Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

kwcodes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 206 posts

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#121

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

pm wrote: post #118
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience. I'm working on an app that will be released in the next few months (we don't have a definite ship date, yet). It's based on two servers that I wrote. One, I wrote eleven or twelve years ago, and has become a world standard; but only in the last three years. Since it's a specialized demographic, the numbers are quite small, for "world standard." The other server is one that I wrote, about…

I'm working on social software at the moment, and when I explain it to potential users, they seem to love the concept (which gives me confidence), but truthfully I don't know if will live up to expectations. I've found it best to downplay any potential success in my own mind so that I'm not disappointed if it doesn't take off. I hope your launch goes well; your comments are always insightful and glad to have someone…

Thanks.

I think that the general Quality of the app will be phenomenal. I spend a great deal of time “polishing the fenders.” This is stuff like making sure that popovers are pixel-perfect, Dark Mode is supported, it’s localizable and accessible, and has various fast animations for “flourish,” etc.

We know the target demographic well, and all indications are, that it will be well-received.

But I don’t think it has much monetary potential, which I feel is fine. We’re a nonprofit, anyway. It will be funny, because a free app will have a level of refinement that leaves many money-making apps in a cloud of dust.

Time will tell. More will be revealed…

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#122

Post by moneywoes »

kjksf wrote: post #38
herval wrote: post #15

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands…

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects. He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal metronome and jobs website. BTW: he didn't get 5 users for minimal time tracker, he got 5 people who signed up for a mailing list based on screenshots of non-existing product. Even smarter would be to not do such projects in the first place. With jobs websites y…

Great points, where do you suggest reading to learn how to think like this?

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#123

Post by CrazyStat »

vhanda wrote: post #104
tessierashpool wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone in the opposite direction. my latest side project is costing me money. but it gives me a dev superpower, so I don't mind. this is a blatant plug, sorry, but here's my newfound superpower: I built forkfreshness.com so that, whenever I find an abandoned repo that would otherwise be perfect for whatever I'm working on, I can find out exactly what downstream forks exist, who's keeping those forks alive, and how…

forkfreshness seems like a really nice idea. I have a repo[0] where I would like to check how active any of the forks are, just to see what they have done with the project, and/or speak with them about contributing upstream. I noticed that just adjusting the URL[1] did not work, however since running this website is costing your money, I don't feel comfortable asking you to add it. Is there any chance you would feel…

Did you try

> Just tweet the GitHub URL to @ForkFreshness on Twitter.

as instructed on the front page? It seems like he's inviting people to use it.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#124

Post by ux-app »

alirsgp wrote: post #82

I've published ~20 iOS apps. Only 4 make money, but they allowed me to reach financial independence and never have to work for someone gain at the age of 24.

That's great, well done, but without details it doesn't add much to the conversation. What are the apps? How did you market them? How long did it take to start seeing results? etc.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#125

Post by mtmail »

ux-app wrote: post #124
alirsgp wrote: post #82

I've published ~20 iOS apps. Only 4 make money, but they allowed me to reach financial independence and never have to work for someone gain at the age of 24.

That's great, well done, but without details it doesn't add much to the conversation. What are the apps? How did you market them? How long did it take to start seeing results? etc.

Based on comment history https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cuff-video-chat-make-friends/i... making $2000/month profit "No marketing involved, all organic traffic"

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#126

Post by JaggerFoo »

You're going at it wrong. There's all kinds of money begging to fund a tech idea. Come up with an idea that sounds dumb and just differentiates a bit from a normal business, then look to get funded by a VC.

Keep in mind that Donald Trump now is worth more than twice the valuation of the NY Times and it only took a few days.

All kinds of money out there looking to fund an idea that can be loosely rationalized by a slide deck.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#127

Post by [deleted] »

vhanda wrote: post #104
tessierashpool wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gone in the opposite direction. my latest side project is costing me money. but it gives me a dev superpower, so I don't mind. this is a blatant plug, sorry, but here's my newfound superpower: I built forkfreshness.com so that, whenever I find an abandoned repo that would otherwise be perfect for whatever I'm working on, I can find out exactly what downstream forks exist, who's keeping those forks alive, and how…

forkfreshness seems like a really nice idea. I have a repo[0] where I would like to check how active any of the forks are, just to see what they have done with the project, and/or speak with them about contributing upstream. I noticed that just adjusting the URL[1] did not work, however since running this website is costing your money, I don't feel comfortable asking you to add it. Is there any chance you would feel…

[deleted]

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#128

Post by holler »

herval wrote: post #106
kjksf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "just stick with it" is a good advice in general and especially not for his projects. He was smart to abandon his minimal time tracker, minimal metronome and jobs website. BTW: he didn't get 5 users for minimal time tracker, he got 5 people who signed up for a mailing list based on screenshots of non-existing product. Even smarter would be to not do such projects in the first place. With jobs websites y…

“Stick with it” is by no means what I said. A time tracker isn’t an end-all product - you start with it, then spiral out based on customer feedback. I’ve seen plenty of companies start that way and succeed, even time tracker and job posts. High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver. Low…

> High competition is also not a red flag by definition. It’s a strong indication that the market exists, and as a solo or bootstrapped founder, that’s a HUGE time & money saver.

I can't tell you how much this resonates with me having been slowly and methodically building a project in a competitive domain over the past two years. I have a handful of organic users who've continued to show up and inspire me to continue pushing forward, but in that time I've also had people close to me question what I'm doing and why it's taking so long (as if there is a finish line).

My experience so far is that building a software product is a hard and time-consuming process fraught with obstacles of all variety. There are many instances where abandoning it will sound like a good idea, so you just have to ask yourself how determined are you to bring it to life and push through when it gets difficult?

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#129

Post by sagarpatil »

I’ve had 100% success with my last 3 projects in 5 years. Here’s what worked for me.

1. An add-on for a cryptocurrency trading bot. I developed a MVP, impressed the founding team, got into a partnership where they promoted my project to their customers. After 1.5 years they acquired my product and I signed a 3 years royalty.

2. A Wordpress security plugin. Started with a free version, focused on ranking the plugin in the plugin directory. Once I saw 3,000 websites using it. I doubled down on it. At the peak it was being used by 50,000 customers, out of which 3000 were paid customers. Sold it to a private investor for mid 6 figures.

3. Dropshipping - It was more if a test to learn everything about FaceBook, Instagram Ads but the website went onto generating ~$800,000 in revenue.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#130

Post by jaredsohn »

luto wrote: post #20
mfollert wrote: post #13

"Get a Product Job (May 2020 - May 2021) This time the main objective was to learn something new by doing. I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a great framework to build websites quickly." Choosing Roby on Rails in 2020 as a "new framework" for web development ... sheesh.

I'm not a RoR developer, but still: which framework would you use for a new web project in 2021?

RoR with vue or react
Post reply on HN