Ask HN: How to come up with monetizable side project ideas?

[sunilkumarc]

I love building small tools which solve problems I myself face in my day to day life. Having been worked in different companies over the last 4 years, I feel I've acquired enough knowledge to develop big applications(big enough to make money) on my own.

I was wondering, how one can come up with side project ideas which can generate few hundred dollars per month on the side. Any inputs, resources and wisdom are appreciated!

[a13n]

It's really easy to make a few hundred dollars a month if you're good at product and can do basic marketing.

1. Find a popular SaaS product. Like Intercom, Algolia, Segment. Make sure it doesn't have a free plan. This guarantees there's a market for the tool. Check out GetLatka for ideas. https://getlatka.com

2. Build your own take on the product. Find the minimum set of features that make it valuable. 10% of the work for 80% of the value.

3. Sell it at a 50-90% discount. There will be price sensitive customers that want the popular product, but don't want to or can't afford it.

4. Target bottom of funnel marketing channels: Targeted quora questions. Paid/organic search queries. Set up retargeting ads on Facebook. Product hunt launch it. That should get you a steady stream of customers.

I don't think this is a great way to build a million dollar business, but is a very easy way to make a few hundred. Shoot me an email if I can be helpful.

[milanmot]

I launched a SaaS startup called "SalezTalk" with the same exact strategy. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes that reaching to a customer is an easy thing.

One of the most difficult thing in a SaaS is reaching to a customer in a cost-effective manner. It's common nowadays to have a CAC of $100+. So paid acquisition channels would be impossible if your prices are low.

If you already have a community or a user-base, then probably you can make a few hundred dollars out of it. But if you are starting from scratch, I would rather suggest going for a big idea instead of a smaller one because your marketing efforts in both the case would be almost same.

[handymarks]

What's your email I'd ? :) Thanks !

[mandeepj]

> Make sure it doesn't have a free plan

Nothing wrong with being free. It can get you popularity like dropbox, robinhood etc

[allenleee]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the awesome sharing. Is there anyway I can have your email? Thank you.- Allen.

[superasn]

Having created a few money making side projects here is some advice:

1. In my experience B2B ideas are best for quick monetization compared to B2C.

2. Think of roadblocks you face creating your own site. Pretty sure somebody else will face them too (many great products were created out of this, readme.io, statuspage, etc)

3. Don't go all in. I never spend more than 2 weeks before submitting my project on PH, HN, mailing my list. Don't ever make the mistake of working on something for 2 years alone not telling anyone about it.

4. Don't reinvent the wheel. Ie don't waste time on things like your login page (HNs login page is a great example on how much it matters), hiring designers (a template from HTML5rocks or wrapbootstrap is just as good). A lot of these things (support, auth, chat, etc) are offered as Saas services and can be integrated directly to save you weeks in launch.

5. Marketing is where you want to spend most of your time since yoh ask about making money. Also don't be afraid of pricing. Read patio11 black art of saas pricing for an excellent guide. Learn content marketing, SEO, etc.

Good luck!

[swingline-747]

Clarification: Don't reinvent the wheel means Don't exactly copy another product. It's damn important to reinvent defensible products that either, and hopefully do all of:

a) solve a slightly different problem

b) target different users

c) solve the problem in a 10x better, compelling way

Uniqueness will be added to the collective, so don't bother creating categories because that requires extra effort building validation from below zero and any new products coming along can execute much easier with the lessons and improvements of the "settlers."

[swalberg]

Focus less on your own problems and pay attention to the problems that other people have. Especially problems where they've come up with really hacky workarounds -- think Excel spreadsheets, weird approval/email chains, manual import/exporting from one system to another, etc. All good signs that there's something to be improved, and that it's enough of a problem to put effort into.

Couple of other thoughts -- your problems are likely not to be technical. They're going to be obtaining domain knowledge, marketing, and supporting your product.

