19 ms·

5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

472 points by kw_dev 5y ago

winrid 5y ago
Well, I think the best advice I can give here is find someone to buy something before you make it. Also, you don't need to build something unique. Start with something that already sells well. Two years into FastComments, glad I followed these principles.
ktustanowski 5y ago
This is so true. Thanks for sharing! It reminds me of my own failures. A few months ago I was thinking about my failed projects too and made a blog post with a few conclusions - "How to fail a project" - https://cornerbit.tech/how-to-fail-a-project/ https://cornerbit.tech/how-to-fail-a-project/ ;)
giantg2 5y ago
I like to hear about other people's failure. For one, it makes me less critical of my own failures. Then I can also learn and improve for the future. I have two Android apps. Neither bring in money. One I intentionally did not monetize. The other I tried to. I targeted the wrong audience and my UI could have been more flashy. I've had ideas for other projects, but they're usually already patented or they're too niche to really make money (involves some hardware).
carlsborg 5y ago
Carlsborg's law: Distribution is as important as product, especially when the barriers to entry are low.
alirsgp 5y ago
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.
- ux-app 5y ago
  That's great, well done, but without details it doesn't add much to the conversation. What are the apps? How did you market them? How long did it take to start seeing results? etc.
  - mtmail 5y ago
    Based on comment history https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cuff-video-chat-make-friends/id1514536428 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cuff-video-chat-make-friends/i... making $2000/month profit "No marketing involved, all organic traffic"
    - deleted 5y ago
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- krater23 5y ago
  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?
  - pantulis 5y ago
    Well he said to "never work again for anyone else", that does not discard working for himself.
  - alirsgp 5y ago
    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
deleted 5y ago
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jpomykala 5y ago
Try to stay longer on an idea than a few weeks.
willcate 5y ago
I've been on a similar trajectory.
necovek 5y ago
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.
- XCSme 5y ago
  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.
thanatos519 5y ago
“I have not failed 10,000 times — I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” — Thomas Edison
- tomcooks 5y ago
  Alessandro Cruto, Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin, James Bowman Lindsay, Nikola Tesla, and many others have different opinion on said quote.
pcj-github 5y ago
What seems lacking in the choice of projects is a particular expertise in any of these subjects. Pick an area of study, try and narrow it as much as possible, stick with it over several years, and seek to become the world's expert on that very narrow topic (which is hopefully useful). Then you will understand what needs to be built.
- WhisperingShiba 5y ago
  Alternatively, you commit to a field of expertise, only to become narrow minded, and unable to synthesize simple ideas into products end users care about.
swayvil 5y ago
My 10 year project (a computer-geometry-art thing) (yes, 10 years, 1 project) was a great success. I made zip cash. But that was not the aim of the project. http://www.fleen.org/generative-art/ http://www.fleen.org/generative-art/
- tekstar 5y ago
  If you don't, you could consider posting some of your art to reddit.com/r/generative or to instagram. It's a really popular concept right now, although a bit plagued with people jumping on the NFT train trying to make money with generative "drops".
- oa335 5y ago
  Do you have any recommendations as to how to get started creating your style of generative art? I have been interested in a similar project for sometime, but don’t know the best place to get started. My background is in Math, so I’d really like to understand the “why” and “how” of these types of algorithms rather than just plugging in some parameters and getting a nice picture.
  - swayvil 5y ago
    Here's a little paper on the geometry https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Geom_Kisrhombille https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Geom_Kisrhombille
- cableshaft 5y ago
  Damn that's impressive. I could see that on the floor of an important building. Somebody make that happen!
xivzgrev 5y ago
Good for you man. I don’t really see much about customer pain points though. If people aren’t in pain they aren’t going to buy / use your stuff. Take the product job board. At first I thought it was product manager jobs, but doesn’t that already exist? Then after seeing accounts payable and other stuff I realized you meant tech, which also exists already. So why would people use yours? Your startup HAS to solve something better than existing solutions. For example -Uber was a taxi, but cheaper and much better -Facebook was MySpace but geared toward your in person friends / clean interface. Turns out people preferred not having to customize their page -TikTok was vine but done way better. Its learning algorithm is unbelievable, it leans into Adding music which makes everything more fun, etc. it’s a markedly better way for people to express themselves The one project you build for yourself, the metronome, already had a solution you discovered after you started building So I’d really spend some time on the problem first. Read the lean startup. Talk to customers. And figure out if a project is actually a smart bet. Your product has to be markedly better for some group of customers - if it’s just a little better, people aren’t going to switch
human 5y ago
I find this kind of post very interesting. The key takeaways from my point of view is that none of these projects actually created value. Most of them didn’t solve a problem that other software hadn’t already solved. The most interesting one I think was the appartment notitication one. Especially that today there is such a race if you want to find a good and affordable appartment. It’s just too bad the author wasn’t able to create something simple for this. At the end of the day, you have to try 10 ideas to get one off the ground. But you also have to give them a serious shot, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here. You often will have to invest actual money to get your idea out there and popular. Unless it’s a one in a million that will go viral on its own.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Regarding solving a problem. I think there is always room for a better way to solve a problem. Really, there is room for multiple companies to solve the same problem the same way. If I would have been pitched Airbnb in its early days, I likely would not have given it much thought. After all, VRBO has been doing basically what Airbnb does for 25 years.
  - brabel 5y ago
    Airbnb is a good example of "success" by doing nothing new, just pushing past law or other external difficulties that no one else managed before. Like you say, there had been similar apps for several years. CouchSurf-style websites were common, and the transition to paid accommodation provided by normal people is obvious from there, but no one could get past the difficulty of getting people to pay for something that was commonly done for free, and getting this done without legal issues. AirBnb, to my knowledge, was likely illegal in most places it worked, but similar to Uber, was on perhaps a gray area that allowed it to continue working until it was so big it cold lobby politicians to acommodate it within the law. Only a handful of successes can happen this way, and I think all that could, have already happened.
ergocoder 5y ago
For every remoteok.io which is a single PHP file and makes $100k a month, there are 1000 of failed job boards. I suppose this is the reality.
- 6510 5y ago
  There it simply becomes a marketing project not a software project.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    It's true, but developers don't like to hear that because we like writing code not marketing shit.
  - Existenceblinks 5y ago
    Yep, the site (CRUD at best) is a poster child of non application. It's more like a beautiful movie star selling beauty product.
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    This is the best description I have seen. I never thought of it that way
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  it helps that Pieter Levels is insanely good at promoting and growing his projects/businesses.
hirako2000 5y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if that's far below the average number of "failures" to face before any sort of success anyone, regardless of their aptitude or luck will be met. All I see among people who make it is that they spent years trying things, they won't tweet every disappointment .
mfollert 5y ago
"Get a Product Job (May 2020 - May 2021) This time the main objective was to learn something new by doing. I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a great framework to build websites quickly." Choosing Roby on Rails in 2020 as a "new framework" for web development ... sheesh.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  I don't like using RoR personally, but it's not a dying platform. There's still a large active community around it. It's fine.
  - mehphp 5y ago
    I don't either but ruby isn't just active, it's larger than it's ever been.
  - krater23 5y ago
    Like it is on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
- ezekg 5y ago
  Another day, another person saying Rails is dead. *sigh*
  - spiderice 5y ago
    I didn't get the impression that GP was saying that at all. Just that, in 2020, Rails is most definitely not "new".
    - ezekg 5y ago
      You’re right, may have misunderstood. If that’s the case, my bad. Text can be hard sometimes.
- namenotrequired 5y ago
  It was clear to me the author meant “new to me”
polote 5y ago
It's ok to fail sometimes, but if you only fail the only way for you to stop failing is to be lucky. It doesn't seem like a good strategy to me. But yeah if the goal of OP is the guy he quoted at the end "Had a business idea that I think could build in 24 hours and get to $5,000 MRR in 30 days". Keep trying, survivor bias is still alive
- claudiulodro 5y ago
  There are a ton of ideas that could get someone to $5000 MRR in 30 days; they're just not passive income. For example, if he had started a facilities maintenance company and found one customer, he'd be set!
herval 5y ago
All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands of dollars immediately. Those are exceedingly rare, and you might be able to pull it off when you have a massive audience. Jumping from project to project won’t net you that audience, so you end up spending time in circles… and earning $0.
