
Ten Years of Worthless Side Projects - _sbxe
https://medium.com/@LastZactionHero/ten-years-of-worthless-side-projects-f44aa9edb028
======
Mizza
This resonates strongly with me.

Let me offer a possible coping mechanism: realize that you are an artist. You
are a true hacker.

For people like us, having ideas and making them real is the purpose of life.
Since the 90s, there has been an immense pressure on our community put
everything we do in get-rich-quick terms, which as been super destructive the
psyches of many hackers. Be mindful of this, then cast it aside.

No matter what, keep having ideas and making them real.

Don't just take my word for it, ask Alan Watts:
[https://soundcloud.com/jeffreysource/above-beyond-ft-alan-
wa...](https://soundcloud.com/jeffreysource/above-beyond-ft-alan-watts)

~~~
AstralStorm
None of the apps or services are even close to art. (Including state of the
art.) This is the main problem of small projects that aren't cutting edge. To
know if you are cutting edge somewhere, run an experiment if your work cannot
be undercut in a week by a small team of low wage country workers or
programmers.

(Even many startups fail this litmus test.)

Hacking is fun, but life as a starving programmer is not.

There is a vast difference between getting reasonable money and negative
money. Bigger than between making reasonable living wage and being filthy rich
in fact.

~~~
spacebear
How do you define art? I've always liked Scott McCloud's definition from
Understanding Comics: "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t
grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and
reproduction."

In my view, anyone who dedicates their free time to creating is an artist.

~~~
drcube
Consider the question of why humans evolved to make art in the first place,
and you'll probably conclude that it was sexual selection. In other words,
artists get laid. Though it may be that artists get respect in general, which
improves chances of survival in a social species like ours. So I respectfully
disagree with Mr. McCloud's definition.

~~~
goatlover
Why reduce all activity to such simplistic motivations? Maybe art is a
spandrel. Maybe artists don't get laid any more often than non-artists. Maybe
human beings do lots of things that have little to do with passing their
genetic material on, because we've acquired motivations that aren't simply
reducible to survival or sex. Maybe some of us realized that making art was
enjoyable, regardless of whatever reason it arose in the species a couple
million years ago.

------
kespindler
Build a better mousetrap, and you'll learn how to build a better mousetrap.
You need to market it (or partner with someone who will) if you want to make
money.

1\. Get some kind of market validation before you build. Get commitments from
paying customers (or even pre-payment), or directly see them paying for a
near-identical offering, and have a competitive advantage to deliver it more
cheaply.

2\. Do an inventory exercise of why these projects have failed. Doing a quick
run-through, it looks like you didn't do marketing or user research for any of
these projects. If making a side business still excites you, make sure you do
these steps before going to build any future side business.

3\. I know nothing about landscaping, but as an outsider, Bloom looks a
promising product. Go talk to customers!

3\. If the marketing side of things doesn't interest you, but you still want
to make side money, reach out to me, my email is <hn username> at gmail. My
background is pure engineering, but I have friends who are looking for
technical co-founders and have ideas that I could use more technical talent
on.

------
andriesm
I've had more than 10 projects, but also at least 3 big hits.

I sense your problem is that you love building stuff, but you are not
fascinated or obsessed by business.

This is why you reliably build really cool and clever things but never make
any serious money. Unless you are truly interested in money and business this
is unlikely to change except by luck.

Find someone like me, or several someone's like me to hang out with, and to
brainstorm business concepts, business model variations, marketing spins,
brandname ideas...

Build your business muscle, or remain an employee forever.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Do you blog about the marketing you did? What are the 3 big hits?

~~~
kzisme
Patio11 has a pretty extensive blog about marketing software and a bunch of
other stuff :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11)

~~~
NicoJuicy
That is not andriesm :), i know patio11 from HN ;)

------
garethsprice
What're your goals? Thinking about what you _really_ want out of side projects
may help. It gets the blood pumping to think about building a project that is
finally the one that makes you millions, but creating a highly profitable
business is a very different set of skills to building the technical side of a
side project.

I'm in a similar boat, you are doing FAR better than I ever have (many "plans
that come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines" over here), but lately
I've not been too disappointed.

I stopped caring if I failed to complete a project once my initial burst of
interest disappeared - usually as I'd learned what I wanted to learn and my
curiosity was best directed elsewhere rather than slogging on with a project
I'd lost interest in (plenty of those you can get paid for, this is supposed
to be hobby time!)

