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Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?
323 points by gillis on April 27, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 502 comments
A thread similar to this was posted ~1 year ago by illdave. I think it's time for an updated 2014 version.

If you have any side projects that you've built and that you no longer have time for, list them here and let's see if others want to buy it from you.




I have a bunch of projects I built up which I consider "done" as far as I'm concerned, but at the same time they're basically free to run (AppEngine in the free tier) so I'm always reluctant to sell... I do wish there were people who wanted to take one of these and build them out to the "next level".

- http://www.tweepsect.com/ - Gets 300,000~600,000 pageviews per month (about 1/6 uniques), makes a couple hundred bucks from ads each month. Been around for almost 5 years.

- http://colorblendy.com/ - There's also a Chrome app (20k weekly users), website gets about 4,000~8,000 visits/month. I had some ideas for making a "Pro" edition with things like importing/exporting colors from/to CSS stylesheets. Probably need to do some more market research before diving into this.

- http://wedomainsearch.com/ - Few hundred visits per month, brand new (built several months ago). Fairly cool idea that is really valuable for founders/hobbyists, I use it all the time. Needs some love for promotion and monetization, though.

I love working on these little stand-alone projects (a few more here: http://shazow.net/, also my email address if you want to reach out), sometimes I wish I could just whip them out and sell them as a living but the code alone is never as valuable without putting in effort into growing the audience.


I'm not interested in buying any of them I'm afraid, but I just wanted to say that your website (shazow.net) and your projects are all very impressive. You have a readable style of writing and a good eye for simplicity.

Thanks for putting it out there :)


Thank you for the kind words!

I have a few more projects in the pipeline that I've been reluctant to publicize, but now I'm suddenly feeling more motivated, ha. :)


Do it!

Unless you're reluctant because they need a cleanup, in which case, do that, and then post in next month's thread ;)


You're the developer I want to be someday.

I realize that may sound weird. I'm ok with it.


Ha, thanks Chris! I hope you become the developer you think I am someday, and more. :)


Almost a Haiku, it is.


Hey Andrey, I was a paid member of SocialGrapple before it got acquired by Google, what has happened to it now?


Hi Thomas! My sincere apologies for letting you down with SocialGrapple. :(

Unfortunately not much happened with it. I joined Google to work on an in-house social analytics product, but most of it never launched. I've since left Google so I don't know what's going on in that department anymore.

I'm working on https://briefmetrics.com/ now, which is vaguely in the same space as SocialGrapple, sans the social for now. :) I'm considering introducing some social metrics into the email reports someday. I'm also working on splitting up the pieces of the project so that most of it can be open sourced and thereby guaranteeing some kind of continuity for loyal customers.


http://www.tweepsect.com/ - is blocked in Russia


These idiots banned a/the cloudflare endpoint.

[1] http://antizapret.info/index.php --- see for yourself (108.162.196.104)


This site is pretty interesting. Where do they get this data from? I'd think that banned site list is not published anywhere?


Oh, nevermind, I read it on their website. ISPs are just leaking these lists.


My work bans it too "Your request was categorized by Blue Coat Web Filter as 'Scam/Questionable/Illegal'."


i got an alert saying that too many tweeter queries can block you. Seems like a dangerous thing. what say?


In the graphic on the home page:

It erks me that different words 'stalkers' and 'stalking' are used to refer to the two parts of the graph, when there is no distinction between them.

Confused me that's all :)


Have you tried selling these on http://flippa.com


Nope. I feel Flippa is better for high-value domains and highly-ranked content sites. I don't feel that web applications get valued appropriately.


How much are you selling tweepsect for?


It's free to run, requires 0% maintenance or effort, and brings in money every month. Send me an email with a tempting offer and we'll talk. :)


Sent.


what do you run it on?


It's all front-end JavaScript running on the free AppEngine tier. Basically just static file hosting.


Out of interest, how is briefmetrics doing? Its a good concept, and nice clean report structure


Thanks!

The fundamental product I wanted to build is done, so it basically runs itself while I do business development and sales. Eventually I'll need to dive back into the code to add more features I have on the roadmap, but I work best when I "switch modes" for spans of several weeks at a time so it may be a while. :)

The current revenue is about $250/mo. I've been trying to focus more on agencies with many clients and offering them custom-branded whitelabel emails reports for their customers. Making some progress on that end.

At the same time, as you can tell, I kind of have a habit of doing other random projects on the side, so things take longer than they should. :)


thats really cool. My first thought was that it could be useful for people like you with several side projects that they dont really spend a lot of time actively maintaining, to get 'at a glance' stats to see that things are ticking over. To that end, you could consider a multi domain plan, $18 for 3 domains or something.

I love projects like this, particularly because although the income seems modest, I frequently live in developing countries for long stretches, where $250/month trickling in pretty much pays for the necessities.


You're absolutely right about the pricing. Right now it's still in the "throw a number down on the front page and see if it sticks" stage of pricing. I'm still banging my head against the wall to find a better pricing scheme, but it will likely be similar to what you mentioned.

Here, I'll write it down just so I can get it out of my head. :)

* Hobby: $4/mo (paid yearly), limited to 1 site and 1 recipient

* Startup: $10/mo, unlimited sites, unlimited recipients

[Custom Branding]

* Freelance: $35/mo, custom branding, 10 sites

* Studio: $85/mo, custom branding, 25 sites

* Agency: $150/mo, custom branding, 50 sites

It's a lot of plans but maybe the two-bucket separation would be manageable. Or maybe I need to do a more fluid $4-5/mo/custom-branded site plan, but pay-per-use plans typically doesn't perform as well for non-developers.


