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Selling Tiny Internet Projects for Fun and Profit

• ismayilzadan 5y ago
  Any advice on actually finding the idea that is worth doing? I have a notion page with 20+ tiny ideas, but I still don't find any of them encouraging enough to spend time on. How to overcome this very first step?
  • almostarockstar 5y ago
    I have two solutions for you that have served me well. 1. Don't wait for the right idea. Just build a less than ideal idea and iterate. More than likely you will gain insight that leads to a better idea along the way. 2. Copy somebody else's idea. Nobody executes perfectly, and no two founders will execute the same way. There is always room for competition.
  • samsquire 5y ago
    I publish all my ideas online if you are interested. They're not really startup ideas though. They're just computer ideas I wish existed. Links in profile.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      Reading your ideas now. You are a fascinating fellow.
  • showHNshow 5y ago
    Is this list of ideas public? I would be interested in reading them.
  • codingdave 5y ago
    It is the same advice you hear for any other project - solve a problem. The projects that work are the ones that solve people's problems. The ones that fail are the ones that try to create solutions for problems people do not have.
    • PUSH_AX 5y ago
      To add to this, advice from people successful in this area really recommend solving a problem *you* have and avoid trying to solve problems you know exist but aren't a problem for you.
      • cestith 5y ago
        This is good advice. Problems you have yourself you understand better and have probably already had some thoughts on how to solve them. Even idle thoughts in the past can be really handy when it comes time to think deeper about solving it in code.
  • hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    20 is a very small amount of ideas. Keep coming up with more, and they keep getting better. It's a skill like any other.
    • giarc 5y ago
      The real learning comes from executing on even those dumb ideas. I learned more from 2 dumb Shopify sites I built and ran then listing out ideas.
  • Rastonbury 5y ago
    If the idea is tiny, they literally should take no longer than 2 weeks. Just start an hour a day at night or in the morning and chip away an hour by hour. Managed to get a tiny idea I had live in 2 months doing it like this
    • geomark 5y ago
      I've had some luck building toy websites for the main purpose of trying out or practicing some tools or skills. Most recently was a site where I was semi-automatically collecting stock price data, creating and posting stock charts and attempting (unsuccessfully) to identify buy opportunities. It was on the domain BuyTheDip.com. After I was done dabbling the site just sat for a few years until a buyer approached with an attractive offer. It was during the Wall Street Bets frenzy so I think it might have been related. Now the domain redirects to a Discord group, so I guess they just liked the domain name. Point being, you might just keep building and dabbling and score a winner now and then.
  • allenu 5y ago
    I don't think you'll ever know off the bat if an idea is worth doing. A lot of ideas sound good to you, but there are so many unknowns, like whether you have a suitable audience and whether there's a good ROI. As an exercise, you could try doing a rough design of a working system to get a feel for how much work it would be. On top of that, you could try imagining all the things that could go wrong and try to predict the likelihood of each. That's what I would do, anyway.
  • notJim 5y ago
    I have a theory that once you get something out there, it establishes you as a person who can ship stuff independently. Even if it's not a success, it'll introduce you to people who may help you discover better ideas. If you can build a bit of a brand, some people will follow you around and help promote your projects just because they like you. I haven't tested this yet, because I haven't shipped my 90%-complete project from 2 years ago yet…
• codeisawesome 5y ago
  I appreciate how open the dev is being and I like the article! But I have a moral annoyance towards username squatting, especially by folks who don’t actually participate in the network…
  • HighlandSpring 5y ago
    As far as sensitivities go, moral an annoyance is pretty good, no?
    • manapause 5y ago
      Is the Utility to users of the service worth a possibility of annoyance to [dont_know_yet] down the road? Does this business model not make it easier for the little guys to squat themselves for a small price? I have gone on a weird rollercoaster of liking the article, but initially disliking the tinybusiness. My own non-involvement in social media as a person is one thing; but I can't help but really like the idea of creating a little service that could be a tinythorn in a domain squatters operation. Terrific work!
  • jfoutz 5y ago
    Totally respect this. I'm curious about your thoughts about pizza/pizza on infogami:reddit. Is it better to make them public, till someone steals them? should they be disallowed? early on, it's a free for all. grabbing the special names feels scummy, but I get why they're grabbed. Silent, ghost accounts, I don't feel are detrimental to the community. (but I'm totally open to education about why that sucks)
  • nileshtrivedi 5y ago
    This is exactly why I end up making usernames non-unique in many of my online projects (such as learnawesome.org). It makes things more complex to implement, but at least nobody has to compromise on the online nicknames they want.
    • clairity 5y ago
      besides the technical implementation, duplicate usernames seems confusing to users, which is why i’ve never given it too much consideration. is there a reliable and obvious way you differentiate users in the ui? i assume the primary key of the user on the backend moves to something like email or phone number (or just a unique id key i suppose). i’ve seen some projects use a randomly generated image/sprite for this, which isn’t as reliably obvious as i’d like (not to mention not as broadly accessible).