The new skills I learn for fun have led onto new jobs, better ability to
function at my day job, friendships, collaborations, a fun summer at ITP Camp
in New York, etc.

~~~
wushupork
I agree. If your goals are to make money on your side project, you'll have to
invest time into sales, bd, or the marketing aspects of these projects rather
than purely the technical aspects.

I don't think they are worthless, you learned a lot, but it sounds like you
also wish to have monetary benefits from them, so I would suggest rounding out
your skill set.

------
matt2000
Perhaps I can give you some perspective from... the future. I've been doing
what you're doing for about 20 years now, and have worked on (mainly with one
other partner) probably 100 things? Some were full blown companies, some were
just fun side projects, some were apps that made pretty good money, etc.
Perhaps some things I've realized recently will be useful to you:

* It took us around 6-8 years before we made any money at all on anything we did. The thing that ended up making money wasn't even a sure thing, it just happened to work out. For a good part of those 6-8 years we thought we sucked because things never quite worked out. It turned out we were learning a bunch of stuff that turned out to be very useful for a whole new thing that came along (phone apps).

* Making money wasn't the most important thing for me in these projects, but once we started making money we could quit our jobs and do our own stuff full time. That turned out to be super important, and is the most important part of making money on your projects probably.

* Making technology and making a business are two pretty different things, and it's pretty rare that someone is really into both of them. That's probably ok! There are a bunch of businesses that naturally develop out of good technology, so you can probably just work on things that make sense given your strengths.

* Jumping around and doing lots of different things is one of my traits as well, and for a while I thought it was a big weakness. It can be. Sometimes an idea needs a few years of consistent effort to see results. Other times though, you were right to give up as it wasn't going anywhere. For me, what helped was to think of what I'm working on as the collection of ALL of the projects that I've done. Then I am making progress no matter which ones fail. Then jumping around doesn't feel as bad. That all being said, there are boring and discouraging times in every project and it can be important that you see things through beyond where you're simply interested intellectually.

I'm sure there are a bunch more things that might be helpful that I can't
quite think of now, I'll add them as I think of them.

Bottom line, what you can do is surprisingly rare (it just doesn't feel that
way on HN). It's ok to take some time to develop these skills, one of which is
filtering ideas to work on. If you spend enough years working at it then you
might even end up an overnight success :)

~~~
aeorgnoieang
> For me, what helped was to think of what I'm working on as the collection of
> ALL of the projects that I've done.

A project portfolio

------
emodendroket
> The exact opposite of the above. Spend my free time exploring things that
> really interest me without worrying about selling it or career application.

This is probably what you should actually do.

~~~
jhpankow
I thought that was the whole point of side projects.

~~~
kbenson
If you equate side project with hobby, yes. If you equate side project with
entrepreneurship, then no. For a lot of people, I think it's somewhere in the
middle.

~~~
emodendroket
Perhaps the problem is a lot of people don't decide and then don't do well at
either. As the proverb goes, a fox who chases two hares catches neither.

------
Kiro
> Stop Thinking about Money

That has been my approach all the time. For me, the problem is quite the
opposite though. I tend to build things that go viral and become potential
cash cows. I have no interest in that though and as soon as something gets
popular I abandon it.

Sounds crazy but when my pet project becomes serious business I get cold feet
and can't even touch it. The creative choices all of a sudden seems really
crucial and I start procrastinate. I just want to experiment and build stuff
without pressure.

~~~
godot
Just curious, how do you get your projects viral? I'll be honest to admit,
I've worked on side projects before that I've deliberately attempted to
manufacture virality (build viral mechanisms off simple games, etc.), but it
seems hard. When the simple game with viral hooks is done, I post it up on
reddit or HN or PH or whatever, and it never takes off. I know the obvious
conclusion is "the game/project sucks", just curious if I'm missing anything
else.

------
justboxing
> Marketing: The worst. I’m bad at it and it just does not interest me.

This resonates with me, and I am sure a whole lot of other engineers working
on side projects out here.

What's the solution? How do you find a "Marketing" person on a side-hustle
budget? Without any network.

Like OP, I know my side-projects need to be marketed, but I also don't enjoy
cold emailing or cold-calling and would really leave it to an expert in that
domain, as long as I can pay him/her by output and not on a full-time salary
or a contractor rate...

~~~
soared
I enjoy marketing for fun ( I work at an ad agency) and always feel I could
contribute to open source / people's side projects, but there is never an
opportunity. No one ever lists the need for a marketer, and reaching out
generally goes unanswered.

There are marketers out there who want to contribute, but just don't see
opportunities.

~~~
Aeolun
The few marketers we reached out to asked us "What is your budget?", and then
instantly dropped off when we told them our budget wasn't anywhere near the
"$10000+" dollars per month they were used to.