Love the projects. Keep it up :)


http://brainy.io is a project i made that creates a complete API for you by inferring information from your Backbone code. it is a rapid prototyping tool.

the simple idea is that you create your front-end application without an API (using standard Backbone best practices). when you start your application, Brainy can inspect your routes and models and create an API for you.

future potential includes something like websocket support (syncing data), and out-of-the-box server side rendering. i have both of these working but not complete.

i'm not exactly looking to sell the project, but i'd love to appoint a new owner to the application. it has a lot of potential i just simply can't prioritize it right now. my email is in my profile if anyone wants to talk about it.

edit: i'm giving away something i put a lot of time in for free and i'm getting downvoted. why am i not totally surprised.


http://yuml.me

UML diagrams via a URL. 1,000,000 page views per year. We sell 2-3 enterprise licenses per year. Customers include Microsoft, Intel, Bose, Lockheed Martin and Yahoo.

Struggling to find the time & energy to turn this hobby into a stronger business.


Not interested in buying, just wanted to show you a little love. I've used yuml.me and it's great.


Thanks man :)


Used this also, you've got my love!


:)


Do Microsoft and Yahoo know you're for sale?


I doubt it, but it would probably be good for them if it meant more regular updates.


Have you set a price? Not sure how to monetize it but I like your traffic stats.


Not yet.

I also have some plans for monetizing further, but they need time or $$$.

Feel free to ping me tobin%tobinharris^com


Chain Reaction iOS/Android game: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chain-reaction-connect-dots/...

Makes ~$1500+ in revenue on a monthly basis. Pretty low maintenance, just add levels every other week to keep engagement (~2 hours a month of work). 2600+ reviews, average 4.5 stars.

Box It: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/box-it!-dodge-the-dots-free/...

Another game, jezzball clone. 200+ 4.5 stars. ~$300 per month revenue. Can be much bigger than it is.

Started Instamotor.com with my partners and we're selling b/c we'd rather take the money now and put it into Instamotor than wait every month to get incremental value.

email in profile.


Can you give me some kind of numbers on how much you would be willing to sell this game for? Besides Obj C, is there anything else one needs to know to manage the game?


How do you make money on Chain Reaction?


Any free app either has in-app purchases or advertisements. This app has both(you can just look at the app store listing and see this).


As Igglyboo mentioned, both advertisements and in-app purchases.


Or it's one of those rare but great open source ones.


I meant any free app that makes money, because he was asking how the app made money.


The Big Eat http://www.thebigeat.com

Menu and takeaway listings (mainly in the UK). Makes around $6,000 per year of Adsense. It's been fairly untouched since I started it in 2006. Has good pagerank for a lot of takeaway names. Costs are a Digital Ocean Droplet @ $5 a month = $60 per year.


Cool idea, and congrats on living the "passive income" dream! ;) One quick suggestion if you're interested: I found the white text on light background on pages like this one a bit tough to read: http://www.thebigeat.com/uk. (Also reduces the professional feel.) That one change would probably take just a few minutes. That said, with $6k in annual income, if I were you I would seriously consider getting some quotes to have a professional web designer give the whole site a facelift. I'm not saying it looks bad by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if a really polished, professional look had a noticeable impact on your bottom line, possibly paying for itself within a few years.

(If I didn't already have too many projects to work on, I would seriously consider making you an offer, but alas...)


Just out curiosity, how much are you expecting to get for a site like that? I really have not clue how to calculate something like this. Hope it's not rude to ask :)


Here is the problem with valuing a business like this... It's my business so I know that revenue has actually risen year-on-year since I set it up (and on just looking is actually $9,000 a year) So for me, I know that I couldn't take less than $40k for it. Since I'd never earn anything like that return on that amount of money elsewhere, even assuming revenue sits static for 5 years.

On the other hand, who in their right mind would pay that with nothing but some Adsense numbers and Google Analytics to go on. So to answer your question "What do I expect to get for it?" Nothing - I don't actually expect anyone to pay what I'd sell it for. And so I'll probably keep it forever.

The only situations that I can see panning out are

a) someone buying it for a brand (unlikely)

b) an established player buying it for the traffic and SEO reasons (a good move IMO)

c) someone with plans to monetize and/or grow it in different ways

or d) a fund is established which buys up all these scrappy little sites, monetizes and maintains them, and earns a steady 20% return for its investors.

I'd actually be very interested in working on d) if anyone wants to get in touch.


Option D is exactly what InternetBrands is[1]. In short they own VBulletin, a bunch of niche forums (eg Fitfreaks, a Honda Fit forum), paid listing sites (Teen Summer Camp) and buy out "medium" sites that have a predictable revenue stream that requires almost no code updates.

I interviewed there and it's pretty much an internet sweatshop, (read any Glassdoor review) and the sites run everything from LAMP to VB/Frontpage MS Access DB. They burn through employees at a quick clip and outsource everything to Romania and Mexico.

[1] http://www.internetbrands.com


Would you say CarsDirect is an exception to their standard practices? It seems like a reasonably high maintenance venture, but likely a profitable one, since they've captured a good chunk of the market.


sites like that are going for around 5-6k on flippa.com. might bget more because of the history. but usually around 10-12mo revenue.


