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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?

#141

Post by existencebox »

4pkjai wrote: post #82
hawk_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's brilliant! How do you advertise/let others discover your product?

I started off by buying Google Ads, but I lost money running them. Eventually I stopped running the ads and focused on writing blog posts. Also I think the domain sort of helps. I wrote a bit more about the start here: https://bankstatementconverter.com/blog/posts/2022-02-25-zer...

Question for ya if you don't mind: I had to do some PDF scraping a while back as part of a side project collecting alternative social/economic datasources.

Even within a single site, there were often errors at the fringes, especially if things like layout/styling changed, and my concern about giving bad data to users (or needing to constantly be checking data quality and adjusting custom parameters for each target site) held me back from ever feeling confident enough to convert it into a paid product.

I don't mean for you to give up your secret sauce here, but wondering if you ran into this same issue, and what your approach was from a business/customer expectations perspective?

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

#142

Post by davidpolberger »

matsemann wrote: post #53
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.

Thanks. I did lots of other things in parallel during the early years. I left my last consulting gig in 2014, so I have been doing in full-time since then.

Yeah, it takes a lot of perseverance to get a startup going. (Or rather, a lifestyle business in my case -- it's not a rocket ship, but I get to work on interesting things and interact with friendly customers, so it really is a great job.)

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

#143

Post by davidpolberger »

baq wrote: post #72
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-…

Yet another proof that no 1 value that an entrepreneur should have is dedication. Congrats!

Thanks!

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

#144

Post by throwbmw »

ilyailford wrote: post #135

I run Maker Stations ( https://makerstations.io ) — the newsletter about workspace tours from creators and makers. Launched in 2021. We’re currently at about 12k monthly sessions and $200 MRR (not much, I know). I love WFH and having my own private space where I can concentrate. Offices are fun in their way, but I always struggled to focus in a noisy, open environment. Ironically, I’d normally listen to white noise w…

What a coincidence. I was trying to remember your site but couldn't. Searching HN didn't help either. So I made an account and posted an Ask HN. Now a few more searches on your site to look for the post I half- read last time. Nice effort. Keep it up.

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

#145

Post by jameshush »

alexfromapex wrote: post #118

Can I just offer an alternative? What if we all pushed back and didn't accept low wages? It's been going on for far too long and just accepting it and starting side hustles is very defeatist.

If you want to optimize to make money: 1. Get good at coding or sales. 2. Get a job at a tech company doing coding or sales.

You'll get even more money if you become excellent instead of good, and relocate to a major city like SF.

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

#146

Post by jameshush »

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..

Just pick one. Focus on that. It doesn't matter which one, it's the execution that causes most ideas to be successful. If that one idea doesn't work after a year of focused effort try something else.

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

#147

Post by xwowsersx »

batmaniam wrote: post #128
holgersindbaek wrote: post #106

I've created an online solitaire platform ( https://online-solitaire.com/ ) that's earning me $10k/m now. It started as a side-project 5 years ago, but I've recently gone full time on it. It actually started as a Mac app 10 years ago and I choose to create a solitaire game because I had made a string of side-project that I didn't earn any money on, so I wanted to see if I could find a project that would actually gene…

Can you clarify how it makes 10k/mo? I don't see anywhere on the site where a person could donate/buy something, and I don't see ads. Your download also seems free. How does it actually generate any cash for you?

Ads, it seems

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

#148

Post by Baloo »

jaclaz wrote: post #24
dewey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you are saying and I felt the same way. I think as a tech person you always undervalue your products as you see it as “something I could build in a weekend”, which is very different to how other people see it. There’s many Twitter tools in the same price range and the feedback from people I got is that they are happy to pay that.

I don't know, I don't even have (never had) a Twitter account, so I completely fail to see any particular utility in the whole stuff (I mean Twitter), but since everyone went on the barricades against the 7.99, no wait 11 if via Apple ;), blue mark/whatever recent idea I figured that Twitter users were philosophically against a paid for subscription.

You need to consider that you don't have to get everyone on Twitter using your tool... if you can get 500 people paying $10 a month you're making $50k a year...

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

#149

Post by smarri »

kyledrake wrote: post #44

https://neocities.org I was looking at my old personal web sites after working on a different startup and really felt sad about how gross social media was getting, and how money focused the web was becoming. I wanted to see creative and interesting personal websites again outside of the context of a museum. So I coded up a prototype and, turns out I wasn't the only one interested in that. HN readers did the first boo…

I'm a member, thanks for neocities!

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

#150

Post by gardenhedge »

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…

What is button down? An editor? No examples of the builder or the output on the landing page.
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