- martincmartin 5y ago
  Reminds me of "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." by Joel Spolsky. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-takes-ten-years-get-used-to-it/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-take...
  - tppiotrowski 5y ago
    https://i1.wp.com/www.joelonsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2003/06/Notes-Installed-Base.gif?resize=341%2C220&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/www.joelonsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/... This chart is a good example of having no traction for years and then growing exponentially. We usually hear about a company once it hits the inflection point so it seems like an overnight success.
    - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
      "no traction" lol. After 2 years that chart shows 35k users. That's only no traction in relation to the final outcome. Imagine this was money instead, where the final result was $1B and after the first 2 years it was only $1M. $1M is only "no traction" in relation to $1B. In absolute terms it's pretty damn good.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    This has been my experience. I'm working on an app that will be released in the next few months (we don't have a definite ship date, yet). It's based on two servers that I wrote. One, I wrote eleven or twelve years ago, and has become a world standard; but only in the last three years. Since it's a specialized demographic, the numbers are quite small, for "world standard." The other server is one that I wrote, about four years ago. It took me seven months. It's a very good general-purpose application server. I wrote it for practice, but it's also ideal for the app I'm writing. I've been working on the frontend app for over a year. It's really, really good. I deliberately took my time, because we went through a lot of "MVP" stuff, during its development. The rest of the team seems to think it will take the world by storm, when it's released, but I don't think it will. That's fine with me. I don't mind a slow burn. I've written software that lasts decades.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Just get a web site ready for the next time a ship gets stuck.
encoderer 5y ago
Main lesson that seems to not have been learned yet, since it's not mentioned at the end: If you want to make money (any money at all), stop focusing on consumer products, build a small B2B product instead.
- krater23 5y ago
  And build it full time, not as a hobby. And build one that no one else is selling already.
  - encoderer 5y ago
    No quite the opposite! Part time is fine, and you can build a simple niched-down version of a popular tool.
kaycebasques 5y ago
Sharing some thoughts in the spirit of us all learning and improving: Re: Planetoid my immediate first impression was "I don't understand what's going on here". With that one it seems like maybe the author should have vetted the basic idea with friends and family first and see if they get it. Re: Minfinity it seems useful and is actually right up my alley! I feel like the strategy here would be to keep it in maintenance mode and wait and see if it ever picks up popularity (such as in a thread like this). My big takeaway from reading the author's post is that it seems to drive home the importance of marketing/advertising/selling/etc. Those stories about the Collison brothers pitching their product to developers and then doing the somewhat socially awkward thing of pressuring them try it out right there on the spot is burned in my memory.
bufferoverflow 5y ago
Minimal metronome and minimal time tracker are close to useless, because the market is so saturated, and there are tons of free options. You need to start with validating your idea instead of wasting days/months on coding.
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  Also, I think we need to stop rewarding 'minimal' products. Like you said, there's no room for minimal time tracking, but there's definitely room for more high quality, feature-dense time tracking tools.
  - krater23 5y ago
    Nope, sometimes I just want no bloat software that can cook my eggs during I use it for time tracking. I just want this one feature. But don't suppose to make money with an app like this, because there are 20 other people that released one before you.
  - xeromal 5y ago
    Yeah, my minimal time tracker is Excel.
- Igelau 5y ago
  Tell that to those guys who made the 1500 slot machines.
- guessbest 5y ago
  He needs to make ten times as many applications/solutions at least in the same time frame. His ratio comes to less than one project a year and across different markets. In fact he doesn't even release but two of the projects mentioned. The product startup world moves a lot faster than that. "How I failed 5 side projects in 6 years"
  - unobatbayar 5y ago
    Exactly. It needs to become a habit so that he can release at greater velocity. Regulary thinking about new ideas and the writing code 1-2 hours everyday is ideal.
cushychicken 5y ago
I'm one of the folks who took part in The Quittening that the last year has made for us. I left a demanding, unfulfilling startup job in July. The main factors in why I was able to do this was: * a large nest egg due to nearly a decade of investing as much excess income as possible into index funds (If you're in the FIRE community, I suppose you could say I'm in a state of "Lean FIRE".) * being married to someone who had the understanding to support me in pursuing this, as well as help me purchase affordable health insurance thru her work. (Love you, Emma!) I took a few months off to not work on anything, at all, except for some very small pet-projects - programming for fun kinda stuff. Starting about a month ago, my focus shifted towards launching a job board targeted to a pretty specific niche in my main area of expertise. It's been my full time thing for about a month, and I'm getting some appreciable traction in the form of newsletter signups. Hasn't made me any money yet. I'd tried launching a few small websites before as part-time endeavors; all of those have ended exactly like the author's posts have. Given all that meandering context: one of the things this project has taught me is that it is INCREDIBLY HARD to launch a side business with a day job. I'm not a web developer, so I've had to spend a lot of time learning HTML, CSS, JS, and all the LAMP stack stuff as I go. I had to spend three or four whole days just figuring out how to deploy this fucking thing to a cloud service. That's supposed to be easy! Or, at least, all the cloud providers' websites would have you think so. At least two of those days were trying and failing to set up AWS instances. (Thank god almighty for PythonAnywhere.) I used to think I was stupid or unskilled for not being able to launch websites and software businesses in my spare time. Nope! Turns out, it's hard work, and it can easily take up all of your working hours! It's easy to think, being an HN netizen, that there are tons of people who can do this as a side hustle and make bank doing easy work, but I simply don't believe that's true. I think the folks who do succeed at this are some combination of: * lucky, * very attuned to a niche market with money to spend, or * blessed with exceptional product sense for a software utility that doesn't exist yet. OP - I'm sorry that none of your efforts have yielded monetary success, and I admire your perseverance for continuing to try. It's easy to beat yourself up over trying so hard, so many times, and being rewarded with nothing back. I just wanted to say that what you are trying is harder than most folks on HN want to admit, and to try to hang onto your positive attitude towards continuing to learn. Your opportunity will come.
ffhhj 5y ago
And you know what's worst than earning $0? - The store not accepting your app because there are too many of the same topic (horoscopes, memes, sound boards, whatever-craft names, etc.) - Spending lots of money on Google/FB ads. - Spending lots of money on AWS. - Burning out yourself and your friends.
- skeoh 5y ago
  Could you expound on this? Are you speaking from experience?
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
"Success Is Going From Failure to Failure Without Losing Your Enthusiasm" Lincoln
- yesenadam 5y ago
  More commonly attributed to Churchill, but apparently there's no evidence either of them said it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success/
grammarnazzzi 5y ago
People pay for services because it's work that they are unable or unwilling to do themselves Building things that people will not pay for is called a hobby. You're not entited to an income from your hobbies. > This is a story about me dreaming Yup > 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0 (kwcodes.com) You didn't even try to finish 2 of the 5 projects You didn't even do anything in 2 of the 6 years. Your title is clickbait. Seems like you want attention more than you want money. By comparison, looking at my github, I started over 50 projects in last year and finished a dozen of them. Hobbies all of them and I didn't expect to make a dime. If you want a reality check, head over to https://itch.io/jams https://itch.io/jams. You'll find 10,000 hobbies projects not making any money.
einpoklum 5y ago
> How I failed 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0 Not earning money is not a failure. Wasting time on non-free software the purpose of which is making money - now that's unfortunate. My advice to that guy would be: * Write software you need personally. You will at least have one happy user - and if you write something you like, other people will probably want to use it too. * Think of the software needs of people you know - in your family, physical community, or online communities - and see whether you can't help implement it or adapt/improve existing software for that purpose.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > the purpose of which is making money Most software that's capable of improving lives is capable of making money, isn't it? > non-free software I really doubt that throwing it up as open source would fix anything. And if you remove those two factors then all that's left is "that's unfortunate".
  - einpoklum 5y ago
    > I really doubt that throwing it up as open source would fix anything. You're probably right. What I'm saying is that the cause for embarking on a software project should be different. If you write software to address needs and desires, then you're more likely to succeed in doing that. And maybe you'll make money off it somehow, or maybe not.
- hvasilev 5y ago
  > Wasting time on non-free software the purpose of which is making money - now that's unfortunate. This sounds very ideological. It looks like a personal trap that you might fall in the future. Be careful.
IkmoIkmo 5y ago
