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Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

40 points| MathCodeLove | 3 years ago

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438930

Feel free to update us on your progress if you participated in that thread.

14 comments

order

kradeelav|3 years ago

I don't talk about my zines (https://kradeelav.itch.io) and artwork to people IRL -- it occupies a very liminal space in my mind and soul where I can mention things a bit too raw or depraved for office spaces. ;)

While I don't make zines to make money, per se (going as far to give a free digital copy on my site), there's still evidentially enough people that buy them that it technically counts.

dormento|3 years ago

Just chiming in: your art looks amazing! I can totally imagine some incredible game cutscenes in this style.

j0hnyl|3 years ago

Do you only sell them on the website or local consignment shops too?

tdeck|3 years ago

I built a system to help people take payments with Google Forms. It was very much an MVP but I lucked into a niche that hadn't been filled, so each week a few people found it and started to use it. I charged 2% of the transaction volume (later lowered to 1.5%) and made about $3k before shutting it down at the end of last year to focus on other things.

Interestingly by that point there were much better, cheaper alternatives and the friction of switching was low, but I had a hard time convincing people to stop using it.

gisho|3 years ago

You would have considered gifting the business to another dev, perhaps in the developing countries.

lamroger|3 years ago

My partner and I started roasting and selling coffee (https://tinywaffle.co). My day job matches donations 2:1 so I've been funneling in proceeds to max the $10k benefit. It's been fun learning about coffee, marketing, and design.

xcubic|3 years ago

This is highly interesting.

Would you share some more details about all this, your setup and how you do it? I'm expecting you to do this in a much lower scale than "regular" coffee roasters, and I'm sure more people might be interested in this.

sdfgdfghj|3 years ago

That's really interesting - what kind of equipment do you need for roasting? Is this something you can do from home?