I mean, what the hell? We're searching for someone to help with something that
doesn't even have visitors, much less customers, yet. What are they expecting?

~~~
soared
Sounds like big agency or freelance guys. If their 30%+ cut isn't $3k or more,
its not worth the work.

Those people were looking for leads, just like a freelance developer would.
But I do not know where you find freelance marketers who want to help build
something, not to add a client to their portfolio.

------
chasing
"In many ways, I’m an just an obsessive builder, and like to busy myself
learning new things and making cool projects."

In which case, I'd say he accomplished his goals! These sound like great
projects.

Unfortunately actually building a product is only one part of building a
successful business.

I wonder how often this guy talks to customers? Learns their needs? Pain
points? Did he ask _anyone_ if they would pay for a new Javascript game engine
(for example) before he wrote one?

If he didn't, then he shouldn't be surprised that he doesn't understand how
his products fit into the market and into his potential customers' lives. And
if he doesn't understand any of that, then making money will be next to
impossible.

------
bochoh
I remember stumbling across
[http://www.plantwithbloom.com/](http://www.plantwithbloom.com/) in the past
and thinking it was amazing. Consider this at least a small thank-you for your
efforts!

~~~
LastZactionHero
Thanks! Bloom is my latest endeavor, and one that I don't think belongs on the
scrap heap yet.

I'm just not sure how to market it. I was going down a path of appealing to
data-nerds with yards, focusing on the data techniques used to make decisions.

I've also experimented with using a physics ending to design beds, but haven't
got it tweaked right:
[http://www.plantwithbloom.com/physics.html](http://www.plantwithbloom.com/physics.html)

(pretty fun if you want to see some plants get wrecked)

The value seems too low as it to get people purchase it. I'm considering
partnering with nurseries, but the build out to use their inventories would be
ambitious.

~~~
bochoh
I just checked out that link you posted. The idea seems like it could
introduce a certain "naturalness" to the gardens by resisting the temptation
to exactly plant in rows. "Organic" planting plans!
[https://ibb.co/nfnQh5](https://ibb.co/nfnQh5) (screenshot of one that I found
particularly interesting).

~~~
LastZactionHero
Yeah, gravity seemed like a good way to do circle packing with different
sizes. Also would be a way to place neatly in irregularly shaped (non-
rectangular) beds.

------
beeforpork
Instead of calling them worthless, enjoy that your side projects have no
deadlines! Say no to deadlines!

Having side projects is a luxury of true joy. I notice this all the time when
life(tm) tries to push side projects aside.

I love my side projects.

------
lynx234
It sounds like you want to build a successful business, but end up building
another coding project. I think that this is very common withs devs and the
vision involved in each (business vs project) is incredibly different.

For one, a good business does not have to be innovative, it just has to be
something you can sell. You might be able to make the most innovative AI to do
X, but if it is not useful to anyone, it won't matter how innovative it is.

It's fantastic for a coding project, just not for a business.

I think the big difference is doing the non-technical part well (sales,
marketing, branding, networking) and having the vision for what your business
should look like.

Personally, I like to read IndieHackers to see what others have done well. A
lot of it tends to be overcoming technical challenges and then business side
work. Seems like you can handle the technical challenges!

~~~
AstralStorm
The 3D printer repair one seemed like a straightforward small business.
However it is a very small or local market - hobbyists tend to know how to fix
them on their own and big businesses get support plans from manufacturers. Not
impossible though.

The bloom app could be either improved or even pivoted. Quite promising, but
unless it becomes a real business or is really the best of is class it can
easily be cloned and undercut.

The "smart" watch of this kind litters the Kickstarter for example... and it
is too nerdy to scale.

Others are random hacks. :)

~~~
LastZactionHero
Rentals (not repairs), to be clear, but man were they heavy to ship. I did
have a few rentals to bigger companies (Google, Samsung), sometimes it's
easier for them to rent.

Yeah, most of them are random hacks. I don't mean to imply they were all
intended to be businesses, though some were. More just meaning I have a lack
of direction and haven't produced much of real value, despite thinking I was.
After ten years, you realize the code and time spent starts to pile up.

------
WheelsAtLarge
I like your product ideas so I can see why you thought they had merit. But
burn this into your mind "the product is only the start." Marketing is what
most new company spend their time doing. Look at any new company and you'll
see that their marketing budget is by far larger than any other part of their
business. If you are lucky you might have a viral marketing episode but after
that marketing spending is what keeps the business going. So in essence
there's a cost for every customer you get. So, Sale price - (Marketing+
product costs) = profit. It better be positive to stay alive as a business.
Marketing also helps you refine your product to meet customer needs.

Also, to start, a product must meet your customer's needs not yours. I love
programming but I can tell you 99% of the people out there don't. If I want a
successful product it's much easier to hit the 99% rather than the 1%. It's a
numbers game. Also you have to tell customers why your product is great and
how it's going to make their lives better - real or not.

The media has conditioned most of us to think that all you need is a good idea
to be successful but they never tell you about the hard work it took to get to
be successful. A product is not a business. A business is so much more. As a
business owner you have to deal with, marketing, taxes, payroll, hr, leases,
unhappy employees (because they rather do anything than work one more day) and
on and on. Your goal is to make the business profitable enough to have those
chores done by someone else so you can focus on what you like or at least get
someone to finance you to do it. Read "The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small
Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber." It's old
but the wisdom it provides is timeless. All startup wannabes' need to read it.

