29 ms·

Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project

265 points by wagslane 4y ago

sweetdreamerit 4y ago
Ux design is about doing research with the users, not about graphic design.
halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
Re: Graphic Design and UX - you can get pretty far by using a component library (Material, Semantic, etc) and even buy full site templates for pretty reasonable prices. You can also contract out design to things like 99designs. To add to this list: marketing. I don't want to grow social media accounts or do cold calls/emails to start to get customers.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Similar but a bit different. I’ve had some cool ideas for some games that I’m 100% confident I could make a pretty neat backend for, but graphics, sounds, etc. not my forte at all.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    Creative assets are what's holding me back from pursuing a lot of my game ideas too. Someone should make an AI to generate art and sound assets for those of us without the skills. That way I can just do something like spore where I feed it inputs and out pops a bitmap.
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      Someone I know mentioned wanting to do something similar to this. I guess the hard part is how to get the model to generate what you want and also generate it in the format you need.
  - bemmu 4y ago
    There are really good marketplaces for buying game assets. Especially if you adopt a low poly style, you can get very far with bought meshes. My go-to sites are CGTrader for meshes, SoundSnap for sounds.
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      I’ll have to look into it. If I ever put any amount of effort into one of these ideas, I don’t think I’d mind paying commission for some stuff either, but at the end of the day I’m just a guy who can write code ok and has some neat game ideas. I don’t have a massive budget for my side projects.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Regarding contracting, remember that there is a pretty large population of beginner graphic designers, UX/UI designers, and frontend devs who need portfolio projects, and might be willing to work for free or very low cost.
  - Cerium 4y ago
    Before following this advice, please read [1] first. [1] https://www.nospec.com/ https://www.nospec.com/
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      That isn't at all what I was suggesting. I am talking about proper contract work, or pro bono volunteer work.
      - Cerium 4y ago
        Thanks for the clarification, I wanted to put this out there, since I have seen the issue from both sides.
      - benjaminwootton 4y ago
        What is it about design and designers that makes people think they would want to or be willing to work for free for a portfolio? It seems unique to that role, yet good design is rare and valuable as the top end in any field.
        nerdponx 4y ago
        It's not specific to design. Data science and software engineering are similar.
- ufmace 4y ago
  I actually haven't had good experience with most of this on the graphic design and UI front. If I'm building, say, a Rails web app, I want my front-end stuff to integrate with Rails reasonably well. Which means ERB or HAML templates with common elements properly extracted out into shared views, maintainable CSS in SASS, that sort of thing. What most of these UI services and contractors seem to actually deliver is something quite different. 99designs output is literally just an image of what they think your website should look like. Actually writing all of the HTML and CSS to make it actually look like that is up to you. It makes me think, why am I paying money for a picture of what my site could look like that requires me to do all of the actual work? Most entry-level contractors seem to want to deliver self-contained HTML and CSS that are usually written with some tool that creates incomprehensible actual code. They have no clue about templating and extracting common elements out. This means that I have to basically rewrite whatever they deliver to actually integrate with the web app. Which again makes me think, why am I paying for this? IMO, if I'm going to pay someone for front-end design work, I want to be able to point them at my Github repo, with a functional site with ugly basic HTML, say basically "make this look pretty", and they open a PR with their work which works with my existing templates to add the appropriate HTML structure and CSS classes and IDs, and CSS, fonts and images all in the right places for the framework I'm using. I'm willing to help and provide advice and guidance, but I don't want to take delivery of something completely unsuited and have to integrate it myself. As a side note, if anyone's looking to get into web design, if you learn enough about coding to do the above and are also great at making websites look good, I expect you'll have boatloads of money thrown at you.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    The skills required to design something that looks good and provides a good experience for users are orthogonal to the skills required to build well-factored, responsive HTML and CSS. I've worked with marketing teams that tried to build their own HTML and CSS and ended up getting something that looked great... as long as you viewed it at the exact resolution of their designer's monitor. I had to go in and make it all work on mobile, which was a nightmare because their markup and styles were so badly organized. It took as much work as if they'd just given me PNGs. More recently I received a bunch of designs from a designer who worked in Adobe XD. The designs were great, and what I got from XD was an interactive template and some very rough auto-generated CSS (mostly colors, fonts, and border radii). This was the sweet spot for me: no breaking out the color picker or guessing what letter-spacing they're using, but I could make the code work with my templating engine and make it responsive without having to rewrite bad code that they charged me for. If you can find a designer that is great at both design and code, awesome! Keep them! But if not, chances are the most productive workflow is to let them do what they do best and just plan on doing the rest.
- lonk11 4y ago
  I used Material for my hobby project [1] and got this feedback: "Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't like the UI. It seems like a demo for a Material design app. I think the site has lots of potential, but without an original, personal style it might put off users. It doesn't have to be complicated, just something recognizable." So a standard component library can get you started quickly, but you might want to tweak it. A few things I changed - made icon buttons smaller (the default sizes are way too big), changed the pills to be white with black border instead of just grey background. [1] - https://linklonk.com https://linklonk.com
  - dinkleberg 4y ago
    Check out the mui.com website. The whole doc site is built using their material UI component library, yet it looks nothing like a cookie cutter material design app. That is to say, if you put in the time a material site can definitely look good.
sandworm101 4y ago
>> I always start from someone else’s design. Sure, I end up tweaking it to fit my site, but I search around until I find a version of the component I want online and then steal the design. I take it that your side project has nothing to do with cellphones.
adamnemecek 4y ago
None of these are a big deal. Did you consider that maybe spending a week figuring out design is not a bad idea?
- altdataseller 4y ago
  Spoken by someone who’s just a designer and never had to balance 10 different things in a startup.
  - adamnemecek 4y ago
    I’m a designer?
ourmandave 4y ago
Thought I'd see a "We're hiring!" link at the bottom.
higgins 4y ago
