I started my professional life ~25y ago with a side project that by 2022 led to roughly 50 more side projects — The vast majority failed, some turned into 200 employee businesses, some others got acquired. In essence, I make a living out of side projects. Side projects are life.
Your career is what I aspired to when I started in this industry over a decade ago. But what ended up happening was that I (a) worked full-time while dabbling on nights and weekends, (b) spent several years trying to decide which project I wanted to really pursue in earnest, and then (c) after picking the project, obsessing over it so much that I never felt it was ready to release. So it's...not going well so far lol.
Can you recall any specific thing you did that brought you success?
I deeply appreciate this perspective (and the similar perspective in this HN submission). Thanks for sharing -- it feels so permissive for me to hear these kinds of perspectives and just get to work on side stuff.
I feel like I often hang up on if something should be done or if it is something that will be "successful". So it's cool to hear stories where the goal isn't the financial success of X project -- the goal is the journey and it's a bonus if it's financially beneficial.
Thanks again, know that it helped me to read this comment!
How do you decide whether a side project/idea is worth pursuing? You mentioned in another comment that you don’t “do the MVP stuff” and go full blown from the beginning. That seems like a big time sink without a rigorous way of validating whether users want what you’re building.
That was actually a pleasant read. I especially like the conclusion to which I can relate.
> If you're stuck for ideas, I recommend just building something; anything; even if it's terrible, and I guarantee a better idea will pop into your brain shortly after.
I have been working on a long project for a few years now and it will not be finished before another few years and I envy the speed at which the author gets feedback after he launches his products.
Dan Harmon (Community, Rick and Morty, etc) has some advice on this:
> Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft.
That conclusion is really applicable to just about everything. Want to start woodworking? Start building something. Want to become a runner? Start running. Want to be a musician? Start making some songs.
A lot of the initial tries will be terrible but it only gets better from there.
I completely agree with this, I almost have too many ideas and find combining them and building “something” usually results in filtering out the bad ones and brining the better ones to the forefront. Sometimes you just find that something “new” and better comes out of the process of trying to build “anything”.
I also do the same as the author, but I only build websites with a clear monetization model. Every project I've done after my first successful one as been in an adjacent audience.
Doing roughly $700k revenue yearly right now over the 2 main projects. Hopefully with a 3rd coming this summer.
As someone who wants to be a software developer one day, I took notes from the 'How to hire actually good engineers' post. Honestly, I lack code and I'm gonna fix that.
I really like this basic list of all your projects and links to them. You've got quite the repertoire. It's inspired me to do something similar, thanks for sharing.
As someone who perpetually overscopes side projects and ends up biting off more than I can reasonably chew given my free time, I really love this idea. What happens with me is I start a new project, then add a new feature here and there (because coding is fun) and end up never reaching anything close to "done" then getting into analysis paralysis of what to do next because there is so much. Ultimately it gets abandoned and forgotten and put on the graveyard of all the other side projects - not that this is horrible, I do them for fun and not profit, but it would be nice to launch a few.
If OP is actually the author, a question - what was your approach in keeping the projects tightly scoped and not introducing feature creep? Deadlines or time-boxing? Pre-emptive deciding on what you will and won't do? Lowering your standards for "good enough"? Just plain old discipline? Something else?
Building for fun vs building for profit are very different and it's important to set your intention for a project, even though the line often gets blurred.
When you are building for fun, it is for yourself. When you are building for profit, it is for other people. When you are building for fun, you get to decide what to work on and when to stop - usually when it is no longer fun. When you are building for profit, other people decide what you work on and when you are done - usually when no new features are requested, you have no competition, and you have absolutely saturated your market. This rarely ever happens so you always have something propelling you.
The biggest failure most engineers encounter is they build things nobody asked for. They build products without customers lined up, for markets that do not currently exist, with only feedback from themselves. This is because they built the product for fun thinking they were building it for profit.
The line between the two is very easy to blur - especially when reading OP's blog where he genuinely sounds like he had fun building his projects, but I guarantee there was also a lot of very unfun background work done in the name of profit.
> Ultimately it gets abandoned and forgotten and put on the graveyard of all the other side projects
Could be worse. I used to have this problem all the time, and at some point managed to fix it. Now I've spent 3 years on a side project (which I originally thought should take a couple of months, and considering its lack of complexity really only should have taken at most a year), and even though I'm fully aware its an "unworkable" idea, I can't stop until its done.