I'll second the recommendation on "Start Small, Stay Small". Also Eric Reis' "Lean Startup" and 37 Signals "Getting Real". The latter two were really helpful in getting my most successful project out the door and making money.

[evan_]

A friend of mine shared his strategy with me: find some big uninteresting data set from the government or whatever, figure out some way to make it interesting for regular people, and build a nice interface to it.

For instance, turning old real estate and immigration records into an ancestry site.

Monetizing it is still an issue...

[megaman8]

There's a lot of stuff in this space that hasn't been done yet, but that's for a very good reason. First of all, it doesn't pass the toothbrush test: it's the type of thing that's super valuable the first time you visit but you don't really need to come back to it over and over.

Second big problem: SEO. Search engines like long form written content, they don't know how to value tools that slice and dice data: they simply don't see any value in it and you'll never get SEO from it.

[newman8r]

That's similar to Matthew Lesko's strategy (AKA question mark guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Lesko)

Many of his books consisted of freely available government publications.

[akudha]

This reminds me of city-data.com

It is an ugly looking site, the forums are full of nasty comments, but it is still useful at some level I guess. They claim to get millions of page views. Not sure how much money they make, but they have been around for more than a decade

[Odenwaelder]

https://www.northdata.de/ Did something like that: Crawl public registries for companies, parse changes to them and build a graph out of it. Very cool!

[croo]

I recommend the book "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling about this topic. It pokes every aspects of starting side projects including how to find something worthwhile to create. It really changed my perspective of how to find out if a side project could work or not.

[nathan_f77]

Thanks for that recommendation, it sounds great! I just ordered it on Amazon, and also signed up for the MicroConf [1] mailing list.

[1] https://www.microconf.com

[adamqureshi]

TIME. Time is the MOST precious commodity. Help users SAVE TIME. Save time finding something of value to the USER. You can't "presume" how much to charge. You have to "TEST" pricing then keep jacking it up until your customers don't pay. How can you pay for something what does not offer value. Stay small. Stay NICHE. Grab a slice from a BIG market. Forget millions. slap-yo-self with fury with delusions of becoming a millionaire, and make a goal of making enough to avoid being trapped in a 9-5 lifer situation. It take a LOT of luck + skill + market segment expertise. Like you have to KNOW the market you are going to be competing in. Assisted living , senior care , retirement calculator is VERY hot now. You'll be at it after your day gig 6pm-2am testing / building / iterating. Good LUCKY. launch a free beta version learn what customers value and how much they will pay ( ask them) THEN when you have enough people crack addict addicted to your service / app start charging. Be merciless. But offer excellent customer service. Always be honest.

[cstanton]

As a marketer, I see countless great projects that were abandoned. What seems like a promising project goes dry when, presumably, the dev can’t market it.

Marketing and sales are so important; without it, your project risks a short life.

I would look at what you already have and figure out why you aren’t making money on it, versus building something brand new.

[goatherders]

100000% agree. Chances are the OP already has a number of finished things that he/she can sell. Sales and marketing sales and marketing sales and marketing.

I have 3 side businesses that make between a few hundred and a few thousand per month. All 3 sat idle for months after completion as I groused about no revenue. When i stopped building the next thing long enough to sell the finished things it really wasnt a problem.

[x0x0]

I'm hardly the first person to have this, well, insight is generous, but it remains true:

People wildly overestimate technical risk and wildly underestimate gtm risk.

[pmorici]

Would be interesting if there was a thing to match people with marketing skills with people who have side projects that need better marketing on a cut of the revenue generated basis.

I have this problem myself. I've got a product that sells itself within its target market but the market is kind of niche so I have no idea how to get it in front of that audience. I tried Ad words but it seemed like a waste of money and didn't move the needle.

[citrablue]

A list of these would be hugely useful to a large portion of the HN community, and I bet you'd get to use some of those projects gratis (or at least see them brought to market).

[CyberDildonics]

I someone knew why they weren't making money off of it, they would already know what to do.

[chris_hawk]

>As a marketer, I see countless great projects that were abandoned.