Typically sites on Flippa.com sell for a multiple of 18 months profit. Sites that are selling for 5 figure sums or higher can be 2-3 years profit multiple. As with most things though, it's only really worth what someone else is prepared to pay. The domain might be more valuable to someone than the site for instance.


Just wondering. You say it is basically untouched, and it generates a fair amount of revenue by itself. Why would you sell it? Why not just let is be and get the income?


Presumably because the buyer was offering a high enough multiple of the annual revenue to be tempting.

I'm sure the seller would decline $6,000 and accept $600,000. The buyer would be looking to find a point in between that both buyer and seller were happy with.


I'm curious: how did you get over the chicken-and-egg problem when you launched this?

How did you seed it with restaurant menus in order to attract your first users? Was there (and when?) a tipping point when you had enough eyeballs that restaurants started to add their own menus?


I initially wanted to charge takeaways £20 a year to list their menus. No-one was interested. Over the entire life of the site I've probably had five people list a menu. I walked the streets of London and Manchester collecting menus, scanning them in and typing in all the details. It was shit. I then sent a personalised letter to each takeaway with a thumbnail of their menu asking them to register on the site and get a free promoted listing. Not one person did.

At some point I'll write a blog post about this. I still have virtually zero engagement with takeaway owners.


That's a fascinating insight Alex. Some businesses are just not ready to be helped...


I agree, very useful insight.


I worked on this concept for a school project [1] for the US market and I like the simplicity a lot. Are businesses pretty responsive in claiming their takeaways?

[1] http://imgur.com/GhLBvb4


They are completely unresponsive, at least in my experience.


Interesting. Is the community then driving content?


I think HN just knocked you offline!


Well, that's a lot of pent-up supply of side projects!

It seems like a natural buyer would be someone like a student who wants to kick the tires of the whole running a small business thing, but start with a better baseline than merely "from scratch", mitigating some market risks, as it were, and reusing existing code.

What I like about this is that rather than all the research and development going to waste, it's helping someone else. So if you want to start a new thing, you can try to buy the closest thing that's already there, and stand on the shoulders of the previous generation.

There's an idea for a market place lurking in there somewhere. not so much from "get the most cash for your side project", but from the "find a good use for your old work" angle. I have a couple of projects I want to offload myself, and I care more about them being put to good use than about finding the highest bidder or whatever.


I think this is the flip side of "business guy seeks technical co-founder". I would love to see a site that partnered up developers with marketers. I can't be the only developer that realizes that they suck at marketing.


Is it really that you suck at marketing, or that you'd just rather spend time coding/building? :) I totally agree with your comment either way.


Yep - I'd also love to see this


But a student has no money.


When I was student age, circa late 1990s, I had a few people I knew with money offer to set me up into an existing web business if I found something interesting to purchase. They didn't have the technical chops to run something, they knew I did, and they had the money. Friends, family, investors, there are numerous options for a younger person to pull this off - even more so if the sums aren't too crazy.


http://the.wubmachine.com, an automatic music remixing web + mobile app that I built a couple years ago. Still gets anywhere from 20-40k uniques/month. Has native iOS and Android clients, as well as the web app. Ads + in-app purchases generate a couple hundred bucks each month with nearly-zero maintenance, but I'm not sure I have the free time to keep it running indefinitely.

- Costs under $50 per month to run

- Generates anywhere from $200-$1200 per month, depending on the season (it gets big each December for some reason)

- 20,000-40,000 uniques each month

- native iOS and Android apps have ~10,000 installs each

If anyone happens to be interested, shoot me an email at hi@petersobot.com.


Wow, this is awesome! How does it work? Or, if you don't want to give away your secrets, how could one get started with mixing and transforming music like this?


Website Screenshots: http://www.bitpixels.com

Serves 40 million images a month. It can generate small thumbnails or large screenshots of full-length Web pages. It runs itself and I rarely touch it, but I don't have time to improve and monetize it.


Wow .. that is something I have been looking for quite some time. In the meantime I decided to make a custom solution, but yours seem to work way smoother.

- Do you cache images? If so, how long are they cached? - Are there any restrictions, beside adding the attribution link, for commercial usage?


Thank you. I cache images on App Engine. I have a simple API to force cache eviction (email me if you need it). There are no restrictions other than the attribution link.


40m images a month as a free service? How much is that costing you to keep up?


If you don't sell it, please open source this. :-)


Please email me traffic details and more info. Would be very interested in taking over, or working with you, on this project to grow it to that next level.


Do you make anything form it now? What are you hoping to get for it? - and what stack are you using?


It's two parts: An App Engine/Python for the UI and user registration, and a Linux server for image capturing (Python, Javascript, RabbitMQ, ...etc.). At first we used popular libraries like Phantomjs, but eventually had to write our own to scale better.

I'm experimenting right now with moving the image capturing code to an App Engine managed VM to simplify things and make it scale easier.


Which library are you using for image capture? Been using webkit2png ( https://github.com/AdamN/python-webkit2png/ ) for a personal project, but I'm interested to hear your experiences.


Could you mention why you stopped using PhantomJS? Also, how are you supporting flash?


Could you please elaborate on what your own implementation turned out to be?


How do you make money from it right now?


I don't yet. I needed a service like this a while ago and the existing ones were too expensive for my level of traffic, so I built one and then decided to open it up to others as well. That was years ago and it grew over time. I never got around to building a payment system for it. It was always something I wanted to do but never had enough free time to do it.