Bit of a painful read. On the first game, it's a common game concept (very much not novel) that I've seen many people recreate. I built one myself with better graphics and gameplay over the course of a week and sold it for 5k to a games publisher around 2013-2014, about 2-3 years before they released their game. That publisher offered it for free on an ad model. I can't believe working on it for a year, with two people, for free, releasing it in 2016 and expecting any sales. Enough has been said about the projects in general already which mostly mimics the game (not solving a real user problem, late-entry, competing with existing solutions, no marketing)
crispyalmond 5y ago
I wouldn't consider projects which make $0 to be failures, unless your intent was to make money from them. I like making tools/games in my spare time with no intention of profiting from them. I simply enjoy the programming aspect way more than any monetary value. I'm not saying that I wouldn't like the money, but it's not my primary focus for making these projects.
- bluewalt 5y ago
  That's a very strong advice to remove irrelevant guilt. Many people bind success with money. That's just one thing you can benefit.
bellajbadr 5y ago
Why didn't you open source your projects!!
- hvasilev 5y ago
  because this would be a great solution to his problems?
  - bellajbadr 5y ago
    Yep. After what he faced he might get help or even sponsored.
zapstar 5y ago
I hope this write-up was a healthy and effective way to help you mourn these losses. (And then move on to the next big idea!) Kudos to you for experimenting like this. Would you consider adding them to the Project Cemetery[0]? Then others could learn from them too! [0] https://projectcemetery.com https://projectcemetery.com
brailsafe 5y ago
What a lot of loud successful people wouldn't like to admit, is that even if you show up and do the work, you have to be very lucky to get traction for anything, regardless of novelty. True for being an employee or a business. For the latter, it helps to be very lucky and opportunistic with timing to begin with.
- jamestimmins 5y ago
  Maybe with consumer tech, but this isn’t the case with enterprise. Successful companies identify a market need then figure out how to sell it. It’s appealing to say it’s luck from the outside, but the successful playbook is consistent enough that it seems naive to attribute it to luck.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Well, it depends what you mean, but I certainly didn't attribute it to luck. I attributed a certain amount to luck, which is always involved no matter how you spin it. I know someone who runs a successful enterprise consulting business for example. He's a relentless worker, and has earned it, but he'd be delusional to not admit that there's luck involved at every point in the delivery chain; starting of course with being lucky to never run into any problems on his first few steps into the job world where he developed connections he could later sell to. If you're a relentless worker, you have probably never been given a reason to question the merit of hard work, because it's always paid off for you somehow. Doesn't even matter whether it's tech related or not. If you're on your way to being a successful mountain climber, you're going to need be lucky to not develop debilitating foot problems. Back to your example, there's a certain amount of luck involved in finding out about the apparent enterprise playbook in a time and place where you can put it to use, and of course in finding a market. I don't know a thing about enterprise sales or business because my dad conveniently doesn't run one and I was never hired at IBM in the 90s.
mehphp 5y ago
I see this a lot: a clearly talented person who is unable to monetize their project. At a glance, it looks like OP is just building stuff, throwing it at a wall and seeing what sticks. Of course, that is bound to fail. You are, essentially, playing the lottery. Nowhere in that blog did I see any mention of figuring out what a customer is looking for in a game or a product. What is the niche you are trying to fill or pain-point you are trying to solve? It would be much better to build something _after_ you know people want it, not before.
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jll29 5y ago
There's something called _market analysis_: you either find a gap in the market for software tools, or you talk to people and ask what they would pay for _before_ starting to code. Yes, you can jump straight into coding for your side projects, but not if your primary goal is to earn a steady side income (it may work but unlikely so). But good to see negative outcome reports to counter-balance the extreme survivor bias on here.
StevePerkins 5y ago
Maybe I'm just old and cranky and this is a generational thing, but when did "side project" become mixed up with "side hustle"? I think the dead horse has been beaten already in this thread, with what the author "should have done" in terms of market research, A/B testing, MVP, etc. No need for me to pile on further there. But what strikes me is that the author really seems to draw no distinction between personal side projects, done for the purpose of developing new skills that you aren't learning at your day job (e.g. iOS development, Ruby on Rails, etc)... versus entrepreneurial side hustles that you pursue for the dream of financial independence. I think the the lesson here is, "Pick one". If you're trying to get rich, then that's not the time dive into some completely unfamiliar tech whose learning curve will slow down your velocity. You should be leveraging whatever boring tech you already know and are already most productive in, so you can focus on the marketing research and business side of things. Conversely, if you're trying to dive into an educational side project to learn new skills, then it's rather naive to expect that to be a path to riches. It won't be, and that's okay!
- bluewalt 5y ago
  That's a relevant advice IMO. However, as a tech guy trying to build stuff too, I need continuous motivation for this. I need to stay in a "flow" state. And a good fuel to this is to learn new cool things during the journey. To put it differently, I think you need to find the right balance between fun and efficiency, even if your goal is to earn money in the end. Trying to always look for the maximum efficiency could be a short term vision that quickly lead to boringness.
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- Normal_gaussian 5y ago
  > personal side projects, done for the purpose of developing new skills That sounds like a work focused side project to me. Things I've made that are personal side projects - iot blind controls (because I wanted it), magic mirror (because I wamted it), triathlon result parser (because me and my so wanted to settle some race stats debates), groupable containerised desktop apps (because I wanted it) etc. None of my personal side projects set out to develop new skills, they set out to make me or a loved one happy. Often they do develop new skills. My partner is currently stripping and repainting an old bike - shes learning loads, but thats not the intent. The intent is to make it match her other gear because that makes her happy.
cryptica 5y ago
I launched 5 major software projects over the last 15 years. The first one was a failure; the big lesson I learned from that failure was that I couldn't salvage or re-purpose any of the code; aside from educational value, all that work had been wasted. After that experience, I tried to build all my projects in such a way that I could always salvage/re-purpose my work. My second project was a software development framework which I tried to sell it as a SaaS platform. The platform was a commercial failure but the open source framework became popular and I was able to convince the founders of a popular blockchain project to use it as part of their P2P layer. Although that project was a technical success, because I didn't own any meaningful stake in that blockchain project, I wasn't able to capitalize on this opportunity so it was a commercial failure for me. So then we (me and some open source community members who joined along the way) used that blockchain as a base to build a Decentralized Exchange and 2 new blockchain projects. Although these projects have not yet succeeded commercially (still working on it), I managed to secure passive income as a blockchain validator on the base blockchain. Securing this passive income was my first hint of commercial success after 10 years of trying. Anyway, it's an ongoing story but if my current 3 active projects don't succeed commercially, I have already planned for the next projects to build on top... The goal is to just keep building stuff on top of this blockchain ecosystem, welcoming new contributors along the way and keeping everything open source.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
What's the genre of the "planetoid" game called? I remember many games like this, both open source and flash, but can't find any of them and don't know if there's a name for the genre.
- hvasilev 5y ago
  I think there is a common benchmark for AI algorithm competitions that looks exactly like that.
askvictor 5y ago
My 5-odd side side projects over the last decade have mostly been tools I've built for myself, that I thought other people might also find useful (and a bit for developing new skills, and fun). Though I thought it might be nice to get a few dollars for ongoing work/support, but in most of my cases, the options to monetize are too complicated to bother with - in my case wanting corporate users to pay some amount, while being free for personal users. The time involved in setting this up isn't worth the likely (lack of) return. Honestly, even listing in an app store is a pretty big barrier (bureaucracy-wise) these days for a side-project - on one project I probably spent more time jumping through these hoops than on developing a MVP.
m3kw9 5y ago
Yeah a lot of the projects are a marketing problem, that’s where it gets hard.
rrjjww 5y ago
My most lucrative "side project" was building a personal portfolio of $0 earning side projects that I could point to in interviews, and landed me a higher paying position.
Stampo00 5y ago
I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but most people never manage to get passive income. I wish it was real, but it's about as common as winning the lottery and you're just burning the candle at both ends while you're doing it. I try to spend my free time doing stuff I enjoy rather than gambling it away for the hope of getting more free time later instead of having to work. I'm sorry.
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visox 5y ago
For mé its 7 years and maybe 10 projects, although they werent equal nothing ever flew... I dont have many regrets tho.
quickthrower2 5y ago
Software hustles: $0 is the median, $1,000,000 is the mean.
tekstar 5y ago