• leodriesch 5y ago
  This is very interesting. I only really heard about these billion dollar aquisitions like Slack, I didn't know that there is an online marketplace for buying startups in the range of a few thousand dollars. That's awesome!
  • randymonday 5y ago
    I sold my tiny project on microacquire marketplace, last time I checked there were even more low priced projects there, indeed it's an awesome way to experience an "EXIT" on a smaller scale :)
    • codingdave 5y ago
      Something feels off if I need an account to even see their listings. I cannot tell if they are legit, or just a landing page for someone trying to get rolling.
      • randymonday 5y ago
        I also looked on indiemaker and flippa, but microacquire was the only one where you dont need to pay to list your project and talk to potential buyers.. big plus
      • gregn610 5y ago
        not just an email, your linkedin profile is required too.
  • kijin 5y ago
    It might be a stretch to call them startups. Often it's just a domain name with an idea attached to it. It might come with a proof-of-concept weekend project if you're lucky, but you'll probably need to rewrite that app anyway. A few thousand dollars doesn't sound bad for a decent domain name and an interesting idea into which someone has put a few days' worth of time and effort. A functional webapp would be nice but not strictly necessary.
  • giarc 5y ago
• admissionsguy 5y ago
  > Giving your project to a stranger on the internet is risky, so we used escrow.com to make the transfer. I sold a website on Flippa once. The buyer put the money on Escrow.com, I transferred everything over, and they went AWOL. What I found out is that there is no straightforward way to obtain the funds when it happens. Apparently there is no way at all except via the court system. Which would mean the only real protection Escrow gives is against the buyer going bankrupt (or using false identity, I suppose). Fortunately, they came back several weeks later with some nonsensical excuse and closed the transaction, but I will never use Escrow.com again.
  • artificial 5y ago
    Can you post a password protected zip then?
    • admissionsguy 5y ago
      Might as well have them pay in advance, no? It's not a way to transfer a whole operational web application, in any case.
      • randymonday 5y ago
        For relatively "small" amount of money, I totally agree. However, from my experience selling a tiny project [1], buyers were reluctant to transfer in advance even sums that are below $10K. Therefore we also used Escrow.com.. [1] I wrote more about my experience in my ebook - https://gum.co/side-project https://gum.co/side-project
  • gnopgnip 5y ago
    That is how escrow works in other contexts, like real estate. Either both parties agree, or the escrow service holds it until it is resolved through the courts.
    • ianhawes 5y ago
      Thats how it's supposed to work. I was in a similar situation to the parent commenter. The buyer had deposited the funds into Escrow.com and received their assets. I notified Escrow.com that the business assets had been handed over and they awaited the response from the buyer - which never came. Escrow.com sends notices after 3, 7, and 10 days of inactivity. After 15 days the buyer requested a cancellation and Escrow.com notified me via email that I had 48 hours to provide proof that "the domain" had been transferred or the transaction would be cancelled and the buyer would received their funds back. My issue was that there was no domain transfer associated with this purchase. The buyer was receiving software that they intended to use under a new brand and thus had no use for the domain. I raised hell with Escrow.com. Calls, emails, assurances that someone would get back to me. The cancellation came on a Friday and no one contacted me until Tuesday. They called to ask if I had spoke to the buyer and then politely explained that they couldn't do anything because there was no domain attached to the sale.
• ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  10k for that app seems insane.
  • shash7 5y ago
    Usually, the price is for the email list, backlinks to the domain name, various social accounts with followers, etc. The price for the actual app is a small part of the equation.
    • ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      They have ~2500 emails, no socials and seemingly only a few backlinks to startup listing websites. That does not seem worth 10k to me. What do you think?
      • randymonday 5y ago
        My side-project only had ~500 email subscribers, no MRR, but pretty good domain authority because it marketed itself. And still it got acquired only after 3 months!
        • bryanrasmussen 5y ago
          for how much?
      • duiker101 5y ago
        if it's making $350/month, that's $12.6k for 3 years. I think a general rule of thumb for website valuations is 3 years of ARR so seems about right. That's assuming that the website will never grow and will never has any other possible income source.
        • sombremesa 5y ago
          Never grow? It will shrink. The buyer got robbed. Churn is one the numbers investors watch like a hawk in a SaaS, and I can’t imagine this service retaining more than 30% of their users over several months.
• Quarrel 5y ago
  Interesting that microacquire was used. I struggle to take seriously a site that lists "Our team" as characters from Silicon Valley.
  • jiofih 5y ago
    Pretty sure it’s a one man operation, that’s just a harmless joke.
