4 ms·

Ask HN: Fun project ideas to make $10?

7 points by HAL9OOO 9y ago

My friend and I are having a friendly contest to see who can build a project/webaite/app that makes $10 first. So I'm looking for fun projects or cool frameworks/stacks to experiment with .

dovin 9y ago
You could try to do some automated trading with Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. Odds are just as good you would lose $10, of course.
- jetti 9y ago
  You could lose a lot more than $10. Looking at the first BTC trading platform I could find, SimpleFX[1], they are saying the Bitcoin/USD pair is going for $2k+ while Ethereum is around $219 and LiteCoin around $40. At 1:10 leverage you would need to put in over $200 to trade bitcoin, $42 to trade Ethereum and $4 to trade LiteCoin. Leverage is a risky game too. [1]https://simplefx.com https://simplefx.com
tedmiston 9y ago
Buy something from China in semi-bulk (e.g., 6–12x) on Alibaba / AliExpress and resell for profit from the US. Even on very small purchases, like $3 phone cases, people are willing to pay 2-3x the price to be able to get them quickly from someone shipping from inside the US. While it's not _highly_ profitable after fees, I think you could automate and outsource most / all of the work. Not sure if this totally aligns with what you and your friend are doing, but just an idea I've been wanting to try lately.
- HAL9OOO 9y ago
  Yeah I was thinking about something like that, might do it for the next project. I know a guy who buys 'high quality tea' from China and resells it with a fancy modern website.
  - anywherenotes 9y ago
    Are there any kind of FDA restrictions on that?
    - jetti 9y ago
      Yes. It seems the major one is: >All commercial imports of food products require the filing of Prior Notice with FDA, and foreign manufacturers and/or distributers of food products must register with the FDA before their goods may be admitted. You can see the rest here: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/337/~/importing-tea%2C-coffee-and-spices-for-commercial-purposes https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/337/~/importing...
      - tedmiston 9y ago
        I wonder if tea is considered a food, and if reselling sealed boxes of tea is considering being a distributor.
        jetti 9y ago
        If you are importing it: >Imports of tea, coffee, and spices are subject to review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and their admissibility is determined by the FDA. So it would still have to go through the FDA. It may not be as stringent as something like meat but it still has to get approval. Also, you don't need to be a distributor to fall under this, you just need to be importing it for commercial use. That means if you are buying a box to sell or just the leaves to sell, both would fall under these rules.
        tedmiston 9y ago
        Does an end user purchasing a box of tea from a seller outside of the country count as importing? Or is it just about reselling?
        jetti 9y ago
- ccdev 9y ago
  The caveat to this might be the longer shipping times from China. I'm just bringing it up since this contest is also a race of sorts.
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    Yep, it totally is. So the person running it has to act more as a "cache" vs dropshiping. I look at it as time arbitrage because people are happy to pay more to wait less. I think there's some interesting detail in optimizing against the market for how much higher cost and shorter delivery time people value, kind of like a convenience store.
imauld 9y ago
If you're charismatic and can tell a good story I feel pretty confident you could tell your story on Reddit and get people to just give you $10 to win your bet.
quickthrower2 9y ago
Why not create your own coin as a smart contract on Etherium?
jetti 9y ago
Create a program that pulls the top posts from subreddits on Reddit and put it into a book then sell it. You could do this automatically by using Reddit's API and then using a library to convert the text into PDF, ePub, etc.
- kleer001 9y ago
  Copyright issues?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- HAL9OOO 9y ago
  Hey that's not a half bad idea. One of the first things I do when I go to a new subreddit is check the top posts for month and year. I wish I could look at the top posts from the last 3 months sometime. If you had a service that just archived top posts month to month, removing duplicates then people could access that anytime. Don't know if I would charge for it initially but it's a cool service at least.

7 points by HAL9OOO 9y ago

My friend and I are having a friendly contest to see who can build a project/webaite/app that makes $10 first. So I'm looking for fun projects or cool frameworks/stacks to experiment with .

dovin 9y ago

You could try to do some automated trading with Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency. Odds are just as good you would lose $10, of course.

jetti 9y ago
You could lose a lot more than $10. Looking at the first BTC trading platform I could find, SimpleFX[1], they are saying the Bitcoin/USD pair is going for $2k+ while Ethereum is around $219 and LiteCoin around $40. At 1:10 leverage you would need to put in over $200 to trade bitcoin, $42 to trade Ethereum and $4 to trade LiteCoin. Leverage is a risky game too. [1]https://simplefx.com https://simplefx.com

tedmiston 9y ago

Buy something from China in semi-bulk (e.g., 6–12x) on Alibaba / AliExpress and resell for profit from the US. Even on very small purchases, like $3 phone cases, people are willing to pay 2-3x the price to be able to get them quickly from someone shipping from inside the US. While it's not _highly_ profitable after fees, I think you could automate and outsource most / all of the work. Not sure if this totally aligns with what you and your friend are doing, but just an idea I've been wanting to try lately.

HAL9OOO 9y ago
Yeah I was thinking about something like that, might do it for the next project. I know a guy who buys 'high quality tea' from China and resells it with a fancy modern website.
- anywherenotes 9y ago
  Are there any kind of FDA restrictions on that?
  - jetti 9y ago
    Yes. It seems the major one is: >All commercial imports of food products require the filing of Prior Notice with FDA, and foreign manufacturers and/or distributers of food products must register with the FDA before their goods may be admitted. You can see the rest here: https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/337/~/importing-tea%2C-coffee-and-spices-for-commercial-purposes https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/337/~/importing...
    - tedmiston 9y ago
      I wonder if tea is considered a food, and if reselling sealed boxes of tea is considering being a distributor.
      - jetti 9y ago
        If you are importing it: >Imports of tea, coffee, and spices are subject to review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and their admissibility is determined by the FDA. So it would still have to go through the FDA. It may not be as stringent as something like meat but it still has to get approval. Also, you don't need to be a distributor to fall under this, you just need to be importing it for commercial use. That means if you are buying a box to sell or just the leaves to sell, both would fall under these rules.
        tedmiston 9y ago
        Does an end user purchasing a box of tea from a seller outside of the country count as importing? Or is it just about reselling?
        jetti 9y ago
ccdev 9y ago
The caveat to this might be the longer shipping times from China. I'm just bringing it up since this contest is also a race of sorts.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  Yep, it totally is. So the person running it has to act more as a "cache" vs dropshiping. I look at it as time arbitrage because people are happy to pay more to wait less. I think there's some interesting detail in optimizing against the market for how much higher cost and shorter delivery time people value, kind of like a convenience store.

imauld 9y ago

If you're charismatic and can tell a good story I feel pretty confident you could tell your story on Reddit and get people to just give you $10 to win your bet.

quickthrower2 9y ago

Why not create your own coin as a smart contract on Etherium?

jetti 9y ago

Create a program that pulls the top posts from subreddits on Reddit and put it into a book then sell it. You could do this automatically by using Reddit's API and then using a library to convert the text into PDF, ePub, etc.

kleer001 9y ago
Copyright issues?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
HAL9OOO 9y ago
Hey that's not a half bad idea. One of the first things I do when I go to a new subreddit is check the top posts for month and year. I wish I could look at the top posts from the last 3 months sometime. If you had a service that just archived top posts month to month, removing duplicates then people could access that anytime. Don't know if I would charge for it initially but it's a cool service at least.