I think it's important to have inspired ideas if you're going to follow a project through to completion. I've met my personal goals with side projects with the following criteria: - I really really want something - It doesn't exist I've got 2 iOS apps that I built with the above formula - one is free and gets about 100 downloads a week, the other is paid and makes about $80/week. It helps that I'm working in a niche I know well, and where people spend money. Don't try to make something generic. Even if nobody else ends up using it at least you've made something interesting.
unobatbayar 5y ago
One thing I've learned from doing side projects is that; If you're not going to spend any time/money on marketing then stop giving your projects obscure names. I know we programmers want some Googly names that is not currently in the dictionary but no one will EVER find it and it's very hard to grow organically. If you're not making any money it doesn't mean your product is bad. It mostly means people can't find it. It's highly possible to make at least +$100 more just by using a name that a normal human would search for. Do anything so that people will can find it easily.
- altitudinous 5y ago
  This. Especially on the app store. I have several successful side projects myself and am semi retired. But it is a waste of time trying to tell people that discoverability is the key to success. Everyone who owns an iPhone thinks they are an app expert and the first thing they do with a new idea is to come up with an unsearchable, undiscoverable name.
underwater 5y ago
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 and thus "finish" the projects. But has been blind to non-technical complexity, whether that is game design, art design, marketing, or sales. 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.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > 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.
71a54xd 5y ago
This is why even at 26 as someone who enjoys working at startups, I'm very apprehensive when it comes to the idea of doing my own. I've leveled out income wise as far as startup comp goes - very motivated to make the jump to a Stripe scale company and not look back instead of trying to do a startup. At this point, I'd just rather have the money and less stress.
JaggerFoo 5y ago
You're going at it wrong. There's all kinds of money begging to fund a tech idea. Come up with an idea that sounds dumb and just differentiates a bit from a normal business, then look to get funded by a VC. Keep in mind that Donald Trump now is worth more than twice the valuation of the NY Times and it only took a few days. All kinds of money out there looking to fund an idea that can be loosely rationalized by a slide deck.
sagarpatil 5y ago
I’ve had 100% success with my last 3 projects in 5 years. Here’s what worked for me. 1. An add-on for a cryptocurrency trading bot. I developed a MVP, impressed the founding team, got into a partnership where they promoted my project to their customers. After 1.5 years they acquired my product and I signed a 3 years royalty. 2. A Wordpress security plugin. Started with a free version, focused on ranking the plugin in the plugin directory. Once I saw 3,000 websites using it. I doubled down on it. At the peak it was being used by 50,000 customers, out of which 3000 were paid customers. Sold it to a private investor for mid 6 figures. 3. Dropshipping - It was more if a test to learn everything about FaceBook, Instagram Ads but the website went onto generating ~$800,000 in revenue.
- umvi 5y ago
  > Sold it to a private investor for mid 6 figures. How? Did you go looking for a buyer or were you approached?
krater23 5y ago
Don't try to make money with your hobby, and don't operate your money busyness like a hobby. Both will not work, if you have other things to do beside your side projects.
wiradikusuma 5y ago
"I still got many ideas in my head but right now I’m more cautious about choosing my next project. First of all, when deciding about the next project, I need to choose the smallest idea possible that can be developed by one person. Cut the scope as much as possible." These two paragraphs resonate very well to everyone in his shoes.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Even if you had some users, making money is difficult nowadays. You have to rely on making some B2B feature and pray that a big company buys you. Or you go to SV and build hype. Or you find an investor that spends a lot on marketing.
sfgweilr4f 5y ago
I feel like there was a loaded gun next to the head of each of these projects. Plus, I don't think the projects were duds. They were instead simply buds - still too immature. Exactly how you execute an idea is often far more important than the actual idea. This isn't some catchy phrase, its how people take failing businesses and rework them to massive profits. I agree that more iteration was required. Focusing on a particular set of real customers is also a useful activity. Real people have real needs. Developers often have no clue what people want because people in general have problems and your shiny thing is weird and wonderful and they don't (yet) understand it. eg That time tracker... omg. Plenty of people use worse. Plenty are better. Its minimal, but a start. If this had been pushed in front of a large enough group of real people and left to grow with multiple iterations from feedback it could have ended up in all sorts of useful directions.
a_c 5y ago
Did you get better at evaluating ideas? Did you get faster in building MVP? Did you get better at listening to customers? Did you get deeper understanding at any of the business domain you worked at? If any of these is yes, then I think you time is well spent. (Financial) Success don't usually arrive suddenly. Keep crushing it!
BatteryMountain 5y ago
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 write at home is much different from what I do at work, where we supposedly follow best practices and at home.. I just express myself. I'm so utterly pleased with some of the things I've come up with that would make development easier (not a new framework, don't worry) but I cannot take it to work since it would mean blasphemy and it would most likely make our architect have another meltdown. My favourite project of the bunch is a code/platform generator. After that one it is probably the small storage engine I've built cause I got frustrated with sql + object mapping - it works so nicely but the entire community/industry will take a dump on it, as relational/sql db's are supposedly god. I maybe want to share some of my work with the world, not as side-projects to earn money, but perhaps just for the fun of it and to contribute yet another shape of doing something - even if it is to educate how not to do something, that is fine too.
- chillfox 5y ago
  I am really curious about how the storage engine works. Would you be willing to explain the idea behind it and how it works?
yCloser 5y ago
1. he tried to monetize a game that should have been free/ads 2. the time tracker could have worked! Not "I'm gonna be rich" worked but still could have been something. 3,4. he didn't do them 5. tried to compete against linkedin/facebook?! IMHO we are always too oriented to "make money, NOW"... Doing free stuff is ok. It's not that "if it's free then scrape the whole project, what's the point anyway"! The opensource/free stuff you make ends up in your CV, and could be a game changer
kburman 5y ago
Only purpose of side projects was suppose to be fun or learn something at the end of it. I don't understand why is there an increasing trend to do a side project with a goal of becoming rich.
- petargyurov 5y ago
  I fully agree with you but here's my take on why this is a phenomenon: 1. People like making money when they shouldn't be; we live under the pretense that the only way to earn money is via your day job. A side-hustle makes things exciting. It's like finding treasure. 2. Pair the above with the rise of social media and the lifestyles people portray on there: success, money, etc. 3. Perhaps there is an actual movement away from "normal" jobs, leading to a mentality shift in which people simply want to be financially independent.
dsign 5y ago
I often wonder how do people find those ideas that earn money with a year of man work or less. I'm seven years into my own company with a stable team of four developers, two business ops and an extremely competent board of directors. We solve a critical high-tech problem to our 170 business customers in an area with "gorilla" competitors. We even have "growth". Getting here took blood and tears by the wagons. And we are not even profitable yet.
Lurkars 5y ago
Maybe I have a different definition of "side project" and/or it's somehow a HN-bubble about articles like "I earned 100k with my side project", but for me a side project is exactly the opposite of what seems to be the target is the author: I have side project in my free time, because it is always about stuff I don't get paid for but I need somehow. Is it about software to use for me and my friends or to learn about something. But it is always under the premise of not gain any cent from it. And I understood articles about making money from a side project exactly about being lucky to start something without financial intension and gain money anyways. If course I would love to get money for my side project, but worth noting, that I don't get any attention on it anyways: for example I build esp-ena, a covid hardware tracker to be compatible with exposure notification framework. I don't want any money, it was I side project, but it was still a failure because it didn't get the attention I hoped for (that maybe someone starting to make this professional). So of course it was not about money, but I had bigger expectations than just being for myself. I'm the end I think, side projects should always stays something you create just for you and maybe it goes bigger, but when planning to make more than that out of it, you shouldn't make it a side project and start a business instead.
davidtranjs 5y ago
Building a product is easy but takes a lot of time, that's why you need some marketing skills and validate your product carefully before put your time into the product. Btw, your story is not alone. There are thoundsand of products are built everyday and just a few of them get to the top of product hunt (yet still out of business).
sAbakumoff 5y ago
>> seeking financial independence So, instead of being dependent on your employee, you are seeking to be dependent on a bunch of random people who you don't know anything about a.k.a. users. What could possibly go wrong,right.
qwerty456127 5y ago
If the apps you have developed solved practical problems of yourself, they are not failed.
XCSme 5y ago
Just leaving this here: people don't want MVPs or a cuter version of something that exists, people want to solve a problem that they have in a cheaper, faster or easier way.

