e.g. Atlassian plugins etc., but also the thing you built). If you're failure, then you've wasted time and money and if you're a success, the behemoth will just reimplement your work as a part of their platform. Pretty much the only way to win it so make something that provides marginal revenue, w…

Couldn't one expect at least a job offer?

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

#409

Post by Aeolun »

milani wrote: post #403

I tried to build the Eventbrite but for Zoom: if you hold online classes, meetings, etc. on zoom and you want people to sign up and receive zoom links periodically, create a page and we help you find audience. Then I realized there are launched products with the same idea and the bigger problem: what if Zoom tries to do it? So I never completed the app. Anyway, zoom.page is for sale ;)

I don’t think zoom would do that. It’s not really their core competency. They might buy the company if it becomes big though :P

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

#410

Post by gremlinsinc »

arnaudsm wrote: post #276

Built a modern comparison engine for tech products ( https://picked.arnaud.at ) Feedback and conversion were amazing but SEO was lacking since Google hates search engines. I needed written content (or advertising) to compete with classical review websites. Bittersweet, but I learned a lot and it got me my first job in the bay so I don't regret it!

Easy fix. Cache all searches or last 200 or so... That way, google indexes the serps page, or use amazon product api to bring in reviews from amazon, etc... Then that content would be searchable wouldn't it?

Also, maybe rely less on google, more on social media. Seems lots of businesses don't use google at all any more for growth but social nets, launch pages, ads, groups, etc...

Create your own subreddit and a bot to crosspost all comparisons as images, linking back to the post.

Edit: Also, cut back on vue/react stuff unless you can create a static page version which search can index better. The write some blog posts featuring some of the top products if you do want some of the organic traffic from google.

I use laravel/livewire for front-facing pages that need indexed, phoenix/liveview or just rails + turbolinks would be good enough probably.

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