I've read tiny projects in the past though and really like it, I really want to try a similar thing at some point...just as soon as this current project is done ;)
This idea comes up in painting. The rule of thumb is that it's done when there's nothing left to add; when adding the next thing does not provide much more value value than it costs in terms complexity.
With coding, it seems like it's much more difficult question to answer.
One thing I would have loved to read about is more about how they did market validation for these ideas. For a micro-bet strategy knowing which one (outside of really interesting projects that would trend on HN), it feels like market validation chops would be crucial.
The author seems to be batting an insanely high average for just building things and having them actually get some traction, and be exit-able.
> When I started this mission, I had a big list of project ideas that I'd built up in my phone. Maybe you have one of those lists too.
> Two years later, I've realised a lot of these initial ideas were pretty terrible.
> It's a paradox, but I've found that my best ideas now come from building other ideas.
Funnily enough, I went the other way and started sharing my large list of ideas with others (I send 3 non-terrible ones to subscribers every week[0]). Of course, running a mailing list and sharing the ideas was one of the ideas...
At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing. Knowing you should take the month to build before you do, but reading the post it feels like maybe bounding initial development time sometimes can work in lieu of validating the market.
[EDIT] - please see previous discussion about the mailing list as well![1] -- it's released every sunday night.
[EDIT2] - is anyone having trouble sending email to the author? I'm using protonmail and wanted to get in touch but I can't -- email looks to be no bueno for proton mail. I guess I'll either try thunderbird or twitter.
[EDIT3] - Looks like proton mail does not like emoji email addresses currently... Thunderbird happily sent.
[EDIT4] - Nope, nvm I'm getting a mail lookup error (hn strips the emoji)...
> Delivery to tinyprojects@.gg failed with error: MX lookup error
>At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing.
Market validation - especially for online products and services - is indeed incredibly important, but not many people like to write about it because it is actually very drab and a tiny bit audacious.
His market validation - you are seeing it. It is a submission to Hacker News.
Ok ok, that is a given, but the author alludes to other various ways he gets feedback and validation for his products. He also talks about how well his products were received on Product Hunt and you can also follow him on Twitter.
My final advice for seeing how online services validate their ideas - run the product's domain through a backlink checker. It lets you see what other websites link to their product and what avenues they pursued for outreach. Each of those submissions exposes the product to potential customers and gives valuable feedback to the creator.
Does anyone let the tax implications of launching (several) tiny projects prevent them from even starting?
I know LLCs allow for pass-through taxation and you don't have to file as a business, but I get frozen by the idea that generating a few hundred dollars in revenue from some silly side project means I have to spend hours/days of my time the next Spring figuring out how to properly pay taxes on it.
A past manager once gave me great advice for situations like these when I was thinking about applying to grad school worrying about my then-job if I got in: "deal with this problem if you get in." The chances of you making a few hundred dollars in revenue by next Spring are statistically very low. And if you are persistent and talented and lucky enough to generate hundreds of dollars in revenue, you're certainly capable of paying taxes on your earnings.
The fact that you're asking this question means you're interested in launching things. If so, the cliched, true advice is: launch.
If you want practical advice: I run a one-person LLC in the US. Taxes on a few hundred dollars are nothing to worry about.
For inevitable naysayers: my manager's advice doesn't mean you shouldn't ever plan or prepare. Just that when your chances of success are very low, don't worry too much about the repercussions of success. I applied to grad school, and didn't get in. My career continued on just fine.
(assuming you're in the US) if you've never had a business before, a couple hundred dollars of extra income is not material to your taxes and I wouldn't worry about it at all.
Once you get to the scale of a few thousand dollars a year, you can file what's called a Form 1040 Schedule C which allows you to declare your business income, claim expenses and other deductions, and include it in your taxable income. For that scale it's an extra 10 minutes with your tax software or even by hand, as long as you keep good records, and you're done.
The point at which an LLC or other more formal business structure makes sense is fuzzy and can have different ranges depending on the business, but typically you probably don't need or want to invoke the expense of a CPA until you're making more than six figures (or if you've taken outside investment, obv).
Thats a dumb reason to get frozen. Just in case you needed that perspective.
All your costs are tax deductions, whether you incorporate or not. The incorporation cost is negligible and you can ignore everything about a local/foreign llc registration simply because the consequences are improbable and inconsequential, just make the llc in the best states. If your employer is withholding any taxes, you’ll get so much more of it back because you have so many deductions now.