I’ve heard this called “doing uncomfortable work” (by Michael Brody-Waite in Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts) and was the thesis of starting project (https://24HourHomePage.com https://24HourHomePage.com, more in that thesis here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WFZ4b7s4Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WFZ4b7s4Y) Maybe its because i haven’t gotten to a place where i hate any one type of work. I recognize that i’m unskilled at it and there is probably some learning in at least trying the problem myself first. Without having much money to invest in contracting out the solution, its sort of a necessity too. I agree with the legal and tax stuff though. Interested in how you approach those grey areas where your skillset and interest align for the problem but might be better to contract out. How do you budget?
candiddevmike 4y ago
I really don't like plugging my side project/astroturfing in comments. It does work, I get a bunch of sign ups, but I feel really icky when I do it.
- biellls 4y ago
  I think a lot of people are in the same boat and wish there was a nice ethical way to promote projects that worked without pushing them hard on people. I hope there is.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    I wonder about ads for this. For example Reddit seems a decent place to advertise to target a group of people with a common interest, in a way that is not obnoxious. Do an hours freelance work for someone else and that’ll pay for a small test!
  - influx 4y ago
    I wish there was a thread in the same frequency as the we're hiring/i'm looking to be hired threads.
    - biellls 4y ago
      I didn't think of that, it sounds like a great idea. What's your project by the way?
      - influx 4y ago
        I'm building a SaaS for e-commerce analytics. It's pre-launch right now, so not too much to share :)
- cinntaile 4y ago
  Why don't you use show hn?
  - 4y ago
apitman 4y ago
I know this is in reference to a project that the author hopes to make money from, but many people start open source projects simply to scratch an itch and solve a personal problem. In these cases, I think it's worth asking if you want the project to grow. Sometimes GitHub stars are empty calories. Once something grows beyond a certain point, it can be annoying for users to constantly be asking for new features that you personally will never use. And documentation... Not suggesting open sourcing things is a bad idea, but there's no shame in throwing some code up on GitHub and being clear about what people can expect from you.
- jchw 4y ago
  I’ve not hit the point of being annoyed on any of my smaller side projects, but despite them being developer focused and relatively niche, they do bring in a bit of overhead from other developers sending PRs and issue reports. That said, while I generally do not mind fielding PRs or even trying to resolve bugs, the actual worst thing for me is having to close a PR because I simply don’t want to merge it. I know it’s the right choice, but it’s not fun.
  - oefrha 4y ago
    > having to close a PR because I simply don’t want to merge it. It helps to be upfront about it. For most of the reasonably popular stuff I put up, I clearly say something like “if you have a small change, it’s probably best to talk to me instead of submitting a PR because I’ll just do it faster without the tiresome back-and-forth review dance; if you have a big change or a major feature, definitely run it though me first, and unfortunately I’ll likely say no in most cases” in CONTRIBUTING.md or the developer section of the website. Of course, lots of people don’t read... But at least I feel a lot better closing big PRs I’ll never get to.
  - Fritsdehacker 4y ago
    Maybe you shouldn't feel bad about this, you're not always hurting feelings. If I'm using an open source project and I need something changed, I'll usually just make the change and put the new code online, because I think that's how open source is supposed to work. Others can now benefit from my change. I'll also make a PR to the original project. But I don't mind if it's rejected. I made the changes for myself. If you can use the changes, fine. If can't, also fine.
Aulig 4y ago
Yea, I can relate to this article a lot. I'm hiring people for everything that I dislike doing at https://webtoapp.design https://webtoapp.design In my case those are namely accounting/taxes, customer support and other repetitive tasks. I should probably also hire someone to write blog articles - currently I almost exclusively write about how customers can use feature X with webtoapp.design, like documentation. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to hire someone for sales too. The thing I really enjoy is coding and strategizing. I have no problem thinking of growth channels, but actually following through with the execution (which is often just writing emails all day) is what I dislike.
cheschire 4y ago
This feels like a question of motivation. What is driving a person to have a side project, and potentially want to grow it? First, I need to take a step back and talk about my perspective on work units in a holistic sense. The larger the company, the more I feel I can specialize. The smaller the company, the more I'm expected to work outside of my defined box. As a company expands, at some point it breaks up into multiple units. Those newly formed units are typically too small, and people in them are expected to work outside of their defined boxes again. This is a pain point of growth. Eventually those units expand until the pain stops. They sometimes continue their expansion until they must again split. Obvious correlations to cell division and growth abound. A side project is the single cell organism, and it will eventually evolve and grow; or it will achieve equilibrium; or it will die. I feel like I'm an equilibrium-oriented kind of person. I don't want to grow and evolve beyond the resources of my immediate work unit. If my work unit fails to meet my needs though, I move on towards a unit that will better help me achieve my equilibrium. People who enjoy working on specialization might better enjoy overemployment[0] with multiple pre-existing work units rather than turning a hobby into a venture. Alternatively some companies offer work at internal innovation groups, and those efforts sometimes offer rewards beyond the base compensation. I also feel like some people are more like viruses in the Agent Smith sense that they never achieve equilibrium and have an insatiable desire to expand. Unlike the movie, I don't think viruses are inherently bad, it's just another form of life. It's tough to discern boundless ambition from a significant deficiency in workplace satisfaction though, and that can lead people to try to expand a hobby into a side hustle. I think first a person has to identify whether they are motivated by boundless growth or are simply no longer achieving equilibrium at their current workplace. Moving to a new company or division, or even moving to a new career altogether, may be preferable to trying to evolve a hobby into a hustle. 0: https://www.overemployment.org/ https://www.overemployment.org/
cube00 4y ago
> Creating videos might be the best way for Boot.dev to grow, but I don’t want to make videos. Making videos is one thing, but making videos to satisfy the algorithm is another. - Like, comment, subscribe and smash that bell! - Make sure your video is 30+ minutes long with plenty of filler. I am disappointed to see established creators who never engaged in click-bait are (probably under duress) resorting to click bait titles and thumbnails now. Unsubscribed from two so far this week, and once I get down to zero I can quit YouTube.
- dymk 4y ago
  I apply a strong mental downrank to videos on YouTube that are between the duration of 10:00 to 10:30, knowing that they're only that long to satisfy the Algorithm (and get a midroll ad). They're all stuffed with filler to get them to exactly that duration. There lies a sharp valley of quality. Especially if surrounding "competing" videos are in the 1-2 minute range (often the case with "How do I do <X> in <Y> software?" kinds of tutorial videos).
- Beldin 4y ago
  > I am disappointed to see creators who don't even really need to, are resorting to click bait titles and thumbnails now. Veritasium has a video on clickbait of itself - basically: it works and is more or less necessary to satisfy The Algorithm(tm). Don't blame your favourite content creators for catering to a wider audience than just you.
