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Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

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Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#51

Post by isthisthingon99 »

fb03 wrote: post #35
isthisthingon99 wrote: post #3

"A smart man learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learns from others." When I was about 25, I saw a 40 year old man get fired. I swore I'd never care if I got fired. Seems similar to your epiphany. The right niche or project idea is: 1. You know where to find the customers 2. You know the customers pay for similar projects 3. You can build what the customers pay for

So, can you share more about your side hustle and how did you get this idea from?

For me it was exactly how I describe. I found the customers first.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#52

Post by codazoda »

newbie578 wrote: post #50

How do you all decide on which idea to focus on? I use Google Keep to write down ideas, but then I am unsure on how to decide which one engage first..

I create a todo list of these right now and move the ones I’m most excited about to the top of the list. The caveat is that I’ve created a lot of things I personally use frequently but not a lot of other people use them and/or I haven’t monetized them.

I keep minor details in the todo notes and move to Nolific (one of mine) when I have more to say.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#53

Post by matsemann »

davidpolberger wrote: post #16

My father asked me to create Windows apps for the hospital department where he worked as a doctor (calculating drug dosages and the nutritional needs of preterm infants). I figured that there might be others with a similar need and eventually created a SaaS app builder that is currently my full-time job. It's been almost 20 years since that original request. https://www.calcapp.net/blog/2018/04/09/launching-after-15-…

Interesting story, cool to see how you persevered with the same thing for almost two decades.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#54

Post by newbie578 »

samsquire wrote: post #13

Journal your ideas meticulously. Everyday, just get a README.md on GitHub in a private or public repository and journal ideas. You don't need advanced tools to journal or write. But the practice of writing is organised thinking and you should try think of things that you're good at. You'll improve your thinking. I do this everyday and I'm up to 700 ideas and 25 startup ideas. They're linked on my profile.

How do you sort your 700 ideas? Don't you get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data?

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#55

Post by indymike »

I've done three money makers... the thing all have in common is I showed someone something I was working on, and they said they'd buy it:

1. I wrote some embedded software and got paid a royalty on every device shipped. Wasn't much per device, but it added up to thousands per year for about 20 years.

2. Started a niche credit card processor and it's made money for 15 years.

3. Put a bunch of T-shirt designs (featuring silly cartoons for error messages) on craft sites. It made money, but fashion burns out quickly compared to code.

Right now, I'm working on something I've always wanted to do, and haven't had time for since the early 90s... writing a game. We'll see how it goes.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#56

Post by przybytniewski »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I run Buttondown ( http://buttondown.email/ ) full-time now, but did so as a side project from 2017 to earlier this year. My strategy was fairly simple: I wanted to create a better version of a tool (in this case, Tinyletter) that: 1. I already used whose quality I thought was extremely poor, 2. I did not think the creators were incentivized to make improvements; 3. I could think of a sub-niche that I was well-equipp…

The part about 'niching down' is really important in the side-projects world, and a lot of people are missing that. They try to build all-in-one heavy projects, hoping to provide more values than existing products.

I higly agree with simplicity and decluterring projects to provide a real, but simple value.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#57

Post by stanmancan »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #43

I currently make 100% of my family's income from side projects that expanded into full time gigs. A lot of people will answer "solve a real-world problem and alleviate your customers' pain points", but I've seen so many people interpret this in the most bizarre ways possible, go down ridiculously dumb paths and fall flat on their arse. To be brutally honest, if you're asking how to find a product idea on HN, I don't…

I think more people have these ideas than they realize, but it’s the failure to act that holds them back.

Just because there are competitors doesn’t mean there’s no room for you.

Don’t look for reasons not to give it a shot.

Don’t tell anyone about it. There’s a lot of psychology trickery going on when you share your idea with people. Either they shit on the idea and you lose incentive to work on it, or the praise you and your brain takes that dopamine rush and considers the job over. Don’t tell anyone, just get to work.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#58

Post by samsquire »

newbie578 wrote: post #54
samsquire wrote: post #13

Journal your ideas meticulously. Everyday, just get a README.md on GitHub in a private or public repository and journal ideas. You don't need advanced tools to journal or write. But the practice of writing is organised thinking and you should try think of things that you're good at. You'll improve your thinking. I do this everyday and I'm up to 700 ideas and 25 startup ideas. They're linked on my profile.

How do you sort your 700 ideas? Don't you get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data?

Thanks for being interested enough to ask. I create a new GitHub repository and add a number to the end.

So I have ideas (100 headings), ideas2(101 headings), ideas3 (101 headings) ideas4 (518 headings)

When I get to 100-500 ideas in that Markdown file I create a new repository. I use the hidden GitHub table of contents feature in the top left of the README.md.

I link to previous ideas where there is synergy.

This is so that when they are published to HN or Reddit people who saw previous issues do not skip over ideas added since last time.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#59

Post by solarkraft »

jaclaz wrote: post #17
dewey wrote: post #5

I know this is usually not the best strategy for coming up with side projects but for me it's just always about solving my own problem. The downside is that I'm solving the problems mostly fellow nerds have that they usually want to solve themselve instead of paying someone to do it for them. What I'm trying to do more actively now is to always keep my eyes open at my day job and try to spot problems that are solved…

Not at all a critic of your idea/tool, but I am surprised (this probably shows how old I am getting) that there can be (many) people willing to spend 10 $/month for a weekly report of twitter bookmarks. Maybe people working in the media or that however somehow monetize their twitter use?

It seems like a really specific niche. These people use bookmarks a lot, probably to manage a big chunk of the information they consume. If you see this much value in this tool it seems like an easy jump to pay a few bucks to make your use of it more effective.

I sure have some bookmarks I never remembered to look at again.

Re: Ask HN: Those with money-making side projects,how did you come up with the idea?

#60

Post by notdarkyet »

jmduke wrote: post #6

I run Buttondown ( http://buttondown.email/ ) full-time now, but did so as a side project from 2017 to earlier this year. My strategy was fairly simple: I wanted to create a better version of a tool (in this case, Tinyletter) that: 1. I already used whose quality I thought was extremely poor, 2. I did not think the creators were incentivized to make improvements; 3. I could think of a sub-niche that I was well-equipp…

How did you market this and get traction?
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