131–140 of 199 posts
General Question for people who do these tiny projects, which might make some money. Do you register a company for this? How do you deal with taxes if you made a small amount of money from them?
Does anyone let the tax implications of launching (several) tiny projects prevent them from even starting? I know LLCs allow for pass-through taxation and you don't have to file as a business, but I get frozen by the idea that generating a few hundred dollars in revenue from some silly side project means I have to spend hours/days of my time the next Spring figuring out how to properly pay taxes on it.
The LLC (and other entity types) increases the deterrent of this ever affecting you.
The LLC specifically has some theoretical weaknesses, but the reason it is a deterrent is because it deters people from spending more money to find out about those weakenesses, and it also increases the odds that people won't be able to know where you are or serve you properly. The more expensive it is to find out anything, the less potential aggrieved people will bother, and "finding out" for them could mean "even harder to create liability and a payout", so they get bounced, or deterred, from trying.
what's the fastest tech stack or other way to go from idea to product...
Deploy to a VPS on DO or Linode
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your career is what I aspired to when I started in this industry over a decade ago. But what ended up happening was that I (a) worked full-time while dabbling on nights and weekends, (b) spent several years trying to decide which project I wanted to really pursue in earnest, and then (c) after picking the project, obsessing over it so much that I never felt it was ready to release. So it's...not going well so far lol…
This is my story as well, more or less. Want to compare notes? Perhaps figuring out what we have in common would help us understand what we're doing wrong.
The other person literally said they tried like 50 things and you two haven't launched any yet.
Doing roughly $700k revenue yearly right now over the 2 main projects. Hopefully with a 3rd coming this summer.
As someone who perpetually overscopes side projects and ends up biting off more than I can reasonably chew given my free time, I really love this idea. What happens with me is I start a new project, then add a new feature here and there (because coding is fun) and end up never reaching anything close to "done" then getting into analysis paralysis of what to do next because there is so much. Ultimately it gets abandon…
When you are building for fun, it is for yourself. When you are building for profit, it is for other people. When you are building for fun, you get to decide what to work on and when to stop - usually when it is no longer fun. When you are building for profit, other people decide what you work on and when you are done - usually when no new features are requested, you have no competition, and you have absolutely saturated your market. This rarely ever happens so you always have something propelling you.
The biggest failure most engineers encounter is they build things nobody asked for. They build products without customers lined up, for markets that do not currently exist, with only feedback from themselves. This is because they built the product for fun thinking they were building it for profit.
The line between the two is very easy to blur - especially when reading OP's blog where he genuinely sounds like he had fun building his projects, but I guarantee there was also a lot of very unfun background work done in the name of profit.
Edit: Don't just take my guarantee for it, read about his challenges for One Item Store https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/one_item_store
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my story as well, more or less. Want to compare notes? Perhaps figuring out what we have in common would help us understand what we're doing wrong.
As someone who is squarely outside the industry of "side project entrepreneurism," it sounds like the problem is obsessing over minor details about the project and never launching it. The other person literally said they tried like 50 things and you two haven't launched any yet.
I imagined myself [silently] looking at such projects to see how they progress. I had a lot of fun looking from afar after explaining to folks how to do websites in html.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your career is what I aspired to when I started in this industry over a decade ago. But what ended up happening was that I (a) worked full-time while dabbling on nights and weekends, (b) spent several years trying to decide which project I wanted to really pursue in earnest, and then (c) after picking the project, obsessing over it so much that I never felt it was ready to release. So it's...not going well so far lol…
I think first and foremost is bringing yourself into a position that gets you enough runway (time and money) to be able to take things seriously — even if that sounds like the opposite of a side project. For me it was skipping university and having kids in favour of starting a web agency in the dotcom days. Also, I don't believe in working on something you love — you just need to hate it a little less than the other…
In general I believe the idea of "work on what you love" to be awful advice; I have found that I get deep satisfaction out of working on something that someone is willing to pay for, even if that means that sometimes it is a headache and I hate doing some of the things that need to be done. Once you accept that those things will continue to exist and continue to need to be done, and it's not going to be bliss, those things seem to matter less.
Does anyone let the tax implications of launching (several) tiny projects prevent them from even starting? I know LLCs allow for pass-through taxation and you don't have to file as a business, but I get frozen by the idea that generating a few hundred dollars in revenue from some silly side project means I have to spend hours/days of my time the next Spring figuring out how to properly pay taxes on it.
I know HN leans heavily US, but if anyone is in the UK, you can now earn up to £1000 in side income without having to declare it or file a self assessment tax return.
But yes, I was thinking of that ('entrepreneur's relief' I believe) too - it solves this problem nicely: don't worry about it until you know you're making money.
(And also other problems like 'hang on I sold some old crap on eBay.. was that income')