from Hacker News

Ash HN: Why it's so hard to get money from side-project?

by uvu on 11/30/18, 3:44 PM with 9 comments

• by Bucephalus355 on 11/30/18, 4:24 PM

  This is a larger problem with the world.

  So many people have been promised dreams of modest wealth or more via side hustling.

  But those dreams are an illusion. Passive income, for most of the population, is an illusion.

  I don’t want to knock anyone for trying side projects. You might even get rich, but the odds are low (so make sure you enjoy it somewhat in case it doesn’t pan out).

  Money for most people in their lives will come from steady, well-paying, full-time work.

• by ocdtrekkie on 11/30/18, 3:50 PM

  Is your sole business plan "collect ad revenue from Google"? Unless you have a particularly good way to bring a lot of traffic to your site, ad revenue is not going to do much for you.

  Consider that most people here are not looking for dev jobs in Myanmar. How do you plan to get people that are to that site? And is the number of people looking for dev jobs in Myanmar enough to bring in a bunch of ad revenue? (Hint: Answer is no.) Also, especially for a dev site: We're running ad blockers or tracking blockers at the very minimum. I don't see any ads on your site.

  With a job site, for example, you'd likely bring in more trying to cash in on headhunting bonuses. Maybe let anyone post a dev job, but have a paid dev job offerings which are placed more prominently and let the company include more content/photos/whatever.

  Note that I had no idea what "myanpx" was before I opened the URL. Even after opening the URL, I didn't know where the name came from, until I realized your other site was "myanmar dev jobs", and so it was probably meant to be "myan pics", whereas I initially read it as "my anpx" out of the URL.

• by aregsarkissian on 11/30/18, 3:54 PM

  You need a very specific set of users that you can explicitly identify and know how to reach online that have a specific problem that your side project helps solve. Can you identify such a user? If not then that is your first job to find one. If yes then your job is to go talk with that user and find out if they are willing to pay and if not, how you can you tweak your project so that they will pay. Rinse and repeat

• by chillacy on 11/30/18, 4:11 PM

  I made a similar mistake early on: I underestimated the business side of things. It turns out business majors did actually learn important stuff in their classes—market analysis, how to validate products, how to price and sell, which are much more important to making products which make money than engineering.

• by keeplearn on 11/30/18, 3:51 PM

  Your side projects need unique features and design. It's not that easy to get customers. But, when you got customer or community. You can surely live by yourself.