TuneFind -- http://www.tunefind.com/

Trailing Month, Google Analytics:

1.9 MM sessions, 1.2 MM users, 8.3 MM pageviews

Age - 9 years.

Database of ~60k song appearances in TV and movies.

Great SEO -- Google search for "<show_name> music"


I have experience with high traffic music sites. What price range would you be interested in?

Are all the songs user submitted or do you use content scrapers?


All songs are user submitted.

Send me a note from http://www.tunefind.com/contact and we can discuss.


http://mote.io

Turn your phone into a remote control for the web. Works with:

- Youtube - Spotify Web - Hype Machine - Vimeo - Pandora - Rdio - SoundCloud - Grooveshark - Plex - TuneIn Radio - Google Play - Twitch.tv - Last.fm

--------------------

http://22pixels.com

Photoshop download resources. 15,000 visits / month.

--------------------

http://rooster.am

Wake up call alarms personalized with Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc.

--------------------

Email me if interested: ian@meetjennings.com


I've always kicked around the idea of selling Tubalr, if anyone's interested shoot me an email(cjstewart88@gmail.com with an offer.

- URL: http://www.tubalr.com

- Age: 3 1/2 years

- Cost to run: $9

- Registered Users: 28,009

- It's been wrote about on sites like mashable, techcrunch, fast company, the next web, etc. .. it's been on the front page of hackernews and reddit. Google for "tubalr" to read around the web.

- Traffic has died down a lot because I haven't spent the time taking it to the next level... it needs to be mobile.

- 37,992 pageviews monthly

- Average time on site: 1 hr 5 minutes

Anyways, like I said, shoot me an email if your seriously interested. I'd love to make my time spent on the project pay off by helping me pay for student loans...


I feel this could be easily monetized, if you don't get a sale you should look into it for sure. iTunes have an affiliate system, and they have an API endpoint for search. You could simply have some links to purchase the latest album of the currently playing artists / just played artists etc.


I'm in a similar situation. I built a music site for a uni project, and have over 100,000 monthly page views but no real time to work on it.

Would love some funding, or for someone to take it over and help out with student loans.

Have you had any luck trying to sell it?


Is there any way to get in contact? I might be able to help.


I'll send you an email tomorrow. Is the email address on your profile correct?


Cody, I'm still sorry I couldn't have maintained the Android app for you. :/ I loved working on it but just balancing that out with school kicked my ass.


No worries man, hope everything is going great :)


I remember when it was first posted on Mashable. It was a great site, that I remember. I'm very suprised the traffic died down.


I saw this years ago having development updates on Forrst. Tubalr outlived its spawn-place.


*

webNES (http://webn.es) - A mobile NES emulator for the browser.

A finalist at the PennApps hackathon in 2014. It gained a lot of attention on social media (Youtube/Twitter/The Blogsphere) during the competition and has been gaining users ever since. Has nearly 300,000 uniques visitors and an average of 2,500-5000 page views daily. Also featured in many online news websites such as Lifehacker (http://lifehacker.com/webnes-plays-your-nintendo-games-in-a-...)

Contact me at jawerty210@gmail.com for more information


http://pitchpigeon.com

Press release platform for startups. Been around for a year, makes about $1k per month, all organically with zero maintenance. Still tons of potential but I am just way too busy with my main startup now, in a different space.

Contact me at yongfook@gmail.com if interested!


Email sent


https://www.chemical.io/ - Lab management made easy

Chemical.io is a free cloud based lab management system that lets you catalogue chemicals using a smartphone and automatically re-order chemicals when running low.

It's an excellent domain and the software is very polished so it would be a great investment for prospective buyers.

I'm also open to offers on http://www.libramatic.com/. It's a cloud based library cataloging solution that lets you catalog books by scanning the ISBN using a smartphone's camera. It's currently in use in over 1,000 libraries and has a number of paying customers on monthly and yearly subscriptions.

Feel free to hit me up at s@chemical.io


Just FYI chemical.io seems to be vulnerable to Heartbleed. https://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#www.chemical.io


Thank you for making me realize a bug in my cache implementation (test author) </OT>


Thanks for the heads up, I'll look into it


Would mind telling me how you're decoding barcodes from the images? This is a problem I'm currently working on using js/canvas. Did you use ZXing?


Yep, Libramatic uses ZXing


Sites By Hand https://sitesbyhand.com/

$150k rev last 12 months Full project management platform to manage clients & contractors (developers, designers, erc.) with auto-quoting proposals, signing and paying online, and tracking and monitoring the progress of your site as it's being built -> 80% done with the platform & built in Rails.

Was doing this while at Stanford, but school is overwhelming and I can't keep working on it. Really promising opportunity to build the first scalable custom web service company.

Rights to existing clients, brand, full code repository with $100k worth of development hours, portfolio, multiple domains, trademark, and tons of infrastructure to execute rapidly on projects.


Check out ShowKnow: a web app that lets you create Khan Academy-style videos, edit them, and upload them to YouTube, all completely in the browser. No users, but everything is functional. Try it!

[https://www.showknow.com/] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXz8oFOsaGE]


I was a developer/founder once. I partnered with another developer, and we made a tool that would track the ranking of your site in regards to certain search terms, to a.) figure out whether your SEO guy was worth the money, and b.) figure out which SEO tricks worked best.

We weren't really making any money ,so I sold out my half of the company to a business guy. My former dev partner then went on with the business guy to make it a half-million a year business with about 4 hours a week of maintenance work.