If you make any revenue its easy to count.
Your standing in society is based on gross revenue, your tax footprint is a fraction of net revenues. Its low key perfect. Net operating losses are the greatest of all time.
In addition, You get massively disproportionate security and anonymity by operating under entities you created. And you can prove product market fit in private and then inherit all the credit for it when it works.
You can launch multiple tiny projects under a single LLC, then just pay taxes on the total income from all of them for the year - you wouldn't have to do any separate filing
Everyone that is saying just "put the earnings on Schedule C or Schedule 1 of your tax form" is overlooking the part about your side project getting you sued and you having much more to worry about than just taxes.
The LLC (and other entity types) increases the deterrent of this ever affecting you.
The LLC specifically has some theoretical weaknesses, but the reason it is a deterrent is because it deters people from spending more money to find out about those weakenesses, and it also increases the odds that people won't be able to know where you are or serve you properly. The more expensive it is to find out anything, the less potential aggrieved people will bother, and "finding out" for them could mean "even harder to create liability and a payout", so they get bounced, or deterred, from trying.
I know HN leans heavily US, but if anyone is in the UK, you can now earn up to £1000 in side income without having to declare it or file a self assessment tax return.
It is a bit less of a problem for me lately, because I now feel somewhat more confident about many things in life. But for the most of my life, absolutely. It isn't like there is any real problem, but it was fear of the unknown for me. I was confident about how to make things, solve technical problems and such, and absolutely clueless about anything else. I was somewhat envious of how everyone files taxes on his own in USA. I just knew that my employer pays taxes for me, that I would have to if I want to start a business, and that I can get in jail if I fuck up. It isn't just about taxes, really, just anything law-related. But I had absolutely no idea what I actually have to do, or how do I even find out. I know it sounds silly, but it wasn't funny to me, it was infuriating helplessness.
Then I became older and just started caring less about doing things "the right way". It was liberating.
I used to fear this, until I read posts on a similar site about how frequently founders botch this and how understanding the IRS is with these situations. Obviously this only applies to the US. When I saw my first success, I paid a CPA ~$1000 (for hundreds of thousands in revenue) to help sort out the first year of taxes (before they were due) and it wasn't a problem.
To summarize someone else's better point: worry about this problem when you have it. In the mean time worry about problems you have right now.
That's me. Note that I'm not a US citizen (in fact, I never set foot on US soil, nor I intend to, in my whole life), so your mileage may vary.
In the end, I decided to launch all my side-projects for free (sometimes I outright include a "non commercial" clause because I don't see why somebody should profit off my free work). I find this reduces all the project related stress to a fraction.
As a side hustler, even with pass-through taxation, you will still have to pay the self-employment tax (15.3% of net earnings) on top of taxes at your federal and state tax bracket. However, side-hustle money spent on qualified business expenses, is not taxable. (Tax people please chime in.)
Reading about the author's projects in the past is actually what inspired me to do it.
I used Windows for a long time before as a power user (living my life in FarManager and WinAPI), then switched to Ubuntu with i3.
After finally switching to the Mac, I loved its simplicity and how it freed my mind from micro-managing the system, but I also noticed its shortcomings and how some things were better on Windows/Linux.
Nowadays I'm making small apps to overcome those macOS shortcomings, and help others find their carefree macOS setup where the system doesn't get in the way of real work.
And it's going pretty well! I've also shared the source of the framework [1] I'm using for these apps, so that I don't have to constantly reimplement payments, licensing [2], SwiftUI styles/components and utility functions on each new project.
I've been following these, and it seems like such a fun thing to do. He seems to have been lucky that he caught on to his real product on day 1 -- semi-viral blog posts.
Still I imagine it's hard for most people to go 2 years on a few thousand of sporadic revenue.
I basically launch tiny projects full time, and have noticed that these have a power law to them. He'll mostly hit $0, with some occasional mid-hits as he has listed, but if he keeps at it I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the later projects make 10x as much as the best one now.
Ummm. Interesting about mailoji. Not actually legit according to ICANN to use "non collating" punycode or multiple languages in an ICANN-controlled domain: you can't register them.
But, it's a CC TLD, in fact it's .kz who I still carry a scar or two from when they issued some domains starting with "-": you know what happens when you "dig -yo.tld"? OWASP applies to domain names.