Given that you can come up with good ideas and produce a working prototype you
might want to patent and licence your product. There you only need to figure
out who might want to license it and work towards selling the idea to them.
Good luck!

------
sushiogoto
The amount of side projects you've gotten off the ground is really impressive!

Something that's been invaluable to me has been coming up with a goal
hierarchy -- an idea taken from Angela Duckworth's Grit. It's helped me focus
where I direct my energy both professionally and personally. Maybe it could
help you decide what to do next, and show you how your projects thus far tie
together.

------
dukedougal
I'm now up to 20 years of - I don't say side projects - but real attempts to
build something people want.

Still trying...... it hurts.

But theoretically you only need one to succeed, right?

One day I hope Andrew Warner from Mixergy will want to interview me about "my
success" and I'll have a tale that will amaze him of how hard I tried for how
long before finding "the one".

------
pfarnsworth
Doing side projects because you think it will make you money is probably the
worst way to do it. Or at least have almost no expectations of making money.

You do side projects because it's interesting to you and you want to learn.
And maybe you can leverage what you learn into getting a job doing something
that really interests you. Chances are much greater that you will make a lot
more money getting a better job through a side project than you will from the
side project itself.

~~~
UK-AL
By that logic side projects should just be stripped down to their novel bits
to learn from and that's it.

Otherwise you'll just be writing non-novel web code over and over and not
learn anything from that.

------
akanet
I would suggest thinking harder about making money, not less. I think these
projects represent a half measure between _really_ trying to make money, and
having fun. Real, profitable side projects cum businesses are usually much
more boring. You may enjoy a talk I gave at Dropbox about how to start a side
business without quitting your day job:
[https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0](https://youtu.be/J8UwcyYT3z0)

~~~
codazoda
Great talk, enjoyed it. Maybe because it's exactly what I wanted to hear.
Hopefully it's a good idea.

------
dlwdlw
There's a certain disconnect in that the author seems to require and at least
want validation in terms of business success while selling himself as a 'true
artist' interested only in making things.

Here's something unintuitive for engineers about successful entrepreneurs,
they're usually not very curious. Seeing the world in black and white rather
than in color creates tunnel vision and focus. However many engineers in the
bay area don't see themselves as engineers in the traditional sense of the
word but some new combination of hacker-artist-technologist-elite. It's
unintuitive because many bay-area engineer feel undervalued and that this
mythos is bolstered by the success of people they actively look down on.

So many engineers think that they are special snowflakes via: "I'm so smart
and curious, I get bored so easily b/c I learn so fast. I need to constantly
be learning and creating." They fall into the trap of valuing breadth over
depth (as depth has diminishing returns to time-spent) that they ironically
never become an expert in anything to a point where their expertise is truly
unique.

It takes a certain amount of focus and thus lack of curiosity to practice one
kick a millions times vs a million different kicks. The expertise often comes
at the cost of an uninteresting and single-direction life. Wether this is
better or worse than sampling all the pre-packaged things (things like TED
talks are the hedonistic equivalent of sex/drugs/food) that life has to offer
is up to the individual.

In the Bay, the jack-of-all-trades think of themselves as master-of-all-trades
while following to the letter online-recipes for success and wondering why
they aren't a michelin start restaurant. Specialization puts you in a sparse
enough zone where your thoughts can actually be unique.

* A curious life with specialization is possible though if the specialization is abstract enough. Specialization can also be built by following your true voice of curiosity rather than having it be influenced by social and monetary pressures. You can say that many youtuber for example followed their true voice, learning some video editing, learning to be humorous to make up for lack of academic success, and managed to be lucky b/c youtube was created. Most people stamp out their inner voice because 99% of the time, you'll end up specialization in something that can't create value that is directly linked to USD. Teaching is one example where the payoffs are so far down the road that they are inadequately compensated for what they do. (I'm ignoring the the majority of US teachers who are often losers on power trips)

~~~
FLUX-YOU
>They fall into the trap of valuing breadth over depth (as depth has
diminishing returns to time-spent) that they ironically never become an expert
in anything to a point where their expertise is truly unique.

Go look at some hilariously long job requirements and tell me there is not an
economical reason for breadth-over-depth engineers.

Following a specialization is risky. Going after unique expertise is risky (it
probably isn't unique anyway, just rare). These are true for tech because
everything moves so quickly. You don't hear about the people that tried to
specialize and failed to do so. You hear a bit more about people who
specialized but the company/committee responsible for the tech decides to
deprecate it.

~~~
TheCowboy
It's also a slightly condescending and forced narrative when the pieces are
examined.

Pursuing depth in knowledge isn't synonymous with a lack of curiosity just by
definition.