Of course, I truly believe it wouldn't have gone anywhere if we didn't bring in a business dev guy, and I can't see any reason in retrospect why I should have expected their business to do so well once I left, but...

Seller beware! :-)


Seller beware, yes, but I also think developers with ideas to sell are a dime a dozen - without execution to make it successful/profitable business ideas by themselves are not worth much.


What changed after the new business partner showed up? How did it transform from basically breaking even to half of a million a year?


http://www.learnpython.org + the rest of my tutorials

I generate quite a lot of revenue for them from ads (about 500,000 hits per month), but they have so much potential and I don't have time to invest.


I recently started learning python and of course got to your site. Wanted to say thanks for putting it up. I didn't actually end up using it much so far.. my impression was that there are still kinks and usability issues, but definitely lots (!) of potential. You should be proud.


Oh man I love your tutorials! They're such an excellent resource. I would love to host them. Can you forward the revenue from the last 12 months?

purchase at bernsteinbear dot com


I would be extremely happy to take over, would you please email me some stats of the website/revenue so we can discuss. contact at iphonophile.fr thanks


Hey Ron, interested in the site details and seeing if we can work out a deal. Please email me traffic stats and revenue info


This is interesting, do you have a ballpark figure you'd accept? Feel free to email me, contact is in profile.


Hi - looks interesting. Can you forward revenue last 12 months and what you think it's worth


Could you please email me basic revenue and traffic stats. My email address is in my profile.


Can you send me 12mo traffic and revenue information. Email is in the profile. Thanks


I might be interested. Can you please email me basic revenue and traffic data?


sure


I'd love to get information also - my email is in my profile. Thank you!


Why don't you hire someone to do it if you don't have the time? Just curious.


Because I feel like it doesn't make sense.

Are you up for it?


http://controlc.com - I still believe in the project but I simply dont have the bandwidth to get into desktop development for osx/win any more.

http://tinywhois.com - A pretty simple whois site that can do lookups by url, ie http://tinywhois.com/ycombinator.com or http://tinywhois.com/8.8.8.8


I like the design for tinywhois. It looks great. How many queries can it handle per day?


https://deckepic.com - Cards Against Humanity meets your social graph. With a few clicks, generate a custom tailored deck for you and your friends based on Facebook data. Download a completely free version or pay for a printed version of your deck.


This is awesome. I was actually thinking of making a custom deck for my friends, but it would have been too time-consuming. But now...

Maybe you could start charging a modest sum for downloading the complete PDF file? I know I would totally pay for that.


That's not a bad idea. Wish there was more time to give it the love it needs.


Do you have a ballpark price in mind? What contact information do you have?


That's awesome! I'm actually working with a kind of CAH version, could be interested in buying it. What do you want for it?


This is cool, and I wanted to pay you money, but you only ship to the US :(


https://ceti.us - a crypto currency market analytics site I've been working on slowly for about 6 months. The analytics are inspired by physical modeling. I'm a full time aerospace engineering and astrophysics student that will be starting a PhD next year. The website could be monetized but I haven't the slightest clue about the best way to do that, nor do I have the time to figure it out. I literally only make improvements to the site out of necessity when my BTC growth plateaus...

Some screenshots: http://i.imgur.com/ToA1xSy.png http://i.imgur.com/33oT24C.png http://i.imgur.com/U2Gx5ak.png

Stats: < 20 active users average session: 3hrs 30minutes bounce rate: 24%

Note: If you sign up for it, not all features are available to new users.

I'm also open to taking on rapid programming contracts if you need something built in the span of a few days. However, it'll have to wait a few weeks until finals are over.


I'm making a magnetic shield for the board game, Settlers of Catan, so that all the pieces clip together nicely: http://facebook.com/hexi.glass


http://RVmenu.com is hotels.com for RV rentals. High conversion rate but very little traffic. Needs lots of SEO love.


Related, maybe an area to expand into: I've always thought an "AirBnb for RVs" made sense. How many people buy RVs, use them for a while, then let them sit for 20 years while they devalue? Just a thought.


Or RV Swaps, like house swaps. For either other side of the country or another country altogether. I've had that idea for a long time hoping someone would do it.

Insurance and others is a minor sticking point I think, but should be workable. On the plus side, unlike house swaps, they don't have to be simultaneous.


Sounds like the problem people have with boats as well.


Darren contact me. I might be able to help sales / seo wise.


Hi Darren, I would be interested in having more details as I am already in this business. Please contact me. Thanks


How many uniques per day do you have and what revenue do you get monthly?


Why are you trying to sell?


I'm bored. The technical side is done and now it needs a sales guy to make it successful.


I'm always curious how side-projects that are marketplaces initially got their supply. Seems like there's a good amount of RVs listed, did you have to do your own biz dev footwork in addition to building out the site?


dude! don't sell it. find a partner.

the next retirement wave (i.e. lots of RVing) is just beginning. this is a huge opportunity.


I think this next retirement wave is dead broke.


which is why they will be RVing instead of taking trips to the south of france.


I maintain the site http://sideprojectors.com

Would love to hear your comments & feedback on how things can be improved to help you sell your side projects.

Personally, it's been quite rewarding to see people exchanging messages and actually buy & sell side projects.