However, the RFCs for the actual _protocol_ declare a label can contain "any octet", so you can use and abuse this in FQDNs under your control and the internet police won't come to get you. "poop".example.com would be fine if you control example.com (either as a quoted string or as an emoji), so would "rm -rf *.example.com".
I really like this idea of creating small projects instead of just building a startup as it would be too much work for me. Can you guys give me more examples about projects that generate money or least a lot of people use it for free.
My problem is a bit different, and I'm curious if others can relate. I constantly have a project in the works, but once I solve the interesting technical hurdles and prove that the concept works, I suddenly think of a "better idea" and never actually release anything. I've been in this cycle for the better part of a decade now.
But let me tell you, if my current project works out, I'll never have to work a W2 job again!
Maybe, as a suggestion, launch a Notion page with your “100 side-project ideas I never got around to making” — perhaps this will get that juices flowing?
That is odd that he would be involved with auditing duplicate domain names. You'd think FB the company would of done the snatching, not Mark Zuckerberg. neat.
While I want to execute the idea I am always put off by the essential administrative stuff such as user management, payment gateway linking, subscription management.
Are there any open source plug and play options available out there which can take away this tedious but important work?
They other option is to not worry about those things. Start with a free product and see if people will even use that. Then worry about payment and subscriptions once you validate that people will use it.
Try to think about a way your product (or at least a minimal version of it) could work without "user management." Sounds counterintuitive but sometimes it is a requirement that has never really been thought about, just assumed to be necessary.
There are a few SaaS templates out there and services such as Memberstack that make it easier to implement the boilerplate SaaS features in Webflow. I'd also recommend just doing the boring work once and keeping that as a template for future projects.
General Question for people who do these tiny projects, which might make some money. Do you register a company for this? How do you deal with taxes if you made a small amount of money from them?
Have you written anywhere about the technology you use underneath - from languages to libraries to hosting?
I’ve got a few ideas somewhere between just started and half-written, but I often grind to a halt when it comes to figuring out sensible hosting. As an amateur, the world of AWS vs. GCE vs. Azure vs. Heroku vs. many, many others is difficult, and there are scary stories about out of control costs abound.
Build on the easiest thing possible (probably Heroku or a competitor). If you have to worry scale and how you'll pay for it then, well that's a good problem to have. Most projects won't get to that point.
How do you get people interested in your projects both from a consumer and production standpoint? Basically I am wondering what the best ways you have found to SELL whatever project you are working on (even if say the project is technically free to the end user) and also how do you sell someone else on collaborating with you?
I feel like having a bunch of tiny projects is probably a great way to learn a ton. I've slowed down on personal projects since graduation, but focusing on something tiny might be what I need to hear/do to get back into learning some new stuff. Good on the author/OP!
How do I start coming up with all these actionable ideas? I mean, not that these are great, but it really doesn't matter for me, implementing them does. It just makes me feel ashamed for my lack of industriousness.
The world is full of interesting people doing interesting things, who come with interesting problems, who don't even know there might be a software solution for it.
On a tiny scale, I'm a programmer. I happen to be between programming jobs and to keep the roof over my head I'm working as a Medical Receptionist. I see lots of ways my skills (totally exotic in that arena) are useful. For example, I see someone doing brute-force hand search-and-replace on a document. I said, give me 10 seconds and I'll do it for you. Regexps, despite the "two-problems" joke, are fantastically powerful and made them drop their jaws. But there's larger problems I have written Powershell scripts to solve, python scripts, macros in the software they use, excel spreadsheets, etc. Whatever tool to get the job done.
Problems are everywhere where people are. Go talk to them.
> If you're stuck for ideas, I recommend just building something; anything; even if it's terrible, and I guarantee a better idea will pop into your brain shortly after.
I was going to ask how your host your projects since lots of small hosting fees can add up. I saw a guide on your site where you use Firebase, which would explain how you keep things cheap. Is that still your strategy?
I did this for a while (most never shipped) but I had a different idea that I haven't tried which is to set a small monthly budget and have others develop and maintain the tiny project. That way you get a whole different game to play. Some tasks are much cheaper than others and hiring experience is a lot more efficient than learning a new skill yourself.
I imagined myself [silently] looking at such projects to see how they progress. I had a lot of fun looking from afar after explaining to folks how to do websites in html.
I've seen your projects before, and I am like you where I don't like projects that depend on me creating content but I rather like technical challenges. Great write up!