People should probably also consider taking a break from quoting Fight Club
and attacking people for "thinking they are special snowflakes" when making
generalizations. It is not an argument that contributes much to a discussion
and seeks to strip people of dignity.

------
ghostbrainalpha
I like what you got started on Caffeine. But how long would you say you spent
on that? If it was more than 1 month, than that might be the start of your
problem.

If that came together quickly, why did it stop? I need a tool to help me quit
caffine. If this had a daily tracker, with little questions designed to assess
my withdrawl and alert fullness, I would love to give you $5 a month for 2-3
months while I used your tool to help me gradually get off caffeine.

~~~
dennislemenace
I made a similar tracker, let me know what you think, and what additional
features you think would be helpful for someone that is interested in lowering
their caffeine consumption like yourself.

[https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/cucuso/caffeine-
tracker/i...](https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/cucuso/caffeine-
tracker/index.html)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I love yours as well. I drink an embarrassing amount currently. 2-3 coffee
drinks and 4-5 sodas throughout the day.

I'm terrified that if I cut anything, my productiveness will suffer. I didn't
even realize how much these drinks were overlapping before seeing these
trackers, which is a good first step.

The number 1 thing I would like would be some type text message question I
received every couple hours throughout the day. The question would just ask
how sleepy I am. I would respond with a 1-5 based on how awake I am.

Then my alert fullness could be charted along with the caffeine in my body to
see if they are even matching up. The app could then suggest which drink I
could cut out, and suffer the least.

~~~
dennislemenace
Thank you so much! I really appreciate the feedback. That sounds like a great
idea I will work on that functionality the coming days and keep you posted. I
did that yesterday from reading your post.

------
chasb
"Building the correct product" is a good way to put it. If you want a shot at
a building a business, a good strategy is to make something people want, a la
YC.

If you do that, "marketing" is just telling people who have a certain problem
that you can help them.

For a lot of products, basic documentation is excellent marketing. What is
this? What does it do? Who is it for? Why is it better than XYZ?

------
ensiferum
All I can say is "winners never quit, quitters never win but those who never
win and never quit are idiots" I've also put over 10 years into side projects
with practically no success. Makes me think that maybe I would have been
better off socializing or something than rather than wasting my time on shit
ppl don't want.

------
cyberferret
In over 30 years of being a software developer, I think I have probably
created more than a thousand apps that have been used in the 'real world',
from tiny command line utilities to major ERP systems.

About a hundred or so have been used in businesses to make money and improve
efficiency, and while I earned money writing those systems, it was a tiny
fraction of what the actual value of those systems could have been.

(One example: I wrote a charter booking system for a local bus company back in
the early 2000's. Total billings was about $10K. The owner of the company came
to me after 10 years of using my system to thank me and say that my software
helped to improve his $1M turnover company by around 10% with booking
efficiency. That is $100K/year for 10 years = $1M productivity improvement for
$10K!)

I have had a couple of apps that could have gone BIG - One was in the early
90's when I wrote an app to build and organise armies for Warhammer 40,000. I
released it on a couple of WH40K forums and got a TON of great feedback, but
the app had a few Games Workshop copyrighted images in it, so they rightfully
sent me a 'cease and desist' letter that was actually quite nice and
recommended I remove the copyrighted elements only.

I decided that I would just can the whole project. Bear in mind this was the
first app I knew of to automate the army building, tracking points and
printing character sheets out. There are a ton of them that have come out
since then which are great, but I always wonder 'what could have been' and if
my pride was just some form of self-sabotage?

Anyhow - looks like the OP has got his perspective right - focusing on life
and his new born son. I find that now I am older, doing stuff like spending
time with family or playing my guitar is far more attractive than coding. I
don't regret the time I spent on 'dead' projects though... Everything is
simply a learning experience.

~~~
dilemma
>That is $100K/year for 10 years = $1M productivity improvement for $10K!

There are two parts of the equation here: [His business] + [Your software] =
[Value]. Your software alone, meaning when it is not in use by his business,
is not worth $1M over 10 years. It is worth $0. His business is what gave your
code value.

------
icicilvuuu
You should try to publish some code for a change, as open source. You can keep
improving your skills but without having to worry about making money (thats
what your job is for) and getting help/input from the community

~~~
rkuykendall-com
> getting help/input from the community

I don't think this is any more likely than a financial success. I have 24
github repos for side projects, and have only had one issue created.

------
Cshelton
Others have said build a better mousetrap, but that isn't your problem.

You just need to solve somebodies problem. It could even be yours. The one
that stood out to me was identifying which pet is at your door. It sounds like
that was a problem (probably pretty minor...?) that you wanted to solve
yourself. Show people how you solved it, and others might comment on it and
say, "That's really cool! Can you make me one?", or offer some new feature
idea that would make them say it's really cool. Boom! First customer. Hell,
don't even tell them you made it, see if they ask you where you got it!
Basically find a need or want from somebody else for something you find fun.
People like cool things.