  - cube00 4y ago
    Fair point. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
  - dymk 4y ago
    The Veritasium channel itself is clickbait much of the time, so of course it would defend the practice. I follow plenty of content creators that make good videos without artificially padding their runtimes, some long-form in the 20+ minute range, but also many that do low-minutes videos. Their channels are doing just fine.
_pdp_ 4y ago
The things you don't want to do are often the things where you will grow and learn new things.
nomilk 4y ago
Keep an open mind. I was horrendous at and didn't enjoy design, kept trying and trying but was still utterly horrid. One day I noticed the work of much more talented people was not better than mine, in fact, it was worse, this was perplexing. The constant practice which seemed to have no impact had actually made me better. Basic things: tinkering with bootstrap layouts, taking 2 hours to feebly make a mediocre background image, curving edges on an image, tinkering with margins and padding, removing unessential elements. It all added up. This skill has also helped me in ways I never expected, like being able to put together a nice looking slide deck (~25 slides) in 90 minutes, where previously it would take days.
- javajosh 4y ago
  Very cool! I like to characterize practice as exercising your degrees-of-freedom in a domain (your "basic things"). This exploration gives you an intuition about what your future choices will be, allowing your current choices to be made with more confidence, and in greater harmony with your later ones, so things go faster and better. It's certainly a human's greatest superpower.
- genewitch 4y ago
  I like this comment; and i have a similar thing with "indie music" or "jingle creation"; lots of podcasts and such have the listeners submit music and jingles to go with the theme of the show, and while a couple over the years have been really fascinatingly good, 99% of it is not. I produced and wrote several electronic albums over 16 years, to no fame, fortune, or recognition. I changed my workflows and software almost a half dozen times in that time frame; but the thing that did not change was the passion of creating something new that no one had ever done before. Now, when someone says something offhand or funny, i can usually bang out a 10-30 second jingle or music clip in a couple hours using rudimentary software (my go to for extreme speed is OpenMPT - https://openmpt.org/ https://openmpt.org/), and i think the quality and listen-ability, as well as the fidelity of speech/singing is light-years ahead of whatever the common submissions are. Now, I'm generally a cantankerous cuss these days online, so even my best stuff doesn't get a lot of play; but 2 decades of being "in the scene" and trying to get plays kinda washed the desire for fame out of me, so i find myself not caring. If you find yourself looking at other artistic things people have done and the thought "train-wreck" comes to mind - maybe you've learned enough stuff to be able to talk about it legitimately in a critical way?
kfk 4y ago
There are many things I don’t want to do… which is why I prefer to work on things I can sell at high margins. Those high margins help me hire people to do things I am not good at nor I like. But it is also a question of velocity, picking a side project that can generate money in a matter of weeks is better because it frees me up from things I don’t like faster. I worked Corporate 9 years, I understand Finance is not popular here, but eventually it’s all about good margins and predictable cash flows.
- pellmellism 4y ago
  like?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    he drew the circles :-)
- hu3 4y ago
  would it be something like B2B SaaS [1]? [1] to those uninitiated: Business to Business, Software as a Service. Basically renting Software.
CookieCrisp 4y ago
One of the books I read before turning a side project into a full time business talked about the importance of finding two good "A"'s - an attorney and an accountant, and gave some tips for how to do so that I no longer really recall. The reason behind it however was that both tasks done well will take up a lot of time, and there is a lot someone that isn't specializing in them could miss. It did take a fair amount of effort finding someone good, but they both paid off very quickly and now we have someone we can trust in both roles
- genewitch 4y ago
  I needed two different sorts of attorneys about 5 years ago, so i asked my friends who have their law degrees and passed the bar how i go about finding lawyers for these two specific things. I was told unanimously to use the state bar association. I went to the state bar site(s) and did whatever was required to get a list/callbacks/whatever, and immediately started receiving spam calls and emails from "Law Services" companies where they wanted me to pre-load some sort of debit card, which would then be debited any time i had need for billable hours from "law services". It felt really strange and scammy, and i relayed this to my friends who told me to try that, and nothing came of it. I didn't even find the lawyer(s) i required, to mine own detriment of six figures of loss.
hrdwdmrbl 4y ago
For me it's just the marketing and sales. I hate it so much. But to succeed it's essential. And I'm so lost and I don't know what to do. I feel helpless
- marssaxman 4y ago
  You could just open-source your code and give the program away. Then you get all the satisfaction of developing it and sharing it with the world, without having to waste time on all that obnoxious business-development stuff.
- reubenswartz 4y ago
  Amen. Some mindset shifts I found helpful: - Get excited about helping people solve the problem, not just your product. - "Teach" people how to solve the problem, instead of "marketing" your product. - "Help" someone solve the problem, instead of "selling" them your product.
polalavik 4y ago
I run a local aggregator website for things to eat, drink, and do in Los Angeles. I’m not a designer, so I opted for the Craigslist approach, but a little more polished. I went super minimal with it and it seems people are responding well to the design. I didn’t use a style framework under the philosophy that everything on the web looks the same. I wanted the website to kinda shock people with how, uhh, handmade it looked. Like there was a real person behind it because there is. I guess this is all to say you don’t always have to worry about design, UX, SEO, etc. Sometimes you want companies to look polished and professional, but sometimes you just want them to solve the problem for you as fast and efficient as possible. Tangentially - the project got me excited about building “quiet” websites - mostly text based, no database, no comment section with people to moderate. Just unique information in a simple, accessible format. I don’t want people to be checking my website every day looking for emotionally charged SEO packed news to react to. I want people to check out my site and then go into the real world and have fun with the information they found.
- canyon289 4y ago
  Can you share the website? This sounds very interesting to me as someone from LA, especially as most other sites are ad filled and annoying
  - polalavik 4y ago
    sure! its veryla.io - would love to hear your feedback
    - thestepafter 4y ago
      Very well done! This was a breath of fresh air compared to most sites these days. How often do the links change and how much time do you typically spend each week curating?
      - polalavik 4y ago
        Thanks! I typically do a complete refresh on Sunday night / Monday morning and will pepper in a couple links throughout the week (not always though). I have a bunch of stuff I’ve saved through the years so that helps, but sometimes curating can take 4-8 hours a week.
snickmy 4y ago
Do you mind if I ask what's your monthly recurring revenue
ryoshu 4y ago
Professional designers I work with, on some of the top brands in world, always have references on what they want to copy or steal. Don't feel bad about it.
dushan01 4y ago
"...marketing, sales, taxes, content creation". Other than taxes, I enjoy everything else on this list more than programming. Am I a bad programmer :D Joking aside, excellent article. Once I've read the rest of it, I realized I could not agree more with everything you've said.