I love this post. Thanks Ben. It's especially generous to share pageviews and revenue numbers which are so frequently kept private. I didn't though understand this point from the post:
> One other weird downside is that .. I sometimes catch myself thinking "should I build something just for the upvotes".
Is the author saying the attention from social media sites like Hacker News sometimes seems like motivation enough to build the next project?
This is awesome and what I initially set out to do but always found a way to talk myself out of it. I dream big. I found a project to stick to "completion" but it took me two years to build alone. I've only lost money but it's been a wild ride of an experience. This tiny project approach sounds like a lot of fun and conveniently my project will help me down that path while I try to market my work.
Also, are domains not $5-$10 say? ~$2000 on 'tiny projects'?
...ahh, read the full breakdown, it is approximately something like that, which seems crazy, but I dunno, guy has some money to spare and went nuts with the project and sold a bunch of accounts. (also weird, but tiktokers susceptible to random stuff I guess)
While reading the post, I realised that it was a really great idea to say the least but I was very shocked when I saw that OP earned $18000 off the project. Although, one down-side of using email addresses which contain emojis is that some email clients do not support them.
I remember seeing snormal on here a while ago. I played around with it briefly because the idea was refreshing, but ended up not coming back for a while because the scrolling was really painful in Firefox on Android.
The premise really resonates with me. I've often struggled with maintaining a presence on any social media, and barely ever post because everything'_s normal_.
I believe this is a good way to quickly filter through a bunch of ideas that may or may not work and stick with those that have potential. Luckily these days launching new ideas is easy. You don't need to invest too much money and time as long as you keep it simple and to the point.
This is very inspiring, thank you! Having never done it, I know first hand how difficult it can be to get your ideas out the door. It looks like you found the perfect tempo and scope, tiny projects rock.
What I found interesting is the iterative process. Failure is simply experience you carry forward to inform future decisions. Its not necessarily a permanent judgement that cripples you.
I actually agree with this. There are a bunch of low-cost ways to prototype and collect user feedback. The paper notebook idea could have started with surveying people and finding if anyone actually existed who say it would be useful and they would pay for it. Or even just launch a one-page product site with an email sign-up list to get notified when the alpha version releases and wait until it reached some critical mass. All of this would have taken less investment than actually building it first lol.
Depends on how much time you plan on putting into it and if it sounds like fun. Most people have a bit of free time to spend on side projects, even if they're silly.
The author mentioned it in the conclusion:”If you're stuck for ideas, I recommend just building something; anything; even if it's terrible, and I guarantee a better idea will pop into your brain shortly after.”
IMO tiny ideas like this are mostly for fun and learning, they don't need to be unique. Build another take on a blog or a game or utility or whatever you like to do online, but put your own spin on it.
Speaking from personal experience: just seeing what unsolved needs you have yields a lot of ideas. I had coworkers who would go to email something confidential to someone and click the wrong auto-complete contact and then we had a full-blown crisis. I thought "is there a way to stop that without the user hating me?" and that's how I got the idea for https://jiminyclick.com
marban|3 years ago
danielvaughn|3 years ago
Can you recall any specific thing you did that brought you success?
herodoturtle|3 years ago
Incredible comment overall but this line was particularly Woah!
What advice would have for solo founders of a side project (that later becomes a full time day job) in terms of evolving to a large team?
First hire(s), things to look out for, etc.
I’d find this insight incredible! Hope I’m not asking too much. But such an incredible story you have.
heywoodlh|3 years ago
I feel like I often hang up on if something should be done or if it is something that will be "successful". So it's cool to hear stories where the goal isn't the financial success of X project -- the goal is the journey and it's a bonus if it's financially beneficial.
Thanks again, know that it helped me to read this comment!
cgg1|3 years ago
acuozzo|3 years ago
Thanks!
acegopher|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
xwowsersx|3 years ago
bitxbitxbitcoin|3 years ago
techsin101|3 years ago
toto444|3 years ago
> If you're stuck for ideas, I recommend just building something; anything; even if it's terrible, and I guarantee a better idea will pop into your brain shortly after.
I have been working on a long project for a few years now and it will not be finished before another few years and I envy the speed at which the author gets feedback after he launches his products.