472 points by kw_dev 5y ago

Well, I think the best advice I can give here is find someone to buy something before you make it. Also, you don't need to build something unique. Start with something that already sells well. Two years into FastComments, glad I followed these principles.

ktustanowski 5y ago

This is so true. Thanks for sharing! It reminds me of my own failures. A few months ago I was thinking about my failed projects too and made a blog post with a few conclusions - "How to fail a project" - https://cornerbit.tech/how-to-fail-a-project/ https://cornerbit.tech/how-to-fail-a-project/ ;)

giantg2 5y ago

I like to hear about other people's failure. For one, it makes me less critical of my own failures. Then I can also learn and improve for the future. I have two Android apps. Neither bring in money. One I intentionally did not monetize. The other I tried to. I targeted the wrong audience and my UI could have been more flashy. I've had ideas for other projects, but they're usually already patented or they're too niche to really make money (involves some hardware).

carlsborg 5y ago

Carlsborg's law: Distribution is as important as product, especially when the barriers to entry are low.

alirsgp 5y ago

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.

ux-app 5y ago
That's great, well done, but without details it doesn't add much to the conversation. What are the apps? How did you market them? How long did it take to start seeing results? etc.
- mtmail 5y ago
  Based on comment history https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cuff-video-chat-make-friends/id1514536428 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cuff-video-chat-make-friends/i... making $2000/month profit "No marketing involved, all organic traffic"
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krater23 5y ago
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?
- pantulis 5y ago
  Well he said to "never work again for anyone else", that does not discard working for himself.
- alirsgp 5y ago
  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

deleted 5y ago

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jpomykala 5y ago

Try to stay longer on an idea than a few weeks.

willcate 5y ago

I've been on a similar trajectory.

necovek 5y ago

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.

XCSme 5y ago
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.

thanatos519 5y ago

“I have not failed 10,000 times — I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” — Thomas Edison

tomcooks 5y ago
Alessandro Cruto, Alexander Nikolayevich Lodygin, James Bowman Lindsay, Nikola Tesla, and many others have different opinion on said quote.

pcj-github 5y ago

What seems lacking in the choice of projects is a particular expertise in any of these subjects. Pick an area of study, try and narrow it as much as possible, stick with it over several years, and seek to become the world's expert on that very narrow topic (which is hopefully useful). Then you will understand what needs to be built.

WhisperingShiba 5y ago
Alternatively, you commit to a field of expertise, only to become narrow minded, and unable to synthesize simple ideas into products end users care about.

swayvil 5y ago

My 10 year project (a computer-geometry-art thing) (yes, 10 years, 1 project) was a great success. I made zip cash. But that was not the aim of the project. http://www.fleen.org/generative-art/ http://www.fleen.org/generative-art/

tekstar 5y ago
If you don't, you could consider posting some of your art to reddit.com/r/generative or to instagram. It's a really popular concept right now, although a bit plagued with people jumping on the NFT train trying to make money with generative "drops".
oa335 5y ago
Do you have any recommendations as to how to get started creating your style of generative art? I have been interested in a similar project for sometime, but don’t know the best place to get started. My background is in Math, so I’d really like to understand the “why” and “how” of these types of algorithms rather than just plugging in some parameters and getting a nice picture.
- swayvil 5y ago
  Here's a little paper on the geometry https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Geom_Kisrhombille https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Geom_Kisrhombille
cableshaft 5y ago
Damn that's impressive. I could see that on the floor of an important building. Somebody make that happen!

xivzgrev 5y ago

Good for you man. I don’t really see much about customer pain points though. If people aren’t in pain they aren’t going to buy / use your stuff. Take the product job board. At first I thought it was product manager jobs, but doesn’t that already exist? Then after seeing accounts payable and other stuff I realized you meant tech, which also exists already. So why would people use yours? Your startup HAS to solve something better than existing solutions. For example -Uber was a taxi, but cheaper and much better -Facebook was MySpace but geared toward your in person friends / clean interface. Turns out people preferred not having to customize their page -TikTok was vine but done way better. Its learning algorithm is unbelievable, it leans into Adding music which makes everything more fun, etc. it’s a markedly better way for people to express themselves The one project you build for yourself, the metronome, already had a solution you discovered after you started building So I’d really spend some time on the problem first. Read the lean startup. Talk to customers. And figure out if a project is actually a smart bet. Your product has to be markedly better for some group of customers - if it’s just a little better, people aren’t going to switch

human 5y ago

I find this kind of post very interesting. The key takeaways from my point of view is that none of these projects actually created value. Most of them didn’t solve a problem that other software hadn’t already solved. The most interesting one I think was the appartment notitication one. Especially that today there is such a race if you want to find a good and affordable appartment. It’s just too bad the author wasn’t able to create something simple for this. At the end of the day, you have to try 10 ideas to get one off the ground. But you also have to give them a serious shot, which doesn’t seem to have been the case here. You often will have to invest actual money to get your idea out there and popular. Unless it’s a one in a million that will go viral on its own.

jjeaff 5y ago
Regarding solving a problem. I think there is always room for a better way to solve a problem. Really, there is room for multiple companies to solve the same problem the same way. If I would have been pitched Airbnb in its early days, I likely would not have given it much thought. After all, VRBO has been doing basically what Airbnb does for 25 years.
- brabel 5y ago
  Airbnb is a good example of "success" by doing nothing new, just pushing past law or other external difficulties that no one else managed before. Like you say, there had been similar apps for several years. CouchSurf-style websites were common, and the transition to paid accommodation provided by normal people is obvious from there, but no one could get past the difficulty of getting people to pay for something that was commonly done for free, and getting this done without legal issues. AirBnb, to my knowledge, was likely illegal in most places it worked, but similar to Uber, was on perhaps a gray area that allowed it to continue working until it was so big it cold lobby politicians to acommodate it within the law. Only a handful of successes can happen this way, and I think all that could, have already happened.

ergocoder 5y ago

For every remoteok.io which is a single PHP file and makes $100k a month, there are 1000 of failed job boards. I suppose this is the reality.

6510 5y ago
There it simply becomes a marketing project not a software project.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  It's true, but developers don't like to hear that because we like writing code not marketing shit.
- Existenceblinks 5y ago
  Yep, the site (CRUD at best) is a poster child of non application. It's more like a beautiful movie star selling beauty product.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  This is the best description I have seen. I never thought of it that way
beaconstudios 5y ago
it helps that Pieter Levels is insanely good at promoting and growing his projects/businesses.

hirako2000 5y ago

It wouldn't surprise me if that's far below the average number of "failures" to face before any sort of success anyone, regardless of their aptitude or luck will be met. All I see among people who make it is that they spent years trying things, they won't tweet every disappointment .

mfollert 5y ago

"Get a Product Job (May 2020 - May 2021) This time the main objective was to learn something new by doing. I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a great framework to build websites quickly." Choosing Roby on Rails in 2020 as a "new framework" for web development ... sheesh.

bpodgursky 5y ago
I don't like using RoR personally, but it's not a dying platform. There's still a large active community around it. It's fine.
- mehphp 5y ago
  I don't either but ruby isn't just active, it's larger than it's ever been.
- krater23 5y ago
  Like it is on Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
ezekg 5y ago
Another day, another person saying Rails is dead. *sigh*
- spiderice 5y ago
  I didn't get the impression that GP was saying that at all. Just that, in 2020, Rails is most definitely not "new".
  - ezekg 5y ago
    You’re right, may have misunderstood. If that’s the case, my bad. Text can be hard sometimes.
namenotrequired 5y ago
It was clear to me the author meant “new to me”

polote 5y ago

It's ok to fail sometimes, but if you only fail the only way for you to stop failing is to be lucky. It doesn't seem like a good strategy to me. But yeah if the goal of OP is the guy he quoted at the end "Had a business idea that I think could build in 24 hours and get to $5,000 MRR in 30 days". Keep trying, survivor bias is still alive

claudiulodro 5y ago
There are a ton of ideas that could get someone to $5000 MRR in 30 days; they're just not passive income. For example, if he had started a facilities maintenance company and found one customer, he'd be set!

herval 5y ago

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands of dollars immediately. Those are exceedingly rare, and you might be able to pull it off when you have a massive audience. Jumping from project to project won’t net you that audience, so you end up spending time in circles… and earning $0.