I'm finding the text for the font on the left menu a bit hard to read. I'm on Win764 running chrome. It's a bit small and the "e"'s in the font you're using seem to bleed into the background a bit. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/Mii1jhj.png


Perhaps add a "date added" for each project, and allow sorting of projects new-to-old.


Is it for sale?


you mean my site itself? :) no.


Would anyone be interested in a platform that keeps up with these side projects, like, "show", "find co-founder/co-creator", "sell"?


https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/home


A couple people have mentioned SideProjectors.. I do feel as if SideProjectors doesn't have the "dynamic" aspect that even something like this thread does. If you could create something that had a dynamic feel where no listing would ever go dormant that would be great!


I do know a few, but posts like this keep hitting the HN frontpage. Those alternatives must not meet the needs. So maybe this my next weekend sideproject!


https://www.sideprojectors.com does this


Exists. I forgot the name though...


Sure.


I would


Thinking of selling https://www.ikeepm.com.

- 6000+ registered users - 26,000+ items entered - 3000+ documents saved - 500+ visits per month (Someone good in marketing can boost this)

It's an online home inventory software. It was featured on Lifehacker among other sites related to home organization. My wife and I had a baby last year so I never had time to market it properly. A lot of folks want an iPhone/Andoird app but I'm not the right person for that.

Someone good at marketing can probably have this take off. No other competitors are as easy to use as iKeepm.


Are you currently monetizing this? What is your contact info?


I recently re-launched w/ a new design (frontend and backend). Also implemented Stripe. I have one user who signed up for the Plus account. i'm seeing more and more companies sign up.

The two most requests are mobile apps and a multi-property feature. I think there's a bigger market for property mgmt companies.

sam_at_echoio.com


One out of 6000 is paying?


How long did it take you to get to 6000 users?


Launched in 2012 I believe it was.


http://bp-chart.com - store you blood pressure records. Chart, statistics, table view. Share them with your doctor. "Take your pills" e-mail reminders.

Over 5k registered users, 3.8k monthly visits. I haven't had time for it in the past 2 years. I keep it around because it really helps people and that gives me a warm feeling :-). It could surely use someone with a heart for marketing. At least a few monetization options (cash could be gotten from users, caretakers, medical facilities, drug companies).


I have a client that has a group of medical clinics that could be very interested in this app as the base to store a variety of different values along with prescription schedules - can you send me an email (see profile).

Thanks!


Hi - can you email me - tom at craz8 dot com? I'd like to know technical details and a price you'd sell this at.

Thanks


Hi Tom, I sent you an e-mail.


would love to see if I could help out on the marketing/monetization side. I'm interested in moving into the health tech space. email me at ah@aaronhanson.com


Sounds interesting, I sent you a reply.


I recently listed one of my apps (a quirky photo effects app) for sale on flippa. Mostly out if curiosity to see if there is a market for that sort of thing https://flippa.com/3061163-quirky-ios-photo-app-with-5-000-f...

App link here https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rainbow-puke!-gold-vomit-las...


http://easybacklog.com is a backlog management tool. It is fundamentally different to many existing tools such as Pivotal or Sprintly in that its focus is to provide scrum masters and product owners with a tool to estimate, and manage the delivery of a project as opposed to the ongoing endless development of a business. This type of workflow is needed for freelancers and agencies who are typically trying to deliver a service at a fixed cost or fixed scope. Easybacklog provides tools to compare the backlog at points in time and thus renegotiate at each sprint with the client in regards to scope or price.

I have thousands of active users and have asked many of them whether they would be willing to pay, and they are. Unfortunately I just don't have the time now or for the foreseeable future to add a few highly requested features and billing systems for the product. This is an ideal product for someone to pick up, add a few of the really needed features, and start charging existing happy customers.

Get in touch with http://mattheworiordan.com if this interests anyone who has some time to develop a Rails / Backbone application, and wants to create a revenue stream for themselves very quickly.


I've made a service for festivals/concert venues/labels, where they can promote their events in various streaming services (e.g. Spotify, Rdio, Deezer etc.). The difference between their regular web page and the streaming apps is that the festivals can now link their news and lineup to the actual artists playing. So, if Outkast is playing at a festival they can add a news item for it, and link to Outkast's artist page where the user can read Outkast's bio and listen to their whole back catalogue. Also, the whole line up for the festival is available on one page, so it's easy to listen to all artists playing, and sort by date, stage, etc.

http://www.promotor.fm (currently only a landing page)

http://open.spotify.com/app/oyafestivalen (Spotify app for Norwegian festival Øyafestivalen)

The app is service agnostic, so it can be used with any streaming service. The only thing needed to add a new client is to create the frontend part, and link it to the back end APIs. Also, clients can add content from their own CMS and add it to the Promotor database through our APIs.

Currently there's only desktop support, but I'm working on adding mobile support for Android and iOS.


http://www.gemsinthejungle.com/ website+iOS app.

Product discovery for amazon-aholics. Don't have the money to invest in marketing right now, so I'm sitting on it till I have the capital and focusing on other projects.

ROI was a little under break even. I was marketing via amazon-fan subreddits. Theres a super simple CMS powering it as well (a google spreadsheet hack).

Willing to sell for 30k or looking for investment partners in the $5k range.

-Aakil

aakilfernandes@gmail.com

www.aakilfernandes.com


http://instantserver.io

Provisions you an ubuntu vm instantly for free with web terminal access.

It got some love here at one point [0]. Fraud, business model, and personal availability problems all struck at once, so I had to turn it off. I'm confident they could all be fixed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5861749


Interested in talking about how we can get this one back online, or perhaps I can take over the project? Email me.