- throwawayboise 4y ago
  I've always done my own taxes, by hand. I like the annual reminder of the insanity of the process, in a masochistic sort of way. But a voice is slowly getting louder, telling me to just turn this over to someone who likes doing it enough to be doing it for a living.
joshwcomeau 4y ago
Yeah, this stuff is tricky! On the one hand, successful businesses require a whole set of skills, and so if you're going to go the solo indie hacker route, you need to wear lots of hats, and you probably won't like some of them. On the other hand, if you spend too much time doing stuff you hate, you'll burn out, which can sabotage the business even more quickly than skipping the tasks you don't like. I've approached this problem by trying to weave the things I like into the things I don't. I enjoy coding more than I enjoy writing blog posts, so why not create interactive blog posts? I wind up doing a fair amount of coding to create the dynamic widgets. Here's an example blog post, so you can see what I mean: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/css-transitions/ https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/css-transitions/ I also try and stay focused on the outcome. I don't really enjoy filming video lessons, but I enjoy the feeling that comes from teaching someone a valuable skill. So I try to keep that in my mind when I'm doing the filming/writing.
la6472 4y ago
I agree with the author. I think one thing to try and do is hunt for cheap outsourcing of these non core items like marketing sales can be done via ffiliate marketing.
alin23 4y ago
We think alike :) I’ve used the same strategy to turn Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi) into a $5k/month business and to have the luxury of not having to sit through an interview or work for someone else in the near future. I like both coding, design and reverse engineering so I do those with passion. But I leave taxes to Paddle and promotion to happy users. I write rarely on my blog [1] and only if I feel I have gathered enough new information that could help other people with their endeavor. I’ve yet to hire people for something, but as the project gets more complex, I feel the need to do that: - some short frontpage animation that could explain the most used app features would be a nice addition but I’m no After Effects expert and I’m not keen on learning that - doing statistics on the monitor data [2] and finding the best sensible defaults for each monitor would improve the user experience, but cleaning up data and having to relearn pandas would take time It’s hard to justify the price of paying someone to do that and I always feel I should do it myself. But in the life of every side project that becomes a business, there comes a day when we have to admit that it’s not healthy to try to do everything. [1] https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog [2] https://db.lunar.fyi https://db.lunar.fyi
- lanecwagner 4y ago
  does paddle make taxes a lot easier than stripe? I've been having issues with VAT taxes
  - danielskogly 4y ago
    I’d be curious to hear what kind of issues you’ve been having, as I’ve quite recently opted for Stripe over Paddle for the SaaS I’m working on (instorier.com). This Twitter thread [0] from some months ago finally tipped me over to Stripe, but considering we haven’t fully launched yet, I’m eager to know more. [0] https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1481579421031092233 https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1481579421031092233
    - kirso 4y ago
      Man I love the idea behind Instorier! Is there a `story` behind it?
Bella-Xiang 4y ago
”If I want to grow faster, I probably need to do more things I don’t like“ - that's so true~
nicbou 4y ago
My side project grew into my only source of income. I still decided to do everything myself. After all, this project teaches people how to do many of those things. The biggest thing I won't do is sell out. I put that on a page and point advertisers to it when they start to annoy me. tl;dr: my readers get the same advice as my best friend, even if it makes your product look bad. Live with it. Here is my list of things I won't do: - Sell out to advertisers - Cover current events (way too much work) - Moderate comments or manage a community - Give interviews or draw attention to myself - Cause harm to my community (with unethical advice) - Give moral advice
unobatbayar 4y ago
> I feel like I have a decent eye for UX Likewise, and it has been a gift and a curse ever since in my experience.
neltnerb 4y ago
For me #1 is "ever ask someone for money that's an investment instead of a sale". It's just like half your attention no matter how small the amount is, I'll self fund it for three years and miss the boat entirely rather than deal with the stress of someone expecting a financial return from my labor.
bspear 4y ago
There's a major difference between things you don't want to do for "growth" and things you don't want to do for "maintenance". Latter is easily outsource-able, former is less so. Because growth is the key to making side project into full-time gig, and nobody will care as much as you
- nicbou 4y ago
  That's a good way to divide things. I had never considered it like that. A dispassionate accountant still does the job fine. Nobody will care about growth like you do. It's also the most interesting part of the job.
finishprobation 4y ago
Yes, I'm an indie developer who is struggling with this as well. I am learning a lot of things outside of programming and it's quite the context switch every day. By doing this, it really can show how dedicated and capable you can really be. Here are some of the things I do day to day - 10 cold calls with director level probation departments. These calls can go straight to voice mail or turn into a 30 minute conversation. - vet through the last 24 hours subreddits related to my industry to see if I can promote my app or help people in need - Verify the drug testing location data is fine - Manage SEO/Google ads analytics to figure out if the website needs adjustments or are there different types of key words that can be used. - Writing a blog post about the data of drug testing locations - Update the app (google policy changed recently) Then at the end of the day wonder how much success or insanity is this going to bring. Webiste: finishprobation.com
abinaya_rl 4y ago
I'm one of the victims of this scenario that the OP is talking about. I'm working on a side project for 3 years, it's a personalized job board for remote job seekers[1]. I'm doing a full-time job as well. I had grown it to 4k$ MRR working day and night and put in a lot of effort. At one point(6 months ago) I lost my energy and lost my focus, interest and everything. Now it's at the lowest point ever 1k$ MRR. I think I'll need to follow OP's advice here. Just do the interesting things and grow slowly. Thanks for this post and it perfectly fit me. [1] - https://remoteleaf.com https://remoteleaf.com
- lloydatkinson 4y ago
  There’s several sites online for (safely) buying startups/sites like that if you ever want. I get a newsletter with them.
  - abinaya_rl 4y ago
    Oh, you mean, selling my startup? Microacquire?
    - lloydatkinson 4y ago
      Yeah just an idea
      - abinaya_rl 4y ago
        got it, I would love to if it's a life changing amount or something like that :)
Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I have a multiplayer browser game I was developing that I didn't even get far enough to start having to worry about accounting, marketing, etc... I stopped because front-end development makes my eyes glaze over. The back-end is complete. You can theoretically play the game using any program that lets you manually send WebSocket messages. The game mechanics are all implemented. But damn I hate writing JavaScript and HTML. I got about halfway done with the front-end before the drudgery got to me and I haven't touched the project in well over a year. Maybe I need more jQuery. I'd been writing the front-end using Vanilla JS. http://vanilla-js.com/ http://vanilla-js.com/