_whiteCaps_|3 years ago
> Switch from team “I will one day write something good” to team “I have no choice but to write a piece of shit” and then take off your “bad writer” hat and replace it with a “petty critic” hat and go to town on that poor hack’s draft and that’s your second draft.
https://www.vulture.com/2016/11/read-dan-harmons-excellent-a...
lancesells|3 years ago
A lot of the initial tries will be terrible but it only gets better from there.
samwillis|3 years ago
buf|3 years ago
Doing roughly $700k revenue yearly right now over the 2 main projects. Hopefully with a 3rd coming this summer.
https://siliconvict.com/projects
nukst|3 years ago
willemh|3 years ago
keyle|3 years ago
RupurtMurloc|3 years ago
FL33TW00D|3 years ago
dafelst|3 years ago
If OP is actually the author, a question - what was your approach in keeping the projects tightly scoped and not introducing feature creep? Deadlines or time-boxing? Pre-emptive deciding on what you will and won't do? Lowering your standards for "good enough"? Just plain old discipline? Something else?
ux4|3 years ago
When you are building for fun, it is for yourself. When you are building for profit, it is for other people. When you are building for fun, you get to decide what to work on and when to stop - usually when it is no longer fun. When you are building for profit, other people decide what you work on and when you are done - usually when no new features are requested, you have no competition, and you have absolutely saturated your market. This rarely ever happens so you always have something propelling you.
The biggest failure most engineers encounter is they build things nobody asked for. They build products without customers lined up, for markets that do not currently exist, with only feedback from themselves. This is because they built the product for fun thinking they were building it for profit.
The line between the two is very easy to blur - especially when reading OP's blog where he genuinely sounds like he had fun building his projects, but I guarantee there was also a lot of very unfun background work done in the name of profit.
Edit: Don't just take my guarantee for it, read about his challenges for One Item Store https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/one_item_store
bodge5000|3 years ago
Could be worse. I used to have this problem all the time, and at some point managed to fix it. Now I've spent 3 years on a side project (which I originally thought should take a couple of months, and considering its lack of complexity really only should have taken at most a year), and even though I'm fully aware its an "unworkable" idea, I can't stop until its done.
I've read tiny projects in the past though and really like it, I really want to try a similar thing at some point...just as soon as this current project is done ;)
cjohnson318|3 years ago
With coding, it seems like it's much more difficult question to answer.
hardwaresofton|3 years ago
The author seems to be batting an insanely high average for just building things and having them actually get some traction, and be exit-able.
> When I started this mission, I had a big list of project ideas that I'd built up in my phone. Maybe you have one of those lists too.
> Two years later, I've realised a lot of these initial ideas were pretty terrible.
> It's a paradox, but I've found that my best ideas now come from building other ideas.
Funnily enough, I went the other way and started sharing my large list of ideas with others (I send 3 non-terrible ones to subscribers every week[0]). Of course, running a mailing list and sharing the ideas was one of the ideas...
At this point market validation (and practice validating ideas) is starting to seem like the most important thing. Knowing you should take the month to build before you do, but reading the post it feels like maybe bounding initial development time sometimes can work in lieu of validating the market.
[EDIT] - please see previous discussion about the mailing list as well![1] -- it's released every sunday night.
[EDIT2] - is anyone having trouble sending email to the author? I'm using protonmail and wanted to get in touch but I can't -- email looks to be no bueno for proton mail. I guess I'll either try thunderbird or twitter.
[EDIT3] - Looks like proton mail does not like emoji email addresses currently... Thunderbird happily sent.
[EDIT4] - Nope, nvm I'm getting a mail lookup error (hn strips the emoji)...
> Delivery to tinyprojects@.gg failed with error: MX lookup error
[0]: https://unvalidated-ideas.vadosware.io
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31388399
ux4|3 years ago
Market validation - especially for online products and services - is indeed incredibly important, but not many people like to write about it because it is actually very drab and a tiny bit audacious.
His market validation - you are seeing it. It is a submission to Hacker News.
Ok ok, that is a given, but the author alludes to other various ways he gets feedback and validation for his products. He also talks about how well his products were received on Product Hunt and you can also follow him on Twitter.
My final advice for seeing how online services validate their ideas - run the product's domain through a backlink checker. It lets you see what other websites link to their product and what avenues they pursued for outreach. Each of those submissions exposes the product to potential customers and gives valuable feedback to the creator.
TameAntelope|3 years ago
If it does fit or is close to fitting, great! If it doesn't fit, oh well, not much is lost (after all, it is a tiny project).
criddell|3 years ago
jasonjmcghee|3 years ago
dcchambers|3 years ago
I know LLCs allow for pass-through taxation and you don't have to file as a business, but I get frozen by the idea that generating a few hundred dollars in revenue from some silly side project means I have to spend hours/days of my time the next Spring figuring out how to properly pay taxes on it.
maxverse|3 years ago
The fact that you're asking this question means you're interested in launching things. If so, the cliched, true advice is: launch.
