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I started doing astrophotography ~5 years ago because I found the mysterious beauty of the incomprehensibly large cosmos a rejuvenating, wondrous thing. In the

I started doing astrophotography ~5 years ago because I found the mysterious beauty of the incomprehensibly large cosmos a rejuvenating, wondrous thing. In the course of my fun I built a star tracking mount that people seemed to like, so I refined the design, built 10 and sold them on Etsy to test the waters of entrepreneurship. Today, I sell 20-30/mth via a dedicated store. How often do I do astrophotography these days? Never. In fact my camera broke and I haven't bothered to replace it. I don't have the time. Has the entrepreneurship been worth it? Probably. But I do miss looking at the stars.

anthilemoon 7y ago
This is beautiful/a bit sad and articulates perfectly why sometimes hobbies are better left alone. Thanks for sharing.
cdjk 7y ago
Do you have a link?
- spacemark 7y ago
  Sure - https://nyxtech.us/ https://nyxtech.us/
  - tartoran 7y ago
    Im not into astrophotography but this is a very very cool product that you’ve made. I hope you’ll grow it and give life to other cool things as you’re clearly very talented
    - spacemark 7y ago
      Oh, thank you :)
jacobolus 7y ago
Looks like a great product! If you don’t mind my asking: Do you have another day job? Some external investment? Are you expecting to grow to a much larger scale? Selling 250–300 devices per year at $100 each doesn’t seem like it would pay the bills even for one person, after materials and other business expenses.
- spacemark 7y ago
  Thanks. :) This is a hobby for me, an experiment in entrepreneurship. I have a day job that pays well enough that I'm free to quit the side business at any time, which I may do soon. The alternative I'm mulling over in my mind is to push the next rev that I've been testing which will reduce material costs another 25%, and then actually market the product to increase volume 3-5x (100% of current sales are from organic traffic, mostly google searches). That kind of effort requires a lot of upfront investment in time I currently don't have, though. And even then I wouldn't be comfortable quitting my day job. So we'll see. My heart is telling me to stop, but my brain is chanting, "student loan payoff."

anthilemoon 7y ago

This is beautiful/a bit sad and articulates perfectly why sometimes hobbies are better left alone. Thanks for sharing.

cdjk 7y ago

Do you have a link?

spacemark 7y ago
Sure - https://nyxtech.us/ https://nyxtech.us/
- tartoran 7y ago
  Im not into astrophotography but this is a very very cool product that you’ve made. I hope you’ll grow it and give life to other cool things as you’re clearly very talented
  - spacemark 7y ago
    Oh, thank you :)

jacobolus 7y ago

Looks like a great product! If you don’t mind my asking: Do you have another day job? Some external investment? Are you expecting to grow to a much larger scale? Selling 250–300 devices per year at $100 each doesn’t seem like it would pay the bills even for one person, after materials and other business expenses.

spacemark 7y ago
Thanks. :) This is a hobby for me, an experiment in entrepreneurship. I have a day job that pays well enough that I'm free to quit the side business at any time, which I may do soon. The alternative I'm mulling over in my mind is to push the next rev that I've been testing which will reduce material costs another 25%, and then actually market the product to increase volume 3-5x (100% of current sales are from organic traffic, mostly google searches). That kind of effort requires a lot of upfront investment in time I currently don't have, though. And even then I wouldn't be comfortable quitting my day job. So we'll see. My heart is telling me to stop, but my brain is chanting, "student loan payoff."