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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?

#471

Post by paulsmal »

Back in 2010 I have worked in a support department and didn't have much experience with programming. One of my tools back than was Oracle SQL Developer[0] a java application that worked a little slower than I would like to on my new MacBook Pro at that time, so I tried to make my own client for oracle database[1]. I had some sales right after publishing to Apple app store, but the application needed bug fixing and that was reflected in app reviews. Very quickly I've lost an interest working on my app and shut it down. It felt nice to be able to jump start my sales for App store so quickly but the whole experience with Apple ecosystem wasn't pleasant. Close and locked down. I didn't want to invest my time developing apps for it.

0: https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/appdev/sqldevel...

1: https://github.com/letitcrash/nora

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

#472

Post by oneil »

fzil wrote: post #210
hermitcrab wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but those animations are BAAAAD. Arguably worse than https://www.lingscars.com/ .

that's an amazing website! Thanks for sharing.

Have a look at the source code; the warning message is amazing

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

#473

Post by seanwilson »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #407
seanwilson wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cool, thanks! Yep, I hate soulless plays like "buy gems to play more", "wait until tomorrow to get more gems to play", "invite your friends to get more gems" etc.

Word definitions would be awesome. Are there any good free sources for this? That also have offensive words flagged?

I'm not sure how to do a free version of the game that isn't so good that nobody upgrades though to be honest. With the competition on mobile now as well, I feel freeium is a must to get tractor too.

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

#474

Post by hermitcrab »

oneil wrote: post #472
fzil wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's an amazing website! Thanks for sharing.

Have a look at the source code; the warning message is amazing

Wow. I never thought to look at the source.

https://www.lingscars.com/ is so bad that it has gone all the way around the dial back to good (for some value of good).

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

#475

Post by fapjacks »

asicsp wrote: post #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…

Congrats on trying something new after your burnout.

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

#476

Post by bumbada »

seanwilson wrote: post #469
top-flight wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool game. Spelling June didn't register a valid answer.

Thanks! Proper nouns (generally capitalised words) are disallowed so June won't. Not sure how best to communicate this in the game though. The original had a wall-of-text pop-up of the rules when you first started that I want to avoid and I'd rather players picked up the rules organically. Maybe showing a "proper nouns and capitalised words not allowed" message when you spelled one would be a nice approach but a list…

It is interesting because the same happened to me while trying the game.

If something happens to almost everybody, why don't you change your game?

When I design a complex system like a game or computer programs, once the system starts working on their own, it talks to me. I learn a lot from the interaction with it.

This is specially important when you have millions of users. They communicate to you what the next step is much better than the best design you could draft isolated on your own.

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

#477

Post by WA »

* I made something similar to https://keywordtool.io/ which focuses on long-tail keyword research. I even signed up for Stripe and had some account management stuff. I was the only user ever and even I didn't really use it more than 5 times. It was a fun little project, but nowadays, I wouldn't hassle with account and payment stuff until I had actual users :)

* I wrote an eBook and sold maybe 3 copies per month for $9.99, for a while, but it wasn't the success I thought it would become. I made it free eventually, because I thought the SEO helped more than having it as a paid product.

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

#478

Post by yalooze »

asutekku wrote: post #198
yalooze wrote: post #15

https://www.musictaco.co.uk - Find the cheapest place to buy albums online (you can also track your favourite artists and it will email you when they have a new release) To be fair, I built it primarily as a way to teach myself Rails, and in this regard it was a great success. But in the back of my mind I figured I might be able to make some affiliate revenue out of the traffic but it never took off. It has failed so…

I would imagine most people are going to buy the music where they usually buy it from. And with just three sites it compares I could just check these sites by myself. So for now it lacks a bit of content. However, something I would like to see and i think could be more niche-oriented would be similar as this but for physical releases. Discogs does have some retailers, but they need to manually upkeep their inventory…

I used to do just that (check them manually) and so built this to scratch my own itch :) It used to have Google Play as well but they sadly moved out of the digital music purchasing space.

Regarding Discogs - I don't have any interest in physical media unfortunately so will leave that problem for someone else to solve.

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

#479

Post by scottmf »

type0 wrote: post #199
ZguideZ wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other alternative to the pointy nose theory was that there just weren't a lot of people who were into having W up their butt, but we felt that must not be the case.

> The other alternative to the pointy nose theory you'd think it would have been much more successful with Obama

?

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

#480

Post by spdionis »

interestica wrote: post #92
killtimeatwork wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wordpress/Automattic bought up successful plugins like WooCommerce and just integrated them.

Automattic is not in the same league as FAANG, it doesn't really apply.
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