265 points by wagslane 4y ago

Ux design is about doing research with the users, not about graphic design.

Re: Graphic Design and UX - you can get pretty far by using a component library (Material, Semantic, etc) and even buy full site templates for pretty reasonable prices. You can also contract out design to things like 99designs. To add to this list: marketing. I don't want to grow social media accounts or do cold calls/emails to start to get customers.

the_only_law 4y ago
Similar but a bit different. I’ve had some cool ideas for some games that I’m 100% confident I could make a pretty neat backend for, but graphics, sounds, etc. not my forte at all.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  Creative assets are what's holding me back from pursuing a lot of my game ideas too. Someone should make an AI to generate art and sound assets for those of us without the skills. That way I can just do something like spore where I feed it inputs and out pops a bitmap.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    Someone I know mentioned wanting to do something similar to this. I guess the hard part is how to get the model to generate what you want and also generate it in the format you need.
- bemmu 4y ago
  There are really good marketplaces for buying game assets. Especially if you adopt a low poly style, you can get very far with bought meshes. My go-to sites are CGTrader for meshes, SoundSnap for sounds.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I’ll have to look into it. If I ever put any amount of effort into one of these ideas, I don’t think I’d mind paying commission for some stuff either, but at the end of the day I’m just a guy who can write code ok and has some neat game ideas. I don’t have a massive budget for my side projects.
nerdponx 4y ago
Regarding contracting, remember that there is a pretty large population of beginner graphic designers, UX/UI designers, and frontend devs who need portfolio projects, and might be willing to work for free or very low cost.
- Cerium 4y ago
  Before following this advice, please read [1] first. [1] https://www.nospec.com/ https://www.nospec.com/
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    That isn't at all what I was suggesting. I am talking about proper contract work, or pro bono volunteer work.
    - Cerium 4y ago
      Thanks for the clarification, I wanted to put this out there, since I have seen the issue from both sides.
    - benjaminwootton 4y ago
      What is it about design and designers that makes people think they would want to or be willing to work for free for a portfolio? It seems unique to that role, yet good design is rare and valuable as the top end in any field.
      - nerdponx 4y ago
        It's not specific to design. Data science and software engineering are similar.
ufmace 4y ago
I actually haven't had good experience with most of this on the graphic design and UI front. If I'm building, say, a Rails web app, I want my front-end stuff to integrate with Rails reasonably well. Which means ERB or HAML templates with common elements properly extracted out into shared views, maintainable CSS in SASS, that sort of thing. What most of these UI services and contractors seem to actually deliver is something quite different. 99designs output is literally just an image of what they think your website should look like. Actually writing all of the HTML and CSS to make it actually look like that is up to you. It makes me think, why am I paying money for a picture of what my site could look like that requires me to do all of the actual work? Most entry-level contractors seem to want to deliver self-contained HTML and CSS that are usually written with some tool that creates incomprehensible actual code. They have no clue about templating and extracting common elements out. This means that I have to basically rewrite whatever they deliver to actually integrate with the web app. Which again makes me think, why am I paying for this? IMO, if I'm going to pay someone for front-end design work, I want to be able to point them at my Github repo, with a functional site with ugly basic HTML, say basically "make this look pretty", and they open a PR with their work which works with my existing templates to add the appropriate HTML structure and CSS classes and IDs, and CSS, fonts and images all in the right places for the framework I'm using. I'm willing to help and provide advice and guidance, but I don't want to take delivery of something completely unsuited and have to integrate it myself. As a side note, if anyone's looking to get into web design, if you learn enough about coding to do the above and are also great at making websites look good, I expect you'll have boatloads of money thrown at you.
- lolinder 4y ago
  The skills required to design something that looks good and provides a good experience for users are orthogonal to the skills required to build well-factored, responsive HTML and CSS. I've worked with marketing teams that tried to build their own HTML and CSS and ended up getting something that looked great... as long as you viewed it at the exact resolution of their designer's monitor. I had to go in and make it all work on mobile, which was a nightmare because their markup and styles were so badly organized. It took as much work as if they'd just given me PNGs. More recently I received a bunch of designs from a designer who worked in Adobe XD. The designs were great, and what I got from XD was an interactive template and some very rough auto-generated CSS (mostly colors, fonts, and border radii). This was the sweet spot for me: no breaking out the color picker or guessing what letter-spacing they're using, but I could make the code work with my templating engine and make it responsive without having to rewrite bad code that they charged me for. If you can find a designer that is great at both design and code, awesome! Keep them! But if not, chances are the most productive workflow is to let them do what they do best and just plan on doing the rest.
lonk11 4y ago
I used Material for my hobby project [1] and got this feedback: "Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't like the UI. It seems like a demo for a Material design app. I think the site has lots of potential, but without an original, personal style it might put off users. It doesn't have to be complicated, just something recognizable." So a standard component library can get you started quickly, but you might want to tweak it. A few things I changed - made icon buttons smaller (the default sizes are way too big), changed the pills to be white with black border instead of just grey background. [1] - https://linklonk.com https://linklonk.com
- dinkleberg 4y ago
  Check out the mui.com website. The whole doc site is built using their material UI component library, yet it looks nothing like a cookie cutter material design app. That is to say, if you put in the time a material site can definitely look good.

sandworm101 4y ago

>> I always start from someone else’s design. Sure, I end up tweaking it to fit my site, but I search around until I find a version of the component I want online and then steal the design. I take it that your side project has nothing to do with cellphones.

adamnemecek 4y ago

None of these are a big deal. Did you consider that maybe spending a week figuring out design is not a bad idea?

altdataseller 4y ago
Spoken by someone who’s just a designer and never had to balance 10 different things in a startup.
- adamnemecek 4y ago
  I’m a designer?

ourmandave 4y ago

Thought I'd see a "We're hiring!" link at the bottom.

higgins 4y ago

I’ve heard this called “doing uncomfortable work” (by Michael Brody-Waite in Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts) and was the thesis of starting project (https://24HourHomePage.com https://24HourHomePage.com, more in that thesis here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WFZ4b7s4Y https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WFZ4b7s4Y) Maybe its because i haven’t gotten to a place where i hate any one type of work. I recognize that i’m unskilled at it and there is probably some learning in at least trying the problem myself first. Without having much money to invest in contracting out the solution, its sort of a necessity too. I agree with the legal and tax stuff though. Interested in how you approach those grey areas where your skillset and interest align for the problem but might be better to contract out. How do you budget?