An example of something to probably not do again would be the Boulder tubing
thing. Was it a problem you or others had? The flow rate can be visualized by
looking at Boulder creek, which runs through much of Boulder, and by going
outside... which it's almost always nice anyway ;) So I don't see how it would
solve any problem you had even.

------
nyxtom
Building a business is a lot more work than hacking on some fun ideas. There
is significant risk, often little chance of a payoff, and it consumes
everything in your life. IMHO there's nothing wrong with working for other
people from time to time and being apart of a community of engineers. That
being said, I have had the privilege of helping build a few startups and it
involves a number of people. So if you are truly interested in building a
successful startup, you need to do with with other people.

As an aside, these sound like awesome projects and it sounds like you
accomplished your goals of creating and learning from new experiences! I
wouldn't call them worthless but rather adventures! That 3D printed watch is
neat, I've been trying to come across a new kind of PC for the year 2020 and
beyond which acts as a hub. There are all sorts of exciting stuff on the
horizon that you can continue to explore like WiGig and beyond. Don't give up!

------
chrisco255
As many have said, there's nothing wrong with cash-less side projects. I
wouldn't call them "worthless". You have learned valuable skills and you have
kept your mind malleable enough to learn new skills. That's invaluable as a
software/hardware developer.

I really enjoy following
[https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/) for inspiration
and ideas about money-making side projects.

If your goal is to make money, then you have to look at the value your product
provides. What is valuable? Could be entertainment or attention (your average
consumer application). Or you could build a product that saves time and solves
business problems.

I would argue that consumer apps and products are tougher to compete in.
Business problems? Those will never go away. And businesses are almost always
willing to spend a $1 if it saves them $2 or more.

------
gwbas1c
I got married and had a child. That solved the problem for me!

------
iknowicouldturn
Good on you for doing so many side projects. I barely get started on mine.
Give up/stop way too quickly.

------
jstelly
I think I would give this advice to just about anyone who is trying to follow
their interests and build a career at the same time:

It just sounds like you enjoy learning. That is great, but it sounds like you
also want a career.

If you want to find similar happiness in a career as you do with learning
you'll need to decide to enjoy making things that are valuable to others. It
may be that you already enjoy this; otherwise you'll have to train yourself to
be happy when others find your work valuable. If you can do that you shouldn't
have much trouble building a career given the skills you already have.
Learning to work with other people will dramatically increase the number of
potentially valuable things you can create so you should also pursue that (as
you've already surmised).

------
jondubois
I can relate to this. I'm in my 8th year and $0 so far. I only did 3 projects
though. All based on open source work. My first took 3 years. Second one took
1 year and I spun it off into my current one which I've been working on for
almost 4 years.

Things have started to look up recently. For years it looked like everything
was going against me: Competitors kept coming up with products that got tons
of attention and were shaking things up towards a different path. But now I
feel that something changed and some opportunities are appearing all at once

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
Just a quick note: competition should not deter you but empower you. Any
successful product will bring competition. Your job is to make sure your
product is better and sell better than your competition. Giving up is not an
option.

------
dakrootie
What Mizza said: "Realize that you are an artist." What perfect, elegant
statement. And so very true!

I'm a professional artist and have been earning 50-100% of my living through
my art for about 20 years. I sold a publishing company I co-founded about 5
years ago and was so burned out, bitter, and over the art world that I went
through a devastating creative slump that took 3.5 years to dig my way out of.

It was the first time in my life I didn't create art in some form daily. I was
convinced my creative talents were either atrophied or dead when business idea
after business idea either failed or were abandoned.

I was fortunate, however, to have the ability to take several years off and
just tinker. Once the burden/responsibility of creating solely for monetary
gain was lifted, everything changed.

I would say, "Let me build this idiotic thing I'm thinking about today!" The
sillier the idea, the more I welcomed it because, after all, I'm not an artist
anymore and my career is over.

Just the process of saying "f-it" and trying damn near anything has turbo-
charged my creativity. So much so, that I feel the way I did when I was a
child.

When you completely relax, get your mind out of your own rear end, and just
try neat - albeit meaningless - crap, amazing things can happen.

The point is not the failed side project! The point is all the beneficial
things you learned/solved for/figured out to make something cool. They stay
with you and will benefit you in ways you can never, ever expect.

Recently, I decided I wanted a vertical clothesline. Stupid, right? Something
nobody would ever buy. (Oh well.) I have a very shady back yard and wanted the
ability to move my clothes to whichever point in my yard had the most sunlight
given the time of day. Just the process of figuring out how to get an entire
load of laundry quickly onto this contraption and then have it fold down into
nothing when not in use was an intense creative exercise...especially because
I have no engineering background.

I could go on and on about how side projects with no hope of monetary gain
saved my grits.