martincmartin 5y ago
Reminds me of "Good Software Takes Ten Years. Get Used To it." by Joel Spolsky. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-takes-ten-years-get-used-to-it/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/07/21/good-software-take...
- tppiotrowski 5y ago
  https://i1.wp.com/www.joelonsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2003/06/Notes-Installed-Base.gif?resize=341%2C220&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/www.joelonsoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/... This chart is a good example of having no traction for years and then growing exponentially. We usually hear about a company once it hits the inflection point so it seems like an overnight success.
  - ZephyrBlu 5y ago
    "no traction" lol. After 2 years that chart shows 35k users. That's only no traction in relation to the final outcome. Imagine this was money instead, where the final result was $1B and after the first 2 years it was only $1M. $1M is only "no traction" in relation to $1B. In absolute terms it's pretty damn good.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  This has been my experience. I'm working on an app that will be released in the next few months (we don't have a definite ship date, yet). It's based on two servers that I wrote. One, I wrote eleven or twelve years ago, and has become a world standard; but only in the last three years. Since it's a specialized demographic, the numbers are quite small, for "world standard." The other server is one that I wrote, about four years ago. It took me seven months. It's a very good general-purpose application server. I wrote it for practice, but it's also ideal for the app I'm writing. I've been working on the frontend app for over a year. It's really, really good. I deliberately took my time, because we went through a lot of "MVP" stuff, during its development. The rest of the team seems to think it will take the world by storm, when it's released, but I don't think it will. That's fine with me. I don't mind a slow burn. I've written software that lasts decades.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Just get a web site ready for the next time a ship gets stuck.

encoderer 5y ago

Main lesson that seems to not have been learned yet, since it's not mentioned at the end: If you want to make money (any money at all), stop focusing on consumer products, build a small B2B product instead.

krater23 5y ago
And build it full time, not as a hobby. And build one that no one else is selling already.
- encoderer 5y ago
  No quite the opposite! Part time is fine, and you can build a simple niched-down version of a popular tool.

kaycebasques 5y ago

Sharing some thoughts in the spirit of us all learning and improving: Re: Planetoid my immediate first impression was "I don't understand what's going on here". With that one it seems like maybe the author should have vetted the basic idea with friends and family first and see if they get it. Re: Minfinity it seems useful and is actually right up my alley! I feel like the strategy here would be to keep it in maintenance mode and wait and see if it ever picks up popularity (such as in a thread like this). My big takeaway from reading the author's post is that it seems to drive home the importance of marketing/advertising/selling/etc. Those stories about the Collison brothers pitching their product to developers and then doing the somewhat socially awkward thing of pressuring them try it out right there on the spot is burned in my memory.

bufferoverflow 5y ago

Minimal metronome and minimal time tracker are close to useless, because the market is so saturated, and there are tons of free options. You need to start with validating your idea instead of wasting days/months on coding.

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
Also, I think we need to stop rewarding 'minimal' products. Like you said, there's no room for minimal time tracking, but there's definitely room for more high quality, feature-dense time tracking tools.
- krater23 5y ago
  Nope, sometimes I just want no bloat software that can cook my eggs during I use it for time tracking. I just want this one feature. But don't suppose to make money with an app like this, because there are 20 other people that released one before you.
- xeromal 5y ago
  Yeah, my minimal time tracker is Excel.
Igelau 5y ago
Tell that to those guys who made the 1500 slot machines.
guessbest 5y ago
He needs to make ten times as many applications/solutions at least in the same time frame. His ratio comes to less than one project a year and across different markets. In fact he doesn't even release but two of the projects mentioned. The product startup world moves a lot faster than that. "How I failed 5 side projects in 6 years"
- unobatbayar 5y ago
  Exactly. It needs to become a habit so that he can release at greater velocity. Regulary thinking about new ideas and the writing code 1-2 hours everyday is ideal.

cushychicken 5y ago

I'm one of the folks who took part in The Quittening that the last year has made for us. I left a demanding, unfulfilling startup job in July. The main factors in why I was able to do this was: * a large nest egg due to nearly a decade of investing as much excess income as possible into index funds (If you're in the FIRE community, I suppose you could say I'm in a state of "Lean FIRE".) * being married to someone who had the understanding to support me in pursuing this, as well as help me purchase affordable health insurance thru her work. (Love you, Emma!) I took a few months off to not work on anything, at all, except for some very small pet-projects - programming for fun kinda stuff. Starting about a month ago, my focus shifted towards launching a job board targeted to a pretty specific niche in my main area of expertise. It's been my full time thing for about a month, and I'm getting some appreciable traction in the form of newsletter signups. Hasn't made me any money yet. I'd tried launching a few small websites before as part-time endeavors; all of those have ended exactly like the author's posts have. Given all that meandering context: one of the things this project has taught me is that it is INCREDIBLY HARD to launch a side business with a day job. I'm not a web developer, so I've had to spend a lot of time learning HTML, CSS, JS, and all the LAMP stack stuff as I go. I had to spend three or four whole days just figuring out how to deploy this fucking thing to a cloud service. That's supposed to be easy! Or, at least, all the cloud providers' websites would have you think so. At least two of those days were trying and failing to set up AWS instances. (Thank god almighty for PythonAnywhere.) I used to think I was stupid or unskilled for not being able to launch websites and software businesses in my spare time. Nope! Turns out, it's hard work, and it can easily take up all of your working hours! It's easy to think, being an HN netizen, that there are tons of people who can do this as a side hustle and make bank doing easy work, but I simply don't believe that's true. I think the folks who do succeed at this are some combination of: * lucky, * very attuned to a niche market with money to spend, or * blessed with exceptional product sense for a software utility that doesn't exist yet. OP - I'm sorry that none of your efforts have yielded monetary success, and I admire your perseverance for continuing to try. It's easy to beat yourself up over trying so hard, so many times, and being rewarded with nothing back. I just wanted to say that what you are trying is harder than most folks on HN want to admit, and to try to hang onto your positive attitude towards continuing to learn. Your opportunity will come.

ffhhj 5y ago

And you know what's worst than earning $0? - The store not accepting your app because there are too many of the same topic (horoscopes, memes, sound boards, whatever-craft names, etc.) - Spending lots of money on Google/FB ads. - Spending lots of money on AWS. - Burning out yourself and your friends.

skeoh 5y ago
Could you expound on this? Are you speaking from experience?

poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

"Success Is Going From Failure to Failure Without Losing Your Enthusiasm" Lincoln

yesenadam 5y ago
More commonly attributed to Churchill, but apparently there's no evidence either of them said it. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success/

grammarnazzzi 5y ago

People pay for services because it's work that they are unable or unwilling to do themselves Building things that people will not pay for is called a hobby. You're not entited to an income from your hobbies. > This is a story about me dreaming Yup > 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0 (kwcodes.com) You didn't even try to finish 2 of the 5 projects You didn't even do anything in 2 of the 6 years. Your title is clickbait. Seems like you want attention more than you want money. By comparison, looking at my github, I started over 50 projects in last year and finished a dozen of them. Hobbies all of them and I didn't expect to make a dime. If you want a reality check, head over to https://itch.io/jams https://itch.io/jams. You'll find 10,000 hobbies projects not making any money.

einpoklum 5y ago

> How I failed 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0 Not earning money is not a failure. Wasting time on non-free software the purpose of which is making money - now that's unfortunate. My advice to that guy would be: * Write software you need personally. You will at least have one happy user - and if you write something you like, other people will probably want to use it too. * Think of the software needs of people you know - in your family, physical community, or online communities - and see whether you can't help implement it or adapt/improve existing software for that purpose.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> the purpose of which is making money Most software that's capable of improving lives is capable of making money, isn't it? > non-free software I really doubt that throwing it up as open source would fix anything. And if you remove those two factors then all that's left is "that's unfortunate".
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > I really doubt that throwing it up as open source would fix anything. You're probably right. What I'm saying is that the cause for embarking on a software project should be different. If you write software to address needs and desires, then you're more likely to succeed in doing that. And maybe you'll make money off it somehow, or maybe not.
hvasilev 5y ago
> Wasting time on non-free software the purpose of which is making money - now that's unfortunate. This sounds very ideological. It looks like a personal trap that you might fall in the future. Be careful.

