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

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161–170 of 219 posts

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

#161

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.

This would involve some kind of collective organizing and action management. We should probably write an app for this first.

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

#162
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Amazon had competitors when it started. Although it was the first online bookstore, they were competing with physical bookstores. Same for Google, Netflix, and Facebook.

Yeah, but for some reason, maybe just "luck" (in the sense of "fortune"), I was always surrounded by people who google your idea and say "look at this, xyz is also doing it" which can be extremely demotivating.

That would be motivating for me. It’s validation that your idea isn’t bad. If someone is else independently thought of it, then there must be reason for it.

First-to-market is overvalued. You want others to make mistakes so you can draft behind them and take over.

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

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting point. As far as I know, it's not that easy. We have a client who contacted the owners of the website he needs to scrape and offered to pay them for access to their data but they were not interested. I know that they are not their competitor and they're not doing anything that would harm their revenue in any way. I assume that they figured it was not worth the legal, organisational and other formal hassle…

It's an interesting problem if you solve it you can probably avoid getting sued to bankruptcy

Why would they be sued? Scraping is legal

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

#164
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds really amazing! Would you be willing to share how you marketed your product - once you moved to selling from your own website? Certainly a big challenge is trying out an idea, but the next challenge is scaling adoption to make some worthwhile money. (By "scaling", i'm not referring to hypergrowth, web company scale....just, you know, maybe a side hustle or even making a modest full-time livelihood.)

Built a good product page with good keywords. I’ve also done some affiliate marketing which helped a lot with generating relevant traffic. I try to write a lot of articles on web dev topics on my blog. Additionally I built an open source file upload library (FilePond) which kind of acts as a stepping stone to the image editing solution. Easier to attract developers with a good free product. :) Finally I’ve moved into…

Well, you certainly have a great and comprehensive plan. And it sure is working for you. Thanks very much for sharing; all great ideas and tactics!!

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

If you don't tell anyone about your idea, how will you get customers? Tell everyone about your idea. But you have to silo people's feedback. Do they have enough knowledge to actually tell you if the idea is good or bad? Are they a potential customer? If they are a potential customer and they like it, are they willing to pay for it? If they are a potential customer and don't like it, why not? What would need to change…

Clearly at some point you’ll have to share it but the point is to get building and at least get an MVP out first. If you have the mental fortitude to press on after having your idea praised or put down then that’s fantastic but realize you’re an anomaly.

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

#166
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…

Get your SSL cert. It gives me a warning in the browser

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

#167

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?

You have to play a bit for the ads to pop up.

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

#168

I started ConvertKit (email marketing for creators) as a side hustle in 2013. In 2011 I had started blogging about my process for building iOS apps. In 2012 that turned into an email list on MailChimp and then a self-published book called The App Design Handbook (launched right here on HN). I thought that social networks like Twitter and Facebook would drive most of the sales, but it was actually the 800 person email…

Could you disclose the signups per month you received in your first year? How long did it take you to get to 100 signups?

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

#169

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…

I'm impressed by the programming. It's very smooth and responsive. Good Job! Thanks for sharing the info.

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

#170
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Amazon had competitors when it started. Although it was the first online bookstore, they were competing with physical bookstores. Same for Google, Netflix, and Facebook.

Yeah, but for some reason, maybe just "luck" (in the sense of "fortune"), I was always surrounded by people who google your idea and say "look at this, xyz is also doing it" which can be extremely demotivating.

Which is why it’s important that you don’t share it until you have some momentum. Then once you do just realize that many people naturally look for reasons not to put in the work, instead of the opposite. Fear of failure? Fear of wasting their time? Fear of finding out they don’t have what it takes? That it’s not all dumb luck? Who knows. Either way; just keep trucking along.
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