candiddevmike 4y ago

I really don't like plugging my side project/astroturfing in comments. It does work, I get a bunch of sign ups, but I feel really icky when I do it.

biellls 4y ago
I think a lot of people are in the same boat and wish there was a nice ethical way to promote projects that worked without pushing them hard on people. I hope there is.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I wonder about ads for this. For example Reddit seems a decent place to advertise to target a group of people with a common interest, in a way that is not obnoxious. Do an hours freelance work for someone else and that’ll pay for a small test!
- influx 4y ago
  I wish there was a thread in the same frequency as the we're hiring/i'm looking to be hired threads.
  - biellls 4y ago
    I didn't think of that, it sounds like a great idea. What's your project by the way?
    - influx 4y ago
      I'm building a SaaS for e-commerce analytics. It's pre-launch right now, so not too much to share :)
cinntaile 4y ago
Why don't you use show hn?
- 4y ago

apitman 4y ago

I know this is in reference to a project that the author hopes to make money from, but many people start open source projects simply to scratch an itch and solve a personal problem. In these cases, I think it's worth asking if you want the project to grow. Sometimes GitHub stars are empty calories. Once something grows beyond a certain point, it can be annoying for users to constantly be asking for new features that you personally will never use. And documentation... Not suggesting open sourcing things is a bad idea, but there's no shame in throwing some code up on GitHub and being clear about what people can expect from you.

jchw 4y ago
I’ve not hit the point of being annoyed on any of my smaller side projects, but despite them being developer focused and relatively niche, they do bring in a bit of overhead from other developers sending PRs and issue reports. That said, while I generally do not mind fielding PRs or even trying to resolve bugs, the actual worst thing for me is having to close a PR because I simply don’t want to merge it. I know it’s the right choice, but it’s not fun.
- oefrha 4y ago
  > having to close a PR because I simply don’t want to merge it. It helps to be upfront about it. For most of the reasonably popular stuff I put up, I clearly say something like “if you have a small change, it’s probably best to talk to me instead of submitting a PR because I’ll just do it faster without the tiresome back-and-forth review dance; if you have a big change or a major feature, definitely run it though me first, and unfortunately I’ll likely say no in most cases” in CONTRIBUTING.md or the developer section of the website. Of course, lots of people don’t read... But at least I feel a lot better closing big PRs I’ll never get to.
- Fritsdehacker 4y ago
  Maybe you shouldn't feel bad about this, you're not always hurting feelings. If I'm using an open source project and I need something changed, I'll usually just make the change and put the new code online, because I think that's how open source is supposed to work. Others can now benefit from my change. I'll also make a PR to the original project. But I don't mind if it's rejected. I made the changes for myself. If you can use the changes, fine. If can't, also fine.

Aulig 4y ago

Yea, I can relate to this article a lot. I'm hiring people for everything that I dislike doing at https://webtoapp.design https://webtoapp.design In my case those are namely accounting/taxes, customer support and other repetitive tasks. I should probably also hire someone to write blog articles - currently I almost exclusively write about how customers can use feature X with webtoapp.design, like documentation. Hopefully at some point I'll be able to hire someone for sales too. The thing I really enjoy is coding and strategizing. I have no problem thinking of growth channels, but actually following through with the execution (which is often just writing emails all day) is what I dislike.

cheschire 4y ago

This feels like a question of motivation. What is driving a person to have a side project, and potentially want to grow it? First, I need to take a step back and talk about my perspective on work units in a holistic sense. The larger the company, the more I feel I can specialize. The smaller the company, the more I'm expected to work outside of my defined box. As a company expands, at some point it breaks up into multiple units. Those newly formed units are typically too small, and people in them are expected to work outside of their defined boxes again. This is a pain point of growth. Eventually those units expand until the pain stops. They sometimes continue their expansion until they must again split. Obvious correlations to cell division and growth abound. A side project is the single cell organism, and it will eventually evolve and grow; or it will achieve equilibrium; or it will die. I feel like I'm an equilibrium-oriented kind of person. I don't want to grow and evolve beyond the resources of my immediate work unit. If my work unit fails to meet my needs though, I move on towards a unit that will better help me achieve my equilibrium. People who enjoy working on specialization might better enjoy overemployment[0] with multiple pre-existing work units rather than turning a hobby into a venture. Alternatively some companies offer work at internal innovation groups, and those efforts sometimes offer rewards beyond the base compensation. I also feel like some people are more like viruses in the Agent Smith sense that they never achieve equilibrium and have an insatiable desire to expand. Unlike the movie, I don't think viruses are inherently bad, it's just another form of life. It's tough to discern boundless ambition from a significant deficiency in workplace satisfaction though, and that can lead people to try to expand a hobby into a side hustle. I think first a person has to identify whether they are motivated by boundless growth or are simply no longer achieving equilibrium at their current workplace. Moving to a new company or division, or even moving to a new career altogether, may be preferable to trying to evolve a hobby into a hustle. 0: https://www.overemployment.org/ https://www.overemployment.org/

cube00 4y ago

> Creating videos might be the best way for Boot.dev to grow, but I don’t want to make videos. Making videos is one thing, but making videos to satisfy the algorithm is another. - Like, comment, subscribe and smash that bell! - Make sure your video is 30+ minutes long with plenty of filler. I am disappointed to see established creators who never engaged in click-bait are (probably under duress) resorting to click bait titles and thumbnails now. Unsubscribed from two so far this week, and once I get down to zero I can quit YouTube.

dymk 4y ago
I apply a strong mental downrank to videos on YouTube that are between the duration of 10:00 to 10:30, knowing that they're only that long to satisfy the Algorithm (and get a midroll ad). They're all stuffed with filler to get them to exactly that duration. There lies a sharp valley of quality. Especially if surrounding "competing" videos are in the 1-2 minute range (often the case with "How do I do <X> in <Y> software?" kinds of tutorial videos).
Beldin 4y ago
> I am disappointed to see creators who don't even really need to, are resorting to click bait titles and thumbnails now. Veritasium has a video on clickbait of itself - basically: it works and is more or less necessary to satisfy The Algorithm(tm). Don't blame your favourite content creators for catering to a wider audience than just you.
- cube00 4y ago
  Fair point. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
- dymk 4y ago
  The Veritasium channel itself is clickbait much of the time, so of course it would defend the practice. I follow plenty of content creators that make good videos without artificially padding their runtimes, some long-form in the 20+ minute range, but also many that do low-minutes videos. Their channels are doing just fine.

