
Ask HN: How to become ramen profitable - smithmayowa
<p><pre><code>  How do I properly research a life style web app niche that can become ramen profitable, enough for me to live on, until I figure out what next to do with my life.
  Getting a job is out of it as there are no much tech opportunities where I live, and I have pretty much lucked out severally on the freelancing side of things.</code></pre>
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a3n
Never been there, never done that, but it seems one of the things you could be
doing is to put up the most interesting ideas you have on sites, just to gain
the operational experience and to see what it takes to transfer an idea, any
idea, into served bits.

Sidenote: as for "ramen profitable," for anyone in the situation where they're
eating ramen or similar to survive, don't. Ramen's expensive and not great for
you.

Buy dry black beans and vegetables. Soak the beans over night (rinse a few
times during the process), then boil the beans the next day as you cut up
carrots, peppers and onions. Saute the peppers, onions, garlic and similar,
wash and cut up the carrots, saute with the rest just to have some place to
put them. Other vegetables too if you like.

Pre-heat the oven to 300 F.

Rinse the beans once more, dump everything in a big oven pot (which you bought
with the money you saved from not eating ramen and going under-nourished). Add
about two cups of water, half cup of wine that can be drunk, or quarter cup of
apple cider vinegar if you don't have wine. Or neither. Whatever spices you
have.

Cook in oven about 3 to 4 hours. This will feed you for days. 16 oz black
beans costs $1 here; the above bean stew costs in total $5 US or less. And
there's actual nutrition in there, as opposed to ramen.

~~~
Govindae
Assuming you have access to an oven. In my brief stay in Silicon Valley, I
lived in an office in an industrial building with only a hot pot to cook with.

~~~
bobabooey02
A great thing about the internet is it's decentralization. If you don't have
tons of capital or income, you might consider moving to somewhere with a
lower​ cost of living and making your app there. You can host it nearly
anywhere with an internet connection until you hit a global scale, at which
point you should be able to go to a more expensive area.

------
mattbgates
Sounds like what most of us want. I would like to be at the point where if my
job laid me off... I can still pay my mortgage and bills and not have to
worry.

I would love to develop that saas web app that many people use and it is
enough for me that I could even quit my day job. And sure enough, I'm working
on it too.

The solution is this: Find a common problem people have. Solve it. Charge for
it. Market it. Sell it. Prosper.

If the solution already exists and someone is charging for it, than find a way
to make it better (and possibly cheaper though this is not always necessary).

How I usually do this is: I have a problem. I want to solve it. If I have a
problem, it is more than likely that others have the same problem too. It is
almost unlikely that NO ONE but me has that same problem.

For example, I wanted a place where I could easily create a web page on the
Internet, set my own URL, change the way the page looks, and share it with
others. The result was a free web app I developed called MyPost (
[https://mypost.io](https://mypost.io) ). I shared it on here and on Twitter a
few times... and now the world is using it daily. I've seen it being used in
places as far as Russia and the Philippines. I had gotten the idea from
another web app that .. was basically lacking a lot of what I wanted to do. So
I created my own.

As far as doing your own research... sign up for a website like:
[http://oppsdaily.com/](http://oppsdaily.com/)

Don't tackle every problem, but seek to get in touch or turn it into your own.
OR just use to get ideas about problems people have.

You can also navigate to websites like ProductHunt and get ideas... sure,
products already exist, but there is nothing wrong with re-creating them,
making them better, etc. After all.. not everyone drives a Chevy. There is
Ford, Toyota, Audi, Acura, etc. Not everyone uses T-Mobile. There is Sprint,
Verizon, AT&T, etc.

It is illegal to copy a product outright where it looks EXACTLY the same. It
is not illegal to make a clone of another web app. Good luck. Always be
working on something.. you'll get to where you want to be eventually.

------
timfrietas
_Getting a job is out of it as there are no much tech opportunities where I
live, and I have pretty much lucked out severally on the freelancing side of
things._

Remote work is still popular and if you freelanced enough, don't you have some
good references or success stories to tell?

I'm sorry i cannot answer your core question, but I would not discount the
ability to continue working as a freelancer until you figure out what the
right answer is.

------
owebmaster
Local news / content with ads. Easy day-by-day work, big rewards in the long
term.

~~~
masukomi
i'm pretty sure most if not all the evidence is against you, seeing as the
small news outlets are all dying and the large (non-tv based) news outlets are
struggling to monetize.

~~~
owebmaster
Yep, but most of the small news outlets are dying because of a lot of one-
person side projects, blogs, fanpages or communities getting each a small
chunk of it ;)

------
anotheryou
side gigs, but they are annoying when you got something better to work on