If you want practical advice: I run a one-person LLC in the US. Taxes on a few hundred dollars are nothing to worry about.
For inevitable naysayers: my manager's advice doesn't mean you shouldn't ever plan or prepare. Just that when your chances of success are very low, don't worry too much about the repercussions of success. I applied to grad school, and didn't get in. My career continued on just fine.
zrail|3 years ago
Once you get to the scale of a few thousand dollars a year, you can file what's called a Form 1040 Schedule C which allows you to declare your business income, claim expenses and other deductions, and include it in your taxable income. For that scale it's an extra 10 minutes with your tax software or even by hand, as long as you keep good records, and you're done.
The point at which an LLC or other more formal business structure makes sense is fuzzy and can have different ranges depending on the business, but typically you probably don't need or want to invoke the expense of a CPA until you're making more than six figures (or if you've taken outside investment, obv).
vmception|3 years ago
All your costs are tax deductions, whether you incorporate or not. The incorporation cost is negligible and you can ignore everything about a local/foreign llc registration simply because the consequences are improbable and inconsequential, just make the llc in the best states. If your employer is withholding any taxes, you’ll get so much more of it back because you have so many deductions now.
If you make any revenue its easy to count.
Your standing in society is based on gross revenue, your tax footprint is a fraction of net revenues. Its low key perfect. Net operating losses are the greatest of all time.
In addition, You get massively disproportionate security and anonymity by operating under entities you created. And you can prove product market fit in private and then inherit all the credit for it when it works.
strbean|3 years ago
chrisa|3 years ago
vmception|3 years ago
The LLC (and other entity types) increases the deterrent of this ever affecting you.
The LLC specifically has some theoretical weaknesses, but the reason it is a deterrent is because it deters people from spending more money to find out about those weakenesses, and it also increases the odds that people won't be able to know where you are or serve you properly. The more expensive it is to find out anything, the less potential aggrieved people will bother, and "finding out" for them could mean "even harder to create liability and a payout", so they get bounced, or deterred, from trying.
petercooper|3 years ago
krick|3 years ago
Then I became older and just started caring less about doing things "the right way". It was liberating.
Kon-Peki|3 years ago
Put it on Schedule 1 line 8z and work on making it a few thousand dollars for next time!
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040s1.pdf
grog454|3 years ago
To summarize someone else's better point: worry about this problem when you have it. In the mean time worry about problems you have right now.
frollo|3 years ago
In the end, I decided to launch all my side-projects for free (sometimes I outright include a "non commercial" clause because I don't see why somebody should profit off my free work). I find this reduces all the project related stress to a fraction.
jhassell|3 years ago
alin23|3 years ago
Reading about the author's projects in the past is actually what inspired me to do it.
I used Windows for a long time before as a power user (living my life in FarManager and WinAPI), then switched to Ubuntu with i3.
After finally switching to the Mac, I loved its simplicity and how it freed my mind from micro-managing the system, but I also noticed its shortcomings and how some things were better on Windows/Linux.
Nowadays I'm making small apps to overcome those macOS shortcomings, and help others find their carefree macOS setup where the system doesn't get in the way of real work.
And it's going pretty well! I've also shared the source of the framework [1] I'm using for these apps, so that I don't have to constantly reimplement payments, licensing [2], SwiftUI styles/components and utility functions on each new project.
[1] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/Lowtech [2] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/LowtechPro
xwowsersx|3 years ago
aaronbrethorst|3 years ago
mNovak|3 years ago
Still I imagine it's hard for most people to go 2 years on a few thousand of sporadic revenue.
bemmu|3 years ago
m3047|3 years ago
But, it's a CC TLD, in fact it's .kz who I still carry a scar or two from when they issued some domains starting with "-": you know what happens when you "dig -yo.tld"? OWASP applies to domain names.
