
Ask HN: What's the best business for a tinkerer? - cronjobma
As a hardware and software tinkerer who loves working on new projects every week, what&#x27;s the best business to start that could support this lifestyle of making?
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kamphey
Start a YouTube channel. Either learn filmmaking or find a friend to help.

Upload a video a week. Full complete projects. Post them on reddit. Reply to
every comment. Ask for suggestions of next project.

After 3 months or 12 videos. Start posting 3 times a week of projects in
progress.

After 3 months start live streaming twice a week.

At the 6 month mark start a Patreon. Even if you don't have any patrons
immediately learn the platform and incorporate it into your videos. Set a goal
that entices ppl to participate. Maybe one of your projects was a hit.

Hope that helps.

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Toast_
Seconded. Maybe look to AvE as an example of this.

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kspaans
Reverse Engineering and security. Every executable you reverse is like a new
project!

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solarkraft
Great suggestion that doesn't rely on self-employment. Thanks.

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fest
I have a friend who runs a lifestyle business of:

1) One-off mechatronics projects: museum exhibits, cable-cams for filming
companies, puzzles for escape-rooms etc.

2) Regional distribution and support for a particular brand of lasercutters.

From what I see, he spends most of the time on first category but most of the
revenue comes from the second.

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rad1o
Teaching others how to tinker. My wife and kids started this business:
[https://makerjunior.com](https://makerjunior.com)

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nvusuvu
Could you elaborate on the business model?

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rad1o
Yes. The business model is primarily kit sales and children's programs. The
latter benefits the former -- maker junior kits are the result of thousands of
hours of research working with kids to understand what works.

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patrickg_zill
Are you involved in a local hacker or maker space?

Do you think you can make a kit that parents or other hackers would want to
buy, like the build your own robots kits that come in pieces but include all
the parts needed?

I know of one guy that got certified on shopbot and the laser cutter, and used
that knowledge to get clients. He helps them go from idea to something
repeatable.

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mjfl
You sound like me. If you like writing tutorials for your tinkering, I'm
building a platform to support people like you:
[https://ocalog.com/](https://ocalog.com/) I'm currently tinkering with
Ethereum.

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khernand
Looks cool. I made an account to sign up and it said email confirmations were
down but I should still be able to log in. Unfortunately, I'm not able to log
in with my email and password

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mjfl
Thanks for letting me know. Looking into it right now.

Edit: I think it may be because you are using your email and not your username
to login. However, you make a great point that people should be able to login
with their emails and I'll put that on my list.

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Maert
Please do so. Logging in with username (which has to be different than email)
is sooooo 10 years ago. I can't remember all the usernames on all the hundreds
of pages I visit. But I know which email I used to create every one of them!

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SirLJ
How about quantitative trading systems? I am really enjoying thinkering, back
testing, inventing, I think this is the ultimate location independent
lifestyle business...

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flashm
Interesting, can you elaborate?

Which platform/APIs do you use? What language do you program in? Where do you
get back testing data from?

Thanks!

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SirLJ
The most used one is probable the Interactive Brokers API, I am using python
and running the algos from VPS, for books on how to get started and data
sources, please check my previous posts... Cheers.

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brudgers
Tinsmithing?

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mchannon
1\. Make something people want.

2\. Learn how to make it for a lot less than people will pay for it.

3\. Partner with people who can market your projects.