IkmoIkmo 5y ago

Bit of a painful read. On the first game, it's a common game concept (very much not novel) that I've seen many people recreate. I built one myself with better graphics and gameplay over the course of a week and sold it for 5k to a games publisher around 2013-2014, about 2-3 years before they released their game. That publisher offered it for free on an ad model. I can't believe working on it for a year, with two people, for free, releasing it in 2016 and expecting any sales. Enough has been said about the projects in general already which mostly mimics the game (not solving a real user problem, late-entry, competing with existing solutions, no marketing)

crispyalmond 5y ago

I wouldn't consider projects which make $0 to be failures, unless your intent was to make money from them. I like making tools/games in my spare time with no intention of profiting from them. I simply enjoy the programming aspect way more than any monetary value. I'm not saying that I wouldn't like the money, but it's not my primary focus for making these projects.

bluewalt 5y ago
That's a very strong advice to remove irrelevant guilt. Many people bind success with money. That's just one thing you can benefit.

bellajbadr 5y ago

Why didn't you open source your projects!!

hvasilev 5y ago
because this would be a great solution to his problems?
- bellajbadr 5y ago
  Yep. After what he faced he might get help or even sponsored.

zapstar 5y ago

I hope this write-up was a healthy and effective way to help you mourn these losses. (And then move on to the next big idea!) Kudos to you for experimenting like this. Would you consider adding them to the Project Cemetery[0]? Then others could learn from them too! [0] https://projectcemetery.com https://projectcemetery.com

brailsafe 5y ago

What a lot of loud successful people wouldn't like to admit, is that even if you show up and do the work, you have to be very lucky to get traction for anything, regardless of novelty. True for being an employee or a business. For the latter, it helps to be very lucky and opportunistic with timing to begin with.

jamestimmins 5y ago
Maybe with consumer tech, but this isn’t the case with enterprise. Successful companies identify a market need then figure out how to sell it. It’s appealing to say it’s luck from the outside, but the successful playbook is consistent enough that it seems naive to attribute it to luck.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Well, it depends what you mean, but I certainly didn't attribute it to luck. I attributed a certain amount to luck, which is always involved no matter how you spin it. I know someone who runs a successful enterprise consulting business for example. He's a relentless worker, and has earned it, but he'd be delusional to not admit that there's luck involved at every point in the delivery chain; starting of course with being lucky to never run into any problems on his first few steps into the job world where he developed connections he could later sell to. If you're a relentless worker, you have probably never been given a reason to question the merit of hard work, because it's always paid off for you somehow. Doesn't even matter whether it's tech related or not. If you're on your way to being a successful mountain climber, you're going to need be lucky to not develop debilitating foot problems. Back to your example, there's a certain amount of luck involved in finding out about the apparent enterprise playbook in a time and place where you can put it to use, and of course in finding a market. I don't know a thing about enterprise sales or business because my dad conveniently doesn't run one and I was never hired at IBM in the 90s.

mehphp 5y ago

I see this a lot: a clearly talented person who is unable to monetize their project. At a glance, it looks like OP is just building stuff, throwing it at a wall and seeing what sticks. Of course, that is bound to fail. You are, essentially, playing the lottery. Nowhere in that blog did I see any mention of figuring out what a customer is looking for in a game or a product. What is the niche you are trying to fill or pain-point you are trying to solve? It would be much better to build something _after_ you know people want it, not before.

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jll29 5y ago

There's something called _market analysis_: you either find a gap in the market for software tools, or you talk to people and ask what they would pay for _before_ starting to code. Yes, you can jump straight into coding for your side projects, but not if your primary goal is to earn a steady side income (it may work but unlikely so). But good to see negative outcome reports to counter-balance the extreme survivor bias on here.

StevePerkins 5y ago

Maybe I'm just old and cranky and this is a generational thing, but when did "side project" become mixed up with "side hustle"? I think the dead horse has been beaten already in this thread, with what the author "should have done" in terms of market research, A/B testing, MVP, etc. No need for me to pile on further there. But what strikes me is that the author really seems to draw no distinction between personal side projects, done for the purpose of developing new skills that you aren't learning at your day job (e.g. iOS development, Ruby on Rails, etc)... versus entrepreneurial side hustles that you pursue for the dream of financial independence. I think the the lesson here is, "Pick one". If you're trying to get rich, then that's not the time dive into some completely unfamiliar tech whose learning curve will slow down your velocity. You should be leveraging whatever boring tech you already know and are already most productive in, so you can focus on the marketing research and business side of things. Conversely, if you're trying to dive into an educational side project to learn new skills, then it's rather naive to expect that to be a path to riches. It won't be, and that's okay!

bluewalt 5y ago
That's a relevant advice IMO. However, as a tech guy trying to build stuff too, I need continuous motivation for this. I need to stay in a "flow" state. And a good fuel to this is to learn new cool things during the journey. To put it differently, I think you need to find the right balance between fun and efficiency, even if your goal is to earn money in the end. Trying to always look for the maximum efficiency could be a short term vision that quickly lead to boringness.
- deleted 5y ago
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Normal_gaussian 5y ago
> personal side projects, done for the purpose of developing new skills That sounds like a work focused side project to me. Things I've made that are personal side projects - iot blind controls (because I wanted it), magic mirror (because I wamted it), triathlon result parser (because me and my so wanted to settle some race stats debates), groupable containerised desktop apps (because I wanted it) etc. None of my personal side projects set out to develop new skills, they set out to make me or a loved one happy. Often they do develop new skills. My partner is currently stripping and repainting an old bike - shes learning loads, but thats not the intent. The intent is to make it match her other gear because that makes her happy.

cryptica 5y ago

I launched 5 major software projects over the last 15 years. The first one was a failure; the big lesson I learned from that failure was that I couldn't salvage or re-purpose any of the code; aside from educational value, all that work had been wasted. After that experience, I tried to build all my projects in such a way that I could always salvage/re-purpose my work. My second project was a software development framework which I tried to sell it as a SaaS platform. The platform was a commercial failure but the open source framework became popular and I was able to convince the founders of a popular blockchain project to use it as part of their P2P layer. Although that project was a technical success, because I didn't own any meaningful stake in that blockchain project, I wasn't able to capitalize on this opportunity so it was a commercial failure for me. So then we (me and some open source community members who joined along the way) used that blockchain as a base to build a Decentralized Exchange and 2 new blockchain projects. Although these projects have not yet succeeded commercially (still working on it), I managed to secure passive income as a blockchain validator on the base blockchain. Securing this passive income was my first hint of commercial success after 10 years of trying. Anyway, it's an ongoing story but if my current 3 active projects don't succeed commercially, I have already planned for the next projects to build on top... The goal is to just keep building stuff on top of this blockchain ecosystem, welcoming new contributors along the way and keeping everything open source.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

What's the genre of the "planetoid" game called? I remember many games like this, both open source and flash, but can't find any of them and don't know if there's a name for the genre.

hvasilev 5y ago
I think there is a common benchmark for AI algorithm competitions that looks exactly like that.

askvictor 5y ago

My 5-odd side side projects over the last decade have mostly been tools I've built for myself, that I thought other people might also find useful (and a bit for developing new skills, and fun). Though I thought it might be nice to get a few dollars for ongoing work/support, but in most of my cases, the options to monetize are too complicated to bother with - in my case wanting corporate users to pay some amount, while being free for personal users. The time involved in setting this up isn't worth the likely (lack of) return. Honestly, even listing in an app store is a pretty big barrier (bureaucracy-wise) these days for a side-project - on one project I probably spent more time jumping through these hoops than on developing a MVP.

m3kw9 5y ago

Yeah a lot of the projects are a marketing problem, that’s where it gets hard.

rrjjww 5y ago

My most lucrative "side project" was building a personal portfolio of $0 earning side projects that I could point to in interviews, and landed me a higher paying position.

Stampo00 5y ago

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but most people never manage to get passive income. I wish it was real, but it's about as common as winning the lottery and you're just burning the candle at both ends while you're doing it. I try to spend my free time doing stuff I enjoy rather than gambling it away for the hope of getting more free time later instead of having to work. I'm sorry.