However, the RFCs for the actual _protocol_ declare a label can contain "any octet", so you can use and abuse this in FQDNs under your control and the internet police won't come to get you. "poop".example.com would be fine if you control example.com (either as a quoted string or as an emoji), so would "rm -rf *.example.com".
abhishek945|3 years ago
danenania|3 years ago
Also Indiehackers.
softwarebeware|3 years ago
kokanee|3 years ago
But let me tell you, if my current project works out, I'll never have to work a W2 job again!
mittermayr|3 years ago
munro|3 years ago
LMAO. The emoji emails is really cool though. [1]
[1] https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/mailoji
moffkalast|3 years ago
Suppose he'll just make a tinydomainmanager.com or something.
itake|3 years ago
drieddust|3 years ago
Are there any open source plug and play options available out there which can take away this tedious but important work?
giarc|3 years ago
SoftTalker|3 years ago
axg11|3 years ago
reducesuffering|3 years ago
UmbertoNoEco|3 years ago
p5v|3 years ago
One of these days, I need to sit down and write th origin story of Murmel, and how I came to it.
Cheers!
twox2|3 years ago
Sinidir|3 years ago
danvoell|3 years ago
liorben-david|3 years ago
mft_|3 years ago
I’ve got a few ideas somewhere between just started and half-written, but I often grind to a halt when it comes to figuring out sensible hosting. As an amateur, the world of AWS vs. GCE vs. Azure vs. Heroku vs. many, many others is difficult, and there are scary stories about out of control costs abound.
cinntaile|3 years ago
abrookewood|3 years ago
aqme28|3 years ago
Melatonic|3 years ago
jjice|3 years ago
brianmcc|3 years ago
krick|3 years ago
MrVandemar|3 years ago
On a tiny scale, I'm a programmer. I happen to be between programming jobs and to keep the roof over my head I'm working as a Medical Receptionist. I see lots of ways my skills (totally exotic in that arena) are useful. For example, I see someone doing brute-force hand search-and-replace on a document. I said, give me 10 seconds and I'll do it for you. Regexps, despite the "two-problems" joke, are fantastically powerful and made them drop their jaws. But there's larger problems I have written Powershell scripts to solve, python scripts, macros in the software they use, excel spreadsheets, etc. Whatever tool to get the job done.
Problems are everywhere where people are. Go talk to them.
DantesKite|3 years ago
> If you're stuck for ideas, I recommend just building something; anything; even if it's terrible, and I guarantee a better idea will pop into your brain shortly after.
leros|3 years ago
6510|3 years ago
I imagined myself [silently] looking at such projects to see how they progress. I had a lot of fun looking from afar after explaining to folks how to do websites in html.
reiichiroh|3 years ago
droobles|3 years ago
blobbers|3 years ago
I endeavour to do this as well.
Out of curiosity, what do you do to generate food to eat though? The projects don't appear to bring in much bread.
jonathanberger|3 years ago
> One other weird downside is that .. I sometimes catch myself thinking "should I build something just for the upvotes".
Is the author saying the attention from social media sites like Hacker News sometimes seems like motivation enough to build the next project?
pnelson|3 years ago
ChrisArchitect|3 years ago
littlevache|3 years ago
ChrisArchitect|3 years ago
...ahh, read the full breakdown, it is approximately something like that, which seems crazy, but I dunno, guy has some money to spare and went nuts with the project and sold a bunch of accounts. (also weird, but tiktokers susceptible to random stuff I guess)
hamiecod|3 years ago
drewzero1|3 years ago
The premise really resonates with me. I've often struggled with maintaining a presence on any social media, and barely ever post because everything'_s normal_.
corderop|3 years ago
How do you pay taxes for a international business? Do you have to pay in every country that you have s costumer?
Also, how do you make sure everything is legal in every country that it's accessible?
_pdp_|3 years ago
textninja|3 years ago
dasz|3 years ago
newbie578|3 years ago
l5870uoo9y|3 years ago
TameAntelope|3 years ago
Quick, iterative feedback is by far a superior approach when attempting to understand how to build a successful product.
lloydatkinson|3 years ago
softwarebeware|3 years ago
Cthulhu_|3 years ago
Kaibeezy|3 years ago
sagarpatil|3 years ago
ngshiheng|3 years ago
ishjoh|3 years ago
klaussilveira|3 years ago
corderop|3 years ago
galactus|3 years ago
yingnansong|3 years ago
immigrantheart|3 years ago
dkasper|3 years ago
muttled|3 years ago
techsin101|3 years ago
Geste|3 years ago
Sateeshm|3 years ago
asadawadia|3 years ago
Deploy to a VPS on DO or Linode
dostojevski1|3 years ago
spicyramen_|3 years ago