Where do you see these?

[zylepe]

I was in the same boat after 4 years of working and built a simple side project that solves a clear problem and now has several hundred thousand MAU (https://onthegomap.com) and costs a few hundred dollars a month to run.

My question is on logistics: Adsense brings in a bit less than expenses. Many users have expressed interest in supporting the project financially. Any recommendations on services to let people do that? One person recommended Patreon but that seems more geared towards artists.

[karaokeyoga]

Hi, I run a small site and have recently made a simple change that has increased revenue significantly. I couldn't find your contact info in your profile. My email is [email protected] … get in touch? FYI my site is a simple tool for learning the various Japanese alphabets. It has benefitted from being online for a long time (thus, good SEO) but I have struggled with monetization until recently. Still not a huge money maker but I'm much happier after this change. Email me!

[kika]

I hate you :-) Opened your app and stuck there for a good half an hour, mapping my walking routes around the neighborhood :-) I want my half an hour back!!11

[citrablue]

Why not make it a traditional SAAS application that charges $10/month?

[LittlePeter]

More than 15 way-points: $$$

Want to save the map: $$$

Sync to GPS-nav device: $$$

Show places to eat with a rating: $$$

[victor_ronin]

I wouldn't be suggesting ideas and approaches. I would instead concentrate on "few hundred dollars per month". I think you are setting the bar too low if you are in US. Let say this side project will generate $200/month and you are spending 15 hours a month on it. It means that your hourly rate will be $13 (which is way-way below software engineer hourly wage). If the goal is do something useful, then work on opensource (for free). If the goal is to get some additional income, then you need to find an idea which can grow more than couple hundred bucks a month.

[yen223]

1. Search through the highest-selling 100 apps in your favourite app store

2. Looks for apps which are poorly-rated (< 4 stars). These are apps which serves an actual need, but whose execution is lacking.

3. Build polished versions of those apps.

[notdang]

Found one: Uber

[mandeepj]

pasting a link here to save everyone else few mins - https://www.apple.com/itunes/charts/top-grossing-apps/

[mandeepj]

Applications repeat themselves - apps like chat, productivity suites (word, excel), photos - got moved from desktop to web and later to smartphones. If you had developed a first chat app on iphone back in 2009 then imagine the leverage. A new platform is in the making - AR\VR, so keep an eye.

[arithma]

One thing I will try doing soon is to look for job postings of companies, and then look what those companies are looking for, and what domain they're in. The theory is: maybe I can get product ideas 1) as spin-offs from their general mission, or 2) maybe I'd be able to replace their job posting with a product.

[swalsh]

When I first started consulting, I had an idea of specializing in automating business processes. It was something I had done before, and I really enjoyed it. However I ran into the problem of those that understood the potential had already employed a few full time devs, and those that didn't, also did not understand the potential. I reasoned that people who needed automation were hiring tons of people. So I searched job ads that looked close to what I thought an ideal customer might be as a way to generate leads.

It turned out to be a fairly low quality way to find leads. Random cold calling would have probably netted me the same conversion rate.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

I used to do a variation of this by looking at project requests posted on RentACoder or other outsourcing sites and considering if there was a product idea there.

[jppope]

1) Go and interact with people/companies in "unsexy" industries. The stuff cool silicon valley companies don't want to touch (shipping, waste removal, small manufacturing, etc). They have shit ton's of small problems that they would gratefully hand over spare change for the problem to go away.

2) Find Entrepreneurs that have had a couple of hits, and don't have the time or resources for small things. They'll more than likely just give you the idea.

3) Pick up freelance gigs and get an agreement that give you rights to the underlying code. (I.E. the unique combination of elements belongs to the client.) If you do enough of this you will start to find efficiencies. You will start finding ideas all over the place when you see how other people work.

4) Read a lot. But about niche things.

5) Read blog articles by Venture Capitalists/ Angels. don't work for them... but built the stuff that they want built.