I'd be interested in seeing the back end code? What was it written in?


All in Meteor! Servers are ec2 spots.


https://www.dailysitesnap.com/public

This project takes screenshots of various URLs once a day. It's been a fun way to watch my side project grow up, and a number of other people receive daily emails. It could be an interesting business, but not really one I'd like to pursue.

Email "adam at cameralends" if you're interested in it.


Which library/plugin you are using to take screenshot of urls ?

I am working on a similar app based on Ruby on Rails and these days searching for a proper solution for taking screenshot of an url .


Not him, but probably PhantomJS (http://phantomjs.org/screen-capture.html)


SauceLabs


I made http://www.pastemehere.com (a screenshot sharing utility) but never got time to promote and make money out of it, still running on my server. Though its not much but still would be happy to get anything for it. It doesnt store images on my server but on imgur anonymously so saving you disk space on server ;)


I have a bunch of side-projects too but most of them are in the limbo because there isn't someone behind it to work daily on it. They are:

- http://startya.co/ - we help non-tech people launch his MVP.

- http://drinks4.us - Drink recipes to teach you how to make drinks with what you have in your fridge!

- http://gamescom.in/ - we notify you when the game you are waiting for is released

In portuguese:

- http://xingueseuamigo.com.br - for U$ 1.50 we prank your friend anonymously via phone.

- http://ficougratis.com.br/ - we email you when the app that YOU want is temporarily free.

- http://estoujogando.com.br - a startup that didint make enough money and turned into a side-project. Its a brazilian social network for gamers.


https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn...

Igor Knots and the Magonda Maze.

A mobile maze game inspired by Traffic Jam and/or Unblock me. Instead of moving items with your finger, you move a character (Igor Knots) and he must push items out of his way to clear the maze.

The game is on the Google Play Store, the Amazon App Store, and the Nook App Store. I also have a version that works on my iPhone / iPad, but never got around to uploading it to the Apple App Store. I also have the engine working in a browser.

The game got very little traction; but I never did anything to push it. The game comes with 50 levels, but I have an additional 50 designed.

I always wanted to expand the game to include more challenges and types of obstacles. But, I moved on to other things.

It was built w/ Flash/AIR.

Contact me here: http://www.jeffryhouser.com/contact.cfm


http://www.randompokemongenerator.com

It does okay, gets about 40,000 unique pageviews per month. Analytics says about 60% of those are unique. I'm cleaning up the code right now and trying to figure out how to get a higher RPM.

I'm averaging about $100/month from this site. But I'm toying with selling it.


how can I contact you?


Gingerly (http://www.ginger.ly) is a Location-based Expense Tracking Android app that we've built on the side: think Mint meets Foursquare.

USP is our ambient sensing platform which shows you how much you've spent at a business, and your receipts for that place the moment you arrive there.

16K+ downloads and makes us about $50-100 per month (varies based on the month). Free app but Monetization is via in-app purchases (unlimited expense reports) and ads.

Expenses: $5 per month with a Digital Ocean droplet that hosts the website. Haven't had any maintenance issues and the app has been on auto-pilot mode for last 1 year.

With some repolish of the UI, this app has tremendous potential. A competing app with half the features but prettier UI ramped up to half-million downloads in 6 months.

If someone offers the right price, willing to sell it. Alternatively, also interested if someone wants to work with us on an iPhone app on an equity or rev-share basis.


Really interesting idea. I had a similar idea for a financial management app, but the use of location is really clever! Hit me up if you are serious about doing an iOS version. I would be interested in contributing.


bwethington, thanks for your kind words. Didn't find your email address in your profile. Drop me a line. My email address is in my profile.


Can't find your email in your profile. Can you re-add it?


http://errorlevelanalysis.com was a side project of mine that ballooned out to modest popularity (100k+ monthly uniques), although it was something that I never charged for.

It's something that I decided I don't have time for myself, but perhaps it could suit someone else.


That's pretty cool. I have no idea how to monetize it though.


http://www.moredrunk.com - Lists alcohol from different bars and grocery stores in order of Alcohol Content/Price. Haven't touched it in over a year and the parser needs an update. Not a lot of traffic currently but perhaps has a high potential.


Typed in Walmart, got an instance crash:

IndexError at /

list index out of range

Request Method: POST Request URL: http://www.moredrunk.com/ Django Version: 1.3.1 Exception Type: IndexError Exception Value:

list index out of range

Exception Location: /home/moredrunk/../moredrunk/views.py in PlacesList, line 117 Python Executable: /usr/bin/python Python Version: 2.7.1 Python Path:

['/home/moredrunk', '/usr/lib/python2.7', '/usr/lib/python2.7/plat-linux2', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-tk', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-old', '/usr/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload', '/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7/gtk-2.0', '/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/gtk-2.0', '/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.7']

Server time: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 22:56:14 -0400


I am aware. That was the "parser needs to be updated" part. Probably should have fixed it before posting! Thanks for looking.


http://assembleyourpc.net - a pc builder tool (for India). 50k+ page views per month. Started in Mar 2013. Generates $300 per month (through Adsense and Affiliate programs) with few hours of work per month. (almost passive)

My email : ramesh at rameshjha.com


India based government jobs and exams search/listing engine. http://www.findjobexam.com I built it as hobby project few weeks ago but it looks awesome and has potential to become kick-ass product in its niche i.e. Indian students.


http://www.hdrtool.com/ - you can view HDR images (High Dynamic Range - brightness is not clamped into 0-255, but can be any Float32 number) in HDR format and export them into some "clamped" format (png, jpg, webp).