(Love this community...finally something on which I can offer "expert" advice.
;) )

------
incan1275
I would say don't be too hard on yourself. It's difficult to find something
you're passionate about and have it practically used by many people.

The best thing you could do is actually work on side projects related to your
paid work. Come up with an idea, prototype it, demo it and convince your
boss/peers that it's something beneficial for you or the company. Many obvious
examples where a lot of successful applications first came up as someone's
side project at work.

------
sigi45
I think that i'm only as good as i'm right now because i do things like side
projects. Or i'm good because i'm someone who is doing side projects, whatever
:)

------
porlune
I think the payout for these activities is the honing of your skill set.

Some of those projects still have potential (Zookeeper) to earn some ROI.

I would, instead of giving up on all of these, pick one that you think has the
most promise, and develop it until you have a solid prototype.

Your market fit doesn't always come immediately, it may take you years of
focus and stress.

What Mizza says is very true as well, you are an artist. So I think you should
build your masterpiece.

~~~
AstralStorm
Some people's masterpieces are a colossal waste of time. Not everyone can make
a hit even if they are doing the exact same thing.

Also quite a few masterpieces were just buried or hidden away. And even more
masterpieces are work of easy more than a single person really.

------
makecheck
Side projects are better compared with other investments in your skills, such
as taking classes.

If you "need" them to go somewhere, you need to start on a commercial path.
Arguably, models like the App Store (while certainly flawed in many respects)
do provide at least an _option_ for hacking a project into a viable product
without necessarily needing a full startup and investors, etc.

------
giarc
>Marketing: The worst. I’m bad at it and it just does not interest me.
Building the correct product and learning to sell it is a clear area for me to
improve.

Why improve? There are lots of people out there with marketing skills looking
for side gigs. Find a co-founder that is willing to do the marketing, customer
acquisition side.

~~~
xur17
Any recommendations on where to find people like this? I have the same issue
as the GP.

~~~
xxr
I'd look around for startup-networking meetups in your area. I've been to
Seattle Startup Drinks on a number of occasions, and there are plenty of more
"business-side" people that show up looking exactly for us--I didn't even have
any interesting ideas to share, but when they heard I was a dev, I was
instantly one of the most popular people there.

------
Brightwise
Ask yourself what your motives are. Did you post to fish for compliments? Are
you depressed/overworked and want sb to advise you changing your life? You
know best. Ask yourself what makes you happy. How do you feel about what you
do? If you love it, just keep pursuing and others will also do and spend on
it.

------
zitterbewegung
You may think those are worthless but it proves that you can ship products. I
struggle with shipping also.

------
CoreXtreme
For me ambitious side project require lot more money, time and focus which I
could never afford while working at some company. That's was my primary
motivation behind starting my own company. Don't shy away from business
opportunities.

~~~
segmondy
How did you learn and how did you handle sales & marketing?

------
bootcat
I am almost in the same boat. I kind of feel, that I did not make it big
considering the amount of time i spend. If it worked on freelancing, I would
have made more. But i still think, perseverance would pay. We may be down but
not out !

------
nurettin
A few of the projects could benefit from aggressive marketing tactics such as
email campaigns and cold calls.

On the other hand, why pursue customers when you could be programming an
android game?

This seems to be the general tone of this article.

------
justboxing
> LocalFavorite: A location-based tweet favoriting application. Made $10/mo
> until it was shut down by Twitter.

Curious. Why did Twitter shut it down? Was it from the updates to their API
Usage TOS? Or something else?

------
nathan_f77
This is very familiar. There's nothing we can do except keep trying. Most of
the time you don't even make any mistakes to learn from, you're just not one
of the lucky ones.

------
procedural_love
Hey Zach, I'm in a similar boat to you, although less prolific. I read your
post as saying "I'm trying to figure out what to do next", and this is some
food for thought in that regard. Personally, moving forward I intend to do
what you call a "project deep dive", but from a slightly different angle.

There was another highly upvoted post on HN last week titled "Things I’ve
Learned from Reading IndieHackers" [0]. The article itself had a lot of
interesting advice, distilled from interviews with people who had taken side
projects and turned them into profitable businesses.

In the comments, soneca had some insightful additions [1]. And we are
increasingly in an attention-driven economy [2]. But while attention is being
widely harvested through exploiting addictive tendencies [3], that does not
motivate me. Reading Hooked [4] was interesting, but also terrifying.

For me, bringing this together means my course of action is as follows: Build
an audience around content which enriches the lives of people. Way easier said
than done. And some may write it off as hopelessly naive.

But while Facebook and friends scour the dopamine landscape for user
attention, building an audience around long-term content that challenges and
enriches the lives of people seems wonderfully contrarian to me. And it's in
that contrarian tenet that I find solace. Take the slow and the long road, and
you can build a sustainable source of value.

In the grand scheme of things, spending a few years of my life creating short
interactive games which explore philosophy and society is the path that makes
the most sense to me. Like I said, food for thought in your journey forward.