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visox 5y ago

For mé its 7 years and maybe 10 projects, although they werent equal nothing ever flew... I dont have many regrets tho.

quickthrower2 5y ago

Software hustles: $0 is the median, $1,000,000 is the mean.

tekstar 5y ago

I think it's important to have inspired ideas if you're going to follow a project through to completion. I've met my personal goals with side projects with the following criteria: - I really really want something - It doesn't exist I've got 2 iOS apps that I built with the above formula - one is free and gets about 100 downloads a week, the other is paid and makes about $80/week. It helps that I'm working in a niche I know well, and where people spend money. Don't try to make something generic. Even if nobody else ends up using it at least you've made something interesting.

unobatbayar 5y ago

One thing I've learned from doing side projects is that; If you're not going to spend any time/money on marketing then stop giving your projects obscure names. I know we programmers want some Googly names that is not currently in the dictionary but no one will EVER find it and it's very hard to grow organically. If you're not making any money it doesn't mean your product is bad. It mostly means people can't find it. It's highly possible to make at least +$100 more just by using a name that a normal human would search for. Do anything so that people will can find it easily.

altitudinous 5y ago
This. Especially on the app store. I have several successful side projects myself and am semi retired. But it is a waste of time trying to tell people that discoverability is the key to success. Everyone who owns an iPhone thinks they are an app expert and the first thing they do with a new idea is to come up with an unsearchable, undiscoverable name.

underwater 5y ago

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 and thus "finish" the projects. But has been blind to non-technical complexity, whether that is game design, art design, marketing, or sales. 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.

CRConrad 5y ago
> 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.

71a54xd 5y ago

This is why even at 26 as someone who enjoys working at startups, I'm very apprehensive when it comes to the idea of doing my own. I've leveled out income wise as far as startup comp goes - very motivated to make the jump to a Stripe scale company and not look back instead of trying to do a startup. At this point, I'd just rather have the money and less stress.

JaggerFoo 5y ago

You're going at it wrong. There's all kinds of money begging to fund a tech idea. Come up with an idea that sounds dumb and just differentiates a bit from a normal business, then look to get funded by a VC. Keep in mind that Donald Trump now is worth more than twice the valuation of the NY Times and it only took a few days. All kinds of money out there looking to fund an idea that can be loosely rationalized by a slide deck.

sagarpatil 5y ago

I’ve had 100% success with my last 3 projects in 5 years. Here’s what worked for me. 1. An add-on for a cryptocurrency trading bot. I developed a MVP, impressed the founding team, got into a partnership where they promoted my project to their customers. After 1.5 years they acquired my product and I signed a 3 years royalty. 2. A Wordpress security plugin. Started with a free version, focused on ranking the plugin in the plugin directory. Once I saw 3,000 websites using it. I doubled down on it. At the peak it was being used by 50,000 customers, out of which 3000 were paid customers. Sold it to a private investor for mid 6 figures. 3. Dropshipping - It was more if a test to learn everything about FaceBook, Instagram Ads but the website went onto generating ~$800,000 in revenue.

umvi 5y ago
> Sold it to a private investor for mid 6 figures. How? Did you go looking for a buyer or were you approached?

krater23 5y ago

Don't try to make money with your hobby, and don't operate your money busyness like a hobby. Both will not work, if you have other things to do beside your side projects.

wiradikusuma 5y ago

"I still got many ideas in my head but right now I’m more cautious about choosing my next project. First of all, when deciding about the next project, I need to choose the smallest idea possible that can be developed by one person. Cut the scope as much as possible." These two paragraphs resonate very well to everyone in his shoes.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Even if you had some users, making money is difficult nowadays. You have to rely on making some B2B feature and pray that a big company buys you. Or you go to SV and build hype. Or you find an investor that spends a lot on marketing.

sfgweilr4f 5y ago

I feel like there was a loaded gun next to the head of each of these projects. Plus, I don't think the projects were duds. They were instead simply buds - still too immature. Exactly how you execute an idea is often far more important than the actual idea. This isn't some catchy phrase, its how people take failing businesses and rework them to massive profits. I agree that more iteration was required. Focusing on a particular set of real customers is also a useful activity. Real people have real needs. Developers often have no clue what people want because people in general have problems and your shiny thing is weird and wonderful and they don't (yet) understand it. eg That time tracker... omg. Plenty of people use worse. Plenty are better. Its minimal, but a start. If this had been pushed in front of a large enough group of real people and left to grow with multiple iterations from feedback it could have ended up in all sorts of useful directions.

a_c 5y ago

Did you get better at evaluating ideas? Did you get faster in building MVP? Did you get better at listening to customers? Did you get deeper understanding at any of the business domain you worked at? If any of these is yes, then I think you time is well spent. (Financial) Success don't usually arrive suddenly. Keep crushing it!

BatteryMountain 5y ago

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 write at home is much different from what I do at work, where we supposedly follow best practices and at home.. I just express myself. I'm so utterly pleased with some of the things I've come up with that would make development easier (not a new framework, don't worry) but I cannot take it to work since it would mean blasphemy and it would most likely make our architect have another meltdown. My favourite project of the bunch is a code/platform generator. After that one it is probably the small storage engine I've built cause I got frustrated with sql + object mapping - it works so nicely but the entire community/industry will take a dump on it, as relational/sql db's are supposedly god. I maybe want to share some of my work with the world, not as side-projects to earn money, but perhaps just for the fun of it and to contribute yet another shape of doing something - even if it is to educate how not to do something, that is fine too.

chillfox 5y ago
I am really curious about how the storage engine works. Would you be willing to explain the idea behind it and how it works?

yCloser 5y ago

1. he tried to monetize a game that should have been free/ads 2. the time tracker could have worked! Not "I'm gonna be rich" worked but still could have been something. 3,4. he didn't do them 5. tried to compete against linkedin/facebook?! IMHO we are always too oriented to "make money, NOW"... Doing free stuff is ok. It's not that "if it's free then scrape the whole project, what's the point anyway"! The opensource/free stuff you make ends up in your CV, and could be a game changer

kburman 5y ago

Only purpose of side projects was suppose to be fun or learn something at the end of it. I don't understand why is there an increasing trend to do a side project with a goal of becoming rich.

petargyurov 5y ago
I fully agree with you but here's my take on why this is a phenomenon: 1. People like making money when they shouldn't be; we live under the pretense that the only way to earn money is via your day job. A side-hustle makes things exciting. It's like finding treasure. 2. Pair the above with the rise of social media and the lifestyles people portray on there: success, money, etc. 3. Perhaps there is an actual movement away from "normal" jobs, leading to a mentality shift in which people simply want to be financially independent.

dsign 5y ago

I often wonder how do people find those ideas that earn money with a year of man work or less. I'm seven years into my own company with a stable team of four developers, two business ops and an extremely competent board of directors. We solve a critical high-tech problem to our 170 business customers in an area with "gorilla" competitors. We even have "growth". Getting here took blood and tears by the wagons. And we are not even profitable yet.

Lurkars 5y ago

Maybe I have a different definition of "side project" and/or it's somehow a HN-bubble about articles like "I earned 100k with my side project", but for me a side project is exactly the opposite of what seems to be the target is the author: I have side project in my free time, because it is always about stuff I don't get paid for but I need somehow. Is it about software to use for me and my friends or to learn about something. But it is always under the premise of not gain any cent from it. And I understood articles about making money from a side project exactly about being lucky to start something without financial intension and gain money anyways. If course I would love to get money for my side project, but worth noting, that I don't get any attention on it anyways: for example I build esp-ena, a covid hardware tracker to be compatible with exposure notification framework. I don't want any money, it was I side project, but it was still a failure because it didn't get the attention I hoped for (that maybe someone starting to make this professional). So of course it was not about money, but I had bigger expectations than just being for myself. I'm the end I think, side projects should always stays something you create just for you and maybe it goes bigger, but when planning to make more than that out of it, you shouldn't make it a side project and start a business instead.

davidtranjs 5y ago

Building a product is easy but takes a lot of time, that's why you need some marketing skills and validate your product carefully before put your time into the product. Btw, your story is not alone. There are thoundsand of products are built everyday and just a few of them get to the top of product hunt (yet still out of business).

sAbakumoff 5y ago

>> seeking financial independence So, instead of being dependent on your employee, you are seeking to be dependent on a bunch of random people who you don't know anything about a.k.a. users. What could possibly go wrong,right.

qwerty456127 5y ago

If the apps you have developed solved practical problems of yourself, they are not failed.

XCSme 5y ago

Just leaving this here: people don't want MVPs or a cuter version of something that exists, people want to solve a problem that they have in a cheaper, faster or easier way.