  • giarc 5y ago
    If you follow Andrew on Twitter it would probably make more sense. He's an interesting guy and very active on social media which brings a ton of traffic to his site I'm sure.
• corobo 5y ago
  > Could I pump out tiny SaaS starter projects and sell them at $10k+ a pop? Honestly I'd probably never trust a business doing this. From my POV they're probably just after cash from a buyer, not a good place for my data. I know I'm probably an outlier though, I don't think I've seen anyone else note a lack of privacy policy on the names one for example
  • onlyfortoday2 5y ago
    Honestly I'd probably never trust a business doing this you would. you do it everyday....
  • giarc 5y ago
    I've sold a few small tiny businesses and some of the potential buyers are just students in their dorms with extra time on their hands. They have a bit of cash they can part with and just want to run a tiny site or Saas as a hobby more than anything. It's also a great way to get feet wet before they finally execute on that "great idea" they have :)
    • corobo 5y ago
      > some of the potential buyers are just students in their dorms with extra time on their hands Yeah that's my concern haha
• sideproject 5y ago
  I do see an increasing number of projects being posted on my little website too https://www.sideprojectors.com https://www.sideprojectors.com The original premise of SideProjectors was to buy and sell small indie projects. Over the years, I've seen many many of these small projects (often ecommerce shops, dropshipping businesses, but at times quite interesting ones too) being submitted. As a side note (pun intended) - I've been also watching out for off-the-shelf template softwares that are being posted and making sure they are filtered out. As an example, you can buy a "Privacy respecting Google Analytics Alternative, launch your own SaaS" from themeforest for $49, repackaged and being sold in many places. Their pitches are usually similar.. "hey, I developed this, but haven't had time to do marketing, it has so much potential, just need someone to take over and start making that passive income".
  • giarc 5y ago
    I listed a project on your site, I can't remember if we found the seller there or not. However, good point about the pre-packaged apps. If someone describes it more honest, would you feel better about them? For example, if someone was upfront and said "I've done the work of putting together this site, you don't need to know the mechanics, you just need to run it."
• andersource 5y ago
  A little OT but for anyone with experience - is the negotiation depicted realistic / typical? The final selling price is over twice the buyer's initial offer and almost 150% of what they said at one point is their max. I know it's a textbook negotiation but (obviously not having too much experience negotiating) I never thought that's really how they work in real life.
  • qixxiq 5y ago
    Yes. The buyer would might have been willing to pay $15,000+, but wanted to anchor (and start low) so went $4,500. The real max was introduced when the seller gave the $15,000 number... buyers never want to or will reveal their number (i.e. the $7500 was a lie.)
    • andersource 5y ago
      Thanks! So basically (typically, of course depending on circumstances) any number explicitly stated by the buyer is less than the true maximum and you can expect to converge on a higher price?
      • borepop 5y ago
        Normally, yes, and as was mentioned higher in the thread this initial figure is referred to as an "anchor," meaning that it has the psychological effect of implying that anything higher than that number is somehow a real concession on the buyer's part, when the reality is that the opening number could have just been higher. It's rather like when a store says "this is normally $500 but now it's on sale for only $250" instead of just pricing something at $250 in the first place. Getting to Yes, also mentioned above, is a useful book on negotiation.
  • clairity 5y ago
    think of negotiations as a price discovery mechanism (auctions as another example) with severe information asymmetries. the point of the process is to learn what each side values and what exactly is on offer (and can be potentially offered) and how much value each side places on those things. price is used as the primary signal of value, and you learn about value as prices and information is exchanged in an iterated fashion.
• dboreham 5y ago
  This thread has an astroturf feel. I wonder who is making the money here and how?
  • StandardFuture 5y ago
    100% The theme of an entire thread is discussing building and selling businesses like it's just something you can choose to do easily in your free time or not ... Oh, just build that random idea you had and sell it for 10K in a couple of months ...
• aphextron 5y ago
  So you've discovered domain squatting.
  • rishabhkaul1 5y ago
    It's definitely not a novel idea, but given that newer social networks are coming up every day, there ofcourse enough takers for it. However, the part that I find worth questioning is, how much of the revenue is really recurring revenue. Why'd someone subscribe for more than a few months on such a service.
• petercooper 5y ago
  Buyer: I think I could come up to maybe $7500 but that’s about it. .. then later: Buyer: Ok at $10,500 we have a deal. I've sold a few projects in my time, but this conversation makes me think I should really look at having an agent represent me in future. The whole "I can only offer $7500" but then that turned into a $10500 sale just goes over my head - the communications skills needed are next level, and I've read Getting to Yes and such books :-) Maybe having someone less emotionally attached to a project could work in negotiations to increase the price to far more than cover their fee?
  • danvoell 5y ago
    Never Split the Difference is another good book to read.
