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5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

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

#201

Post by chillfox »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #168

Oof. I have something similar as other stories posted here. I have about 30 pet projects from the past 10 years or so, not released to the public and I treat them as utterly private. A few of them have gotten me through job interviews when I would have failed otherwise. I think some of them exist as a form of therapy. I can probably "productize" 2 or 3 of them but then the world will be the judge of my work. The code…

I am really curious about how the storage engine works. Would you be willing to explain the idea behind it and how it works?

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

#202

Post by alirsgp »

krater23 wrote: post #136
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.

What's when your apps are removed from Apple for any reason? Do you have enough money to live without this income? Or do you need then just start over again?

I'd have ~2 years and not hurting my lifestyle. Hopefully it doesn't come to that, but I can get a job if needed

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

#204

Post by XCSme »

necovek wrote: post #3

This was 3 projects from 5 ideas of projects. If I count ideas I had that I never seriously started on, I've failed hundreds of projects.

I have at least 20 project ideas described in my notebook that I truly believe all of them could be successful businesses and solve a real problem, but the truth is that you can only really build ONE good business at a time. It is very easy to abandon a project and go for the next shiny idea, but it is very hard to stick to a project and make it work.

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

#205

Post by 67929 »

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…

I think you just said “stick with it is by no means what I said”, and then gave a longer, richer explanation why he should have indeed just “stuck with it”. I agree with the original commenter. Seems these app ideas were all pretty unoriginal and in markets with giants already. Making a video game is the software equivalent of opening a restaurant… And so are a few other of these app ideas.

I think it’s good to see failure posts like this on HN. Helps balance out some of the toxic positivity you can run into. Not everyone will succeed, even the ones that work hard for years and are very talented (like these folks).

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

#206

Post by CRConrad »

underwater wrote: post #116

This is the most telling quote for me: > I started developing scrapers gathering data. I spent maybe 2 weeks on it when I realized the level of complexity. This was too much work for just one person. When the complexity was in the technical domain he was able to (relatively) quickly understand the scope and effort required and cut his losses. For the other projects he's been able to constrain the technical complexity…

> One silly little example that stood out to me was the iOS game, which has the evocative name of "Planetoid". I can imagine a space themed game where planets battle to the death. But the video shows a white screen with minimalist graphics. Isn't this a space game? What a missed opportunity to sell the game with interesting visuals.

Or alternatively, keep it as an abstract (Go-like? Not the language!) game and just change the name.

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