_pdp_ 4y ago

The things you don't want to do are often the things where you will grow and learn new things.

nomilk 4y ago

Keep an open mind. I was horrendous at and didn't enjoy design, kept trying and trying but was still utterly horrid. One day I noticed the work of much more talented people was not better than mine, in fact, it was worse, this was perplexing. The constant practice which seemed to have no impact had actually made me better. Basic things: tinkering with bootstrap layouts, taking 2 hours to feebly make a mediocre background image, curving edges on an image, tinkering with margins and padding, removing unessential elements. It all added up. This skill has also helped me in ways I never expected, like being able to put together a nice looking slide deck (~25 slides) in 90 minutes, where previously it would take days.

javajosh 4y ago
Very cool! I like to characterize practice as exercising your degrees-of-freedom in a domain (your "basic things"). This exploration gives you an intuition about what your future choices will be, allowing your current choices to be made with more confidence, and in greater harmony with your later ones, so things go faster and better. It's certainly a human's greatest superpower.
genewitch 4y ago
I like this comment; and i have a similar thing with "indie music" or "jingle creation"; lots of podcasts and such have the listeners submit music and jingles to go with the theme of the show, and while a couple over the years have been really fascinatingly good, 99% of it is not. I produced and wrote several electronic albums over 16 years, to no fame, fortune, or recognition. I changed my workflows and software almost a half dozen times in that time frame; but the thing that did not change was the passion of creating something new that no one had ever done before. Now, when someone says something offhand or funny, i can usually bang out a 10-30 second jingle or music clip in a couple hours using rudimentary software (my go to for extreme speed is OpenMPT - https://openmpt.org/ https://openmpt.org/), and i think the quality and listen-ability, as well as the fidelity of speech/singing is light-years ahead of whatever the common submissions are. Now, I'm generally a cantankerous cuss these days online, so even my best stuff doesn't get a lot of play; but 2 decades of being "in the scene" and trying to get plays kinda washed the desire for fame out of me, so i find myself not caring. If you find yourself looking at other artistic things people have done and the thought "train-wreck" comes to mind - maybe you've learned enough stuff to be able to talk about it legitimately in a critical way?

kfk 4y ago

There are many things I don’t want to do… which is why I prefer to work on things I can sell at high margins. Those high margins help me hire people to do things I am not good at nor I like. But it is also a question of velocity, picking a side project that can generate money in a matter of weeks is better because it frees me up from things I don’t like faster. I worked Corporate 9 years, I understand Finance is not popular here, but eventually it’s all about good margins and predictable cash flows.

pellmellism 4y ago
like?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  he drew the circles :-)
hu3 4y ago
would it be something like B2B SaaS [1]? [1] to those uninitiated: Business to Business, Software as a Service. Basically renting Software.

CookieCrisp 4y ago

One of the books I read before turning a side project into a full time business talked about the importance of finding two good "A"'s - an attorney and an accountant, and gave some tips for how to do so that I no longer really recall. The reason behind it however was that both tasks done well will take up a lot of time, and there is a lot someone that isn't specializing in them could miss. It did take a fair amount of effort finding someone good, but they both paid off very quickly and now we have someone we can trust in both roles

genewitch 4y ago
I needed two different sorts of attorneys about 5 years ago, so i asked my friends who have their law degrees and passed the bar how i go about finding lawyers for these two specific things. I was told unanimously to use the state bar association. I went to the state bar site(s) and did whatever was required to get a list/callbacks/whatever, and immediately started receiving spam calls and emails from "Law Services" companies where they wanted me to pre-load some sort of debit card, which would then be debited any time i had need for billable hours from "law services". It felt really strange and scammy, and i relayed this to my friends who told me to try that, and nothing came of it. I didn't even find the lawyer(s) i required, to mine own detriment of six figures of loss.

hrdwdmrbl 4y ago

For me it's just the marketing and sales. I hate it so much. But to succeed it's essential. And I'm so lost and I don't know what to do. I feel helpless

marssaxman 4y ago
You could just open-source your code and give the program away. Then you get all the satisfaction of developing it and sharing it with the world, without having to waste time on all that obnoxious business-development stuff.
reubenswartz 4y ago
Amen. Some mindset shifts I found helpful: - Get excited about helping people solve the problem, not just your product. - "Teach" people how to solve the problem, instead of "marketing" your product. - "Help" someone solve the problem, instead of "selling" them your product.

polalavik 4y ago

I run a local aggregator website for things to eat, drink, and do in Los Angeles. I’m not a designer, so I opted for the Craigslist approach, but a little more polished. I went super minimal with it and it seems people are responding well to the design. I didn’t use a style framework under the philosophy that everything on the web looks the same. I wanted the website to kinda shock people with how, uhh, handmade it looked. Like there was a real person behind it because there is. I guess this is all to say you don’t always have to worry about design, UX, SEO, etc. Sometimes you want companies to look polished and professional, but sometimes you just want them to solve the problem for you as fast and efficient as possible. Tangentially - the project got me excited about building “quiet” websites - mostly text based, no database, no comment section with people to moderate. Just unique information in a simple, accessible format. I don’t want people to be checking my website every day looking for emotionally charged SEO packed news to react to. I want people to check out my site and then go into the real world and have fun with the information they found.

canyon289 4y ago
Can you share the website? This sounds very interesting to me as someone from LA, especially as most other sites are ad filled and annoying
- polalavik 4y ago
  sure! its veryla.io - would love to hear your feedback
  - thestepafter 4y ago
    Very well done! This was a breath of fresh air compared to most sites these days. How often do the links change and how much time do you typically spend each week curating?
    - polalavik 4y ago
      Thanks! I typically do a complete refresh on Sunday night / Monday morning and will pepper in a couple links throughout the week (not always though). I have a bunch of stuff I’ve saved through the years so that helps, but sometimes curating can take 4-8 hours a week.

snickmy 4y ago

Do you mind if I ask what's your monthly recurring revenue

ryoshu 4y ago

Professional designers I work with, on some of the top brands in world, always have references on what they want to copy or steal. Don't feel bad about it.

dushan01 4y ago

"...marketing, sales, taxes, content creation". Other than taxes, I enjoy everything else on this list more than programming. Am I a bad programmer :D Joking aside, excellent article. Once I've read the rest of it, I realized I could not agree more with everything you've said.