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468)

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468#unv_14804395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14803468#unv_14804395)

[2]: [https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our-
feeds-e86511...](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-enemy-in-our-
feeds-e86511488de)

[3]:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

[4]: [https://www.amazon.ca/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-
Product...](https://www.amazon.ca/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products-
ebook/dp/B00P8B75Z4)

------
navalsaini
I tried to look at each of your ideas to see if they solve any of my problems
- they don't. If they, I did be happy to use them and provide more feedback.

~~~
navalsaini
typo corrections: if they did, I be happy ...

------
dmalvarado
The titles and purpose for these side projects are hilarious! I bet the author
learned a lot though. Perhaps it's not a total waste...

------
empath75
If you learned something, it wasn't worthless.

~~~
emodendroket
Well, sure, but if you're not enjoying it, slogging through tons of side
projects isn't the best use of your limited time on this Earth.

~~~
vacri
When every side project is wildly different and requires learning considerable
new skills, there's clearly something else going on besides unenjoyable work
just to bootstrap a business.

~~~
emodendroket
Maybe. I'm just responding to what seem to be the OP's own sentiments that
he's wasted a decade.

------
Keeeeeeeks
He should do something with crypto that's novel/tongue-in-cheek enough for
people to want to send him money

------
asah
interesting - I'm also a hacker (CTO-type) between gigs and looking to
collaborate on technical projects. Hit my profile and connect on linkedin.

I'm pretty good at marketing and making small-medium money, happy to either do
it or teach-to-fish...

~~~
segmondy
can I ping you? I do like to learn marketing and how to fish and possible
collaboration too.

------
la_fayette
hmm. bloom seems to really amazing, everbody with a garden might want to
use.would be cool if this works in europe also...

------
cowpig
> Find collaborators

take a look at The Recurse Center

www.recurse.com

------
sghiassy
I share the same affliction haha

------
pnathan
do you want to make money or do you want to hack?

you need to answer that for yourself.

~~~
segmondy
why can't he do both?

------
Ologn
As he says, he previously had a number of priorities - learning new things,
making cool projects, as well as trying to make money. If he's unsatisfied
with monetary returns, he has to put more focus on making money. Because even
if he decides to prioritize that right now, it still will probably take some
time.

He throws out some ideas of how to solve this problem

> Find Collaborators

If I was him I would not look for people that I would call collaborators at
this point. What would be helpful is talking to people working in the same
space. If he is building a Javascript application, he should talk to other
people who are building their own Javascript application. They'll teach you
things, you'll teach them things, you can bounce ideas off each other. Start
on that level. Then at some point in the future you both might want to
collaborate on something.

Also, not that it would help in making money in the short term, but you might
want to look at active, cool FLOSS (open source) projects that are out there.
See what bugs people are reporting, and see if you can patch them and send a
pull request. Perhaps you are a FLOSS user and notice a bug yourself which you
can try to patch. This helps you learn how to collaborate with people outside
of work.

> Project Deep Dive

This makes the most sense of all the ones he says. He did a 3d printer, a
Javascript application, an Android app, a smartwatch etc. Focus on one
project. Or at least one field - build up expertise writing Javascript
applications, or designing smartwatches etc. Expertise in an area will help
you - especially in a new or fairly new field.

> Marketing

Marketing will bring in users to your product even as you're polishing off the
rough edges. Depending on what it is it's not hard - either be really clever
and get some free users, or pay a few cents for each user who clicks an ad and
comes to your website and downloads your app. Improve your product responding
to consumer demand.

Once closing thought is to have two side project tracks going - a money-
focused one, and one not focused on money. Spend a few weeks/months on a
project that will try to make money. Also plan ahead - if the project is a
Javascript application, decide that if it fails you will build another
Javascript application as your next money-making project attempt, and will
reuse code/knowledge from your first attempt in the second one. Then - after
release version 1, fixing bugs, making improvements etc., if it is not going
anywhere or you feel a lull - go to track two, learn something new and do a
cool project on it. Every few weeks you can shift between the money-making
project track, and the learning/fun track. The one difference is you can
abandon projects on the fun track as soon as they stop being fun, whereas the
money you tend to work and work on something until you decide that your MVP is
dead and you must pivot.

------
draw_down
I never really tried to build a side project of any real substance. Sometimes
I wrote libraries or other things to better understand a language I was
learning, or something like that.

I like to cook, I think the physicality of it is satisfying after dealing with
computers all day. And as time goes on, the problems that get solved with code
seem more and more frivolous. Though I guess you could argue I should try to
change that instead of posting about it.

------
vacri
> _I’ve learned a lot, but what’s the point without application?_

An entertaining hobby? People who do archery for a hobby don't bemoan that
they've spent another Saturday shooting arrows at targets without making a
cent, and that their club dues are just wasted.