    • twobitshifter 5y ago
      This negotiation as written was just moving down by the same amount offered by the buyer, is that what the book would recommend as a technique? It gave a gain of $750 over splitting the difference from the start.
      • JohnCurran 5y ago
        The book does not recommend it as a technique for starting a negotiation but does include a chapter on the final barter/haggle over price and how best to handle it
      • Aken 5y ago
        > This negotiation as written was just moving down by the same amount offered by the buyer Huh, didn't even notice. Thanks for pointing that out!
        • twobitshifter 5y ago
          If you continued to play it out with computers you’d run into Zeno’s paradox. At some point the buyer stopped going to lower increase amount,s but it could happen in which case I guess you’d end up in the middle and quibbling over pennies.
• roofwellhams 5y ago
  This looks like an ad for microacquire.com - quite shady in my opinion: to see any listing you need to sign up (even give linkedin), then you can't see any details... You got to pay premium, which is 290 usd a year. He says will refund if not happy. But to me seems more like a shady business.
• stevehawk 5y ago
  congrats on the emoji sale!
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• Spinosaurus 5y ago
  I wonder how viable a sort of "micro PE" firm would be, basically a company that just buys many of these micro indie projects with positive cash flow with the goal of holding on to them for profit or investing into their operations and eventually reselling them. There's been this trend of new firms popping up that acquire small ecommerce brands (in fact, there was one on HN just the other day). I'm wondering if the same model can (or has) been applied to small "indie" companies and projects.
  • ezekg 5y ago
    I do remember seeing one, actually, aimed at smaller bootstrapped SaaS products doing >10k/MRR. But I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
  • noodle 5y ago
    I've also thought about this a lot wrt microsaas projects. Specifically, looking to acquire projects that are small but match my tech expertise such that I can consolidate certain aspects of them easily. Ultimately maintenance will probably be the biggest problem with acquiring numerous small projects, so making that as easy as possible is important. It would probably not be "viable" in the sense of it becoming a unicorn, but it probably is a viable small business or side project. I get the feeling that once you become a medium sized business, you kind of necessarily outgrow the "micro" part of the monicker.
  • edmundsauto 5y ago
    I think it's going to be more common than it is. Or, maybe its already super common and we just don't hear about it. My reasoning is as follows: small products/companies have de-risked the initial PMF exploration, but aren't at a scale where they can hire specialists. Sure, maybe you can find a 10 hours / week data engineer who can build your analytics infra MVP. It's more likely you don't find someone good, IMO. Building a portfolio of these means you can hire a specialist who can focus on the low hanging fruit of 3-4+ companies at a time. That's a huge advantage over the small companies.
• mraza007 5y ago
  Just curious how do you find the market for your projects
• ijustwanttovote 5y ago
  We have a similar background. I do tiny projects on the side and I did ice cream for retail and wholesale. Pretty cool to find like minded individuals.
• tomlagier 5y ago
  Seems like a pretty low ROI to me. Generously, we're talking about ~$100/hour, my guess is it was actually a lot less than that, maybe as low as half or a third, and this is for an idea that got some traction. That could be a good wage for some groups of people, but my guess is you'd find a much better one either a) growing something to a larger size or b) working for someone else. If you're really interested in building these tiny products though, then it could be a way to support yourself doing what you're interested in. I just wouldn't generalize this strategy to "this is a good way to make a living". On the flip side, I bet doing this sort of thing really sharpens the entrepreneurs skillset - identifying good ideas, quickly bootstrapping a product, and negotiating for funding, so I bet you're getting some pretty big personal levelups as you go.
  • j45 5y ago
    Building something that people want and will pay for has a compounding effect far beyond trading time for an hourly rate. Sometimes what you build can be early, and it needs to simmer for a while or flesh out. There is a real opportunity time cost for sitting on things to ripen that someone else may be in a place to work. It’s really shouldn’t be worded as a backhanded compliment that if it’s really what you want to do. There are people who have built and scaled things and have decided what’s good for them, and how it’s good for them. Having 10m on a 100m exit or 10m on a 30m exit, or 1m of 1-2m exit is all the same to the bank account, maybe not ones self image. Being an exited founder at any dollar amount puts a person in very small company, and learning to exit small deals can also teach one to be prepared on what to look out for on the bigger deals. This is probably the biggest thing, if entrepreneurship is in your blood you want to make sure you’re well rounded and prepped for those biggest outcomes of your life. Still, it’s fun to see what you’re made of and see how much you can make of nothing. One can imagine what is possible with $ efficiency.
• StandardFuture 5y ago
  Where does someone in their early 20s get the capital to just up and start multiple ice cream shop locations, and simultaneously find the time to work on an array of random software "projects/ideas"? This whole thread seems really fishy. The theme of an entire thread discussing building and selling businesses like it's just something you can choose to do in your free time or not ...