throwawayboise 4y ago
I've always done my own taxes, by hand. I like the annual reminder of the insanity of the process, in a masochistic sort of way. But a voice is slowly getting louder, telling me to just turn this over to someone who likes doing it enough to be doing it for a living.

joshwcomeau 4y ago

Yeah, this stuff is tricky! On the one hand, successful businesses require a whole set of skills, and so if you're going to go the solo indie hacker route, you need to wear lots of hats, and you probably won't like some of them. On the other hand, if you spend too much time doing stuff you hate, you'll burn out, which can sabotage the business even more quickly than skipping the tasks you don't like. I've approached this problem by trying to weave the things I like into the things I don't. I enjoy coding more than I enjoy writing blog posts, so why not create interactive blog posts? I wind up doing a fair amount of coding to create the dynamic widgets. Here's an example blog post, so you can see what I mean: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/css-transitions/ https://www.joshwcomeau.com/animation/css-transitions/ I also try and stay focused on the outcome. I don't really enjoy filming video lessons, but I enjoy the feeling that comes from teaching someone a valuable skill. So I try to keep that in my mind when I'm doing the filming/writing.

la6472 4y ago

I agree with the author. I think one thing to try and do is hunt for cheap outsourcing of these non core items like marketing sales can be done via ffiliate marketing.

alin23 4y ago

We think alike :) I’ve used the same strategy to turn Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi) into a $5k/month business and to have the luxury of not having to sit through an interview or work for someone else in the near future. I like both coding, design and reverse engineering so I do those with passion. But I leave taxes to Paddle and promotion to happy users. I write rarely on my blog [1] and only if I feel I have gathered enough new information that could help other people with their endeavor. I’ve yet to hire people for something, but as the project gets more complex, I feel the need to do that: - some short frontpage animation that could explain the most used app features would be a nice addition but I’m no After Effects expert and I’m not keen on learning that - doing statistics on the monitor data [2] and finding the best sensible defaults for each monitor would improve the user experience, but cleaning up data and having to relearn pandas would take time It’s hard to justify the price of paying someone to do that and I always feel I should do it myself. But in the life of every side project that becomes a business, there comes a day when we have to admit that it’s not healthy to try to do everything. [1] https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog [2] https://db.lunar.fyi https://db.lunar.fyi

lanecwagner 4y ago
does paddle make taxes a lot easier than stripe? I've been having issues with VAT taxes
- danielskogly 4y ago
  I’d be curious to hear what kind of issues you’ve been having, as I’ve quite recently opted for Stripe over Paddle for the SaaS I’m working on (instorier.com). This Twitter thread [0] from some months ago finally tipped me over to Stripe, but considering we haven’t fully launched yet, I’m eager to know more. [0] https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1481579421031092233 https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1481579421031092233
  - kirso 4y ago
    Man I love the idea behind Instorier! Is there a `story` behind it?

Bella-Xiang 4y ago

”If I want to grow faster, I probably need to do more things I don’t like“ - that's so true~

nicbou 4y ago

My side project grew into my only source of income. I still decided to do everything myself. After all, this project teaches people how to do many of those things. The biggest thing I won't do is sell out. I put that on a page and point advertisers to it when they start to annoy me. tl;dr: my readers get the same advice as my best friend, even if it makes your product look bad. Live with it. Here is my list of things I won't do: - Sell out to advertisers - Cover current events (way too much work) - Moderate comments or manage a community - Give interviews or draw attention to myself - Cause harm to my community (with unethical advice) - Give moral advice

unobatbayar 4y ago

> I feel like I have a decent eye for UX Likewise, and it has been a gift and a curse ever since in my experience.

neltnerb 4y ago

For me #1 is "ever ask someone for money that's an investment instead of a sale". It's just like half your attention no matter how small the amount is, I'll self fund it for three years and miss the boat entirely rather than deal with the stress of someone expecting a financial return from my labor.

bspear 4y ago

There's a major difference between things you don't want to do for "growth" and things you don't want to do for "maintenance". Latter is easily outsource-able, former is less so. Because growth is the key to making side project into full-time gig, and nobody will care as much as you

nicbou 4y ago
That's a good way to divide things. I had never considered it like that. A dispassionate accountant still does the job fine. Nobody will care about growth like you do. It's also the most interesting part of the job.

finishprobation 4y ago

Yes, I'm an indie developer who is struggling with this as well. I am learning a lot of things outside of programming and it's quite the context switch every day. By doing this, it really can show how dedicated and capable you can really be. Here are some of the things I do day to day - 10 cold calls with director level probation departments. These calls can go straight to voice mail or turn into a 30 minute conversation. - vet through the last 24 hours subreddits related to my industry to see if I can promote my app or help people in need - Verify the drug testing location data is fine - Manage SEO/Google ads analytics to figure out if the website needs adjustments or are there different types of key words that can be used. - Writing a blog post about the data of drug testing locations - Update the app (google policy changed recently) Then at the end of the day wonder how much success or insanity is this going to bring. Webiste: finishprobation.com

abinaya_rl 4y ago

I'm one of the victims of this scenario that the OP is talking about. I'm working on a side project for 3 years, it's a personalized job board for remote job seekers[1]. I'm doing a full-time job as well. I had grown it to 4k$ MRR working day and night and put in a lot of effort. At one point(6 months ago) I lost my energy and lost my focus, interest and everything. Now it's at the lowest point ever 1k$ MRR. I think I'll need to follow OP's advice here. Just do the interesting things and grow slowly. Thanks for this post and it perfectly fit me. [1] - https://remoteleaf.com https://remoteleaf.com

lloydatkinson 4y ago
There’s several sites online for (safely) buying startups/sites like that if you ever want. I get a newsletter with them.
- abinaya_rl 4y ago
  Oh, you mean, selling my startup? Microacquire?
  - lloydatkinson 4y ago
    Yeah just an idea
    - abinaya_rl 4y ago
      got it, I would love to if it's a life changing amount or something like that :)

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago

I have a multiplayer browser game I was developing that I didn't even get far enough to start having to worry about accounting, marketing, etc... I stopped because front-end development makes my eyes glaze over. The back-end is complete. You can theoretically play the game using any program that lets you manually send WebSocket messages. The game mechanics are all implemented. But damn I hate writing JavaScript and HTML. I got about halfway done with the front-end before the drudgery got to me and I haven't touched the project in well over a year. Maybe I need more jQuery. I'd been writing the front-end using Vanilla JS. http://vanilla-js.com/ http://vanilla-js.com/