Also... Please build a themeforest for Bulma. I haven't had time to do it and I hate working in Bootstrap.

[danieltillett]

Number 2 is very true. Make sure you choose people who have actually successfully built something not just a serial wantraprenuer. They can tell the difference between an idea that sounds good in theory and one that will work in the real world.

[BLanen]

Concerning nr.1:

Maybe find areas where people use excel sheets/ or word/pdf forms that they email around to each other. Always seemed like an idea to me.

Disclaimer: just a wantrepreneur.

[dahx4Eev]

Are you looking for landing pages, corporate sites or web app templates built with Bulma?

[aldoushuxley001]

I'll second that Bulma wish, I'd buy templates off that.

[vinayms]

At the risk of being grayed out to invisibility, I am going to say this.

What you are asking is similar to "I think I have learnt playing the keyboard well enough as an assistant in an orchestra, now how to create great music for ads or whatever to make some pocket money?".

This is a matter of creativity. The situation you describe is usually the other way around - people have ideas first and then learn whatever is necessary in order to realize their creativity, they don't start with a tool set and then look for ways to apply it. That is done by consultants. So may be you must become one?

Creativity can't be taught. No amount of tips is going to substitute for innate creativity, of any degree, because all tips are effective only when you have an idea to work with, which is the product of creativity. If you don't have it, in this case identifying a problem and imagining a suitable solution, just do what all/most successful companies do - copy, but add a tiny variation to claim that its different and your own.

All that said, my tip would be to keep eyes and mind open, and just build whatever you feel is right and release it. Do consider feedback but don't get discouraged by criticism. There are ample examples of how the most derided product ideas have ended up making quite a profit, not just in software, although luck had a major hand in their success.

[seventhtiger]

Ideas do not only come from creativity. Creativity is a shortcut but ideas can be mechanically generated. You can analyze a niche market and identify gaps, statistically, and address the ones which will return value.

He doesn't need tips. He needs a process to find a market data set and analyze it for profit opportunities. The amount of untouched data in the world tells me that it's really a matter of time, hardwork, and intelligence, rather than creativity.

[wusatiuk]

I have already built several sideproject over the past 15 years. For me the hardest part as a marketer is to find a developer, mostly freelancers, who are willing to "dive into" the idea and work with the same passion as i do on the project, even if they are usually getting paid by hour.

The biggest issue for me was finding a suitable developer who is willing to grow the one ore another project together with me. So if any of you guys is interested in a marketing partner and willing to invest his time into a project and split the revenue, i would be happy to get in tough with you.

Now let´s come you back to your question - how to come up with an idea? I will discribe you my way:

note down every "problem" somebody is telling you. No matter if it means "find the cheapest flight price", "would be cool if tool X could do Z" or if somebody tells you a terrible workflow within his company. In addition to that, we are all surfing the web all day long, so simply also note down things you like somewhere, and make screenshots / screencasts, if something is really great.

when you do this some days / week, you will generate hundreds of cool ideas within a very short period of time. but the idea itself is worth nothing at all. the idea itself is just an idea.

[AlexITC]

Sent you an email.

[DoreenMichele]

Start a sandbox of some sort, some kind of (digital) file to collect things in.

Collect stories and examples of successful side projects that resonate with you. (You can start by searching HN. This gets talked about a fair amount here.)

Also, collect your ideas and start fleshing them out.

Also, collect information on how small side projects get monetized.

[arthev]

Maybe this is of interest: https://jamesaltucher.com/2014/05/the-ultimate-guide-for-bec...

[dabockster]

Just start building free stuff until something sticks. Then figure out how you can make money from it or something similar.

[einarvollset]

Honestly, if you have a full time job (which it sounds like), i’d consider buying a product. At that kind of revenue prices are extremely reasonable - the only challenging is binary: is this worth $0 or something else.

[haihaibye]

Companies use spreadsheets to fix gaps in their IT processes.

Find these big, ugly, shared spreadsheets and turn them into webapps.