I have two alpha state multiplayer games for sale (c# unity3d), one is Desktop/Browser only, one also has an iOS client. Complete with Client/Server code, tons of assets (arts/sound/music), concepts, videos, Web backend for stats, ingame purchases of virtual currency, item shop, integration with several gaming platforms etc.

Both games have been discontinued when my startup ran out of money in 2012, but the usage numbers were promising.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/6abiv4rz4qe6srh/hDvmz1Kf_v

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vqv37l1y1wgoabv/20120807_174851.mp...

info@yoone.de if you are interested in more info


Password Grid: http://passwordgrid.com/ Simple password generator (iOS)

QuoteAddict: http://www.quoteaddict.com/ Quote collection from movies/tv (web/iOS)

DailyWallpaper: http://dailywallpaperapp.com/ New daily wallpaper (using Bing.com) (iOS)

QR Wallpaper: http://passwordgrid.com/ Simple way to share a URL or email address from your device's lock screen (iOS)

VirusZoo: http://www.viruszoo.com/ A safe and fun way to play with viruses (web, iOS app in the works)

Contact: info@skyriser.com


www.blogmask.com

It's a 100% anonymous blogging platform with a clean interface. Just start writing and set a password for your post so you can come back later and edit it. Stores literally zero information about the author. Has a stolen-from-svbtle voting system and a reply mechanism.

I believe it has potential because I left it untouched and came back a month later to find dozens of employees of the company OpenEnglish using it as a forum to discuss their issues with their employer and to anonymously coordinate action. They have no fear of ever being "found out" because I couldn't even tell you who wrote what.

Built in a week and I'd give it away for free to anyone who wants to move forward with it. I think it's a really great idea but I'm not sure where to take it.


I would love to have it and move forward to see how far I can improve it and monetize it. I also started working on a dynamic blogging platform using python last week(https://github.com/scottydelta/miniblog)and could use ideas from your project to improve it. Let me know what you think about it. Cheers :)


Email me, you can find my email in my profile. A few people have expressed interest so I'd like to find a way to get as many people involved as possible.


You could try https://flippa.com/ I don't know how big of a cut they take but they have a bidding process, you could also open it to the public.


For websites there is a $19 listing fee and a 10% success fee.


but they charge an upfront fees of min $9, any free alternative to flippa?


Almost free alternative for now http://talkbig.co


Seems like your idea under development seeing people ready to sell and buy apps and sites here ;)


Actually I has this idea a long back and I am working on it too http://sitesale.co/


I'm not in a position to buy it, but have to say that i love the concept and i'd definitely use it.

I've been looking for exactly this just this week.


Love the editor GUI. Are you using a framework for that, or did you code it yourself?


It's hallo.js plus Foundation CSS, not my work!


any better editor which supports markdown aswell?


Have you open sourced the editor? It looks great!


The editor is hallo.js, not my work at all and already open source. If you want to know more about it ask me on the alumNY group :)


I have just sold a small side project last week. Now I'm looking to let go of my favorite project..

Rainbow Shopping List ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chak.rainb... ) - Android app with 12k+ downloads and 2k+ active users - Cost to run: ~$6-7 (hosting + domain)

And a bunch of other apps. Check them out at https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Chak+Develop...

Just landed a new job so I don't think I'll have time to actively maintain these projects anymore.

You can reach me at hgcheah@chakdev.com


I created a project called http://customlawyerapps.com. The site allows law firms and attorneys to create iPhone and Android apps for their business.

The project includes a Wordpress website to collect orders. The customers choose the features they would like from a 'menu' and then are given a price quote.

The project also includes 'base' iPhone and Android apps that are then customized to a customer's needs.

I haven't had the time to market the site very much but it would be a good opportunity for someone that has mobile app development background and the ability to market the site to the target market.

If you have any interest my contact info is in my profile.


http://spacedelta.com - Your own website, hassle free

* Highly engaged handful of clients * Fully automatic (demo accounts, paypal recurring payments, domain/mail purchase and association, etc.,) * Expenses ~50$ (hosting and providers) * Profits ~250$ / month (paying clients)

Website builder focused in easy of use, aiming to solve online presence for freelances and small businesses (website, email and domain).

Established since 2011, we have still some customers from the very beginning.

It's not exactly a side project, it has been an established business for the last 3 years, but we've struggled to grow it with no success.

Looking for someone that could take it to the next level.


Pixter: http://pixter.in

Like Instagram, but for more privacy conscious users. It's ad-free so users have to pay a yearly fee for using the app similar to App.net. Has support for comments, likes, push notifications and live filters.

We couldn't market it properly and also people were not as willing to pay as we had expected so we want to sell it.

Includes the iPhone app, the fully responsive web app and the backend. Code can be reused to make any type of photo/selfie sharing app.

More details: https://www.sideprojectors.com/project/project/717/pixter


Poemz - anonymous poetry app for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/poemz/id476811547?mt=8

Includes a web backend which allows poems from the app to be shared on social networks. http://poets-anonymous.appspot.com

The app has good reviews and thousands of submitted poems in its database, backed by Parse.

Monetization is through ads and the sale of credits to submit poems beyond the 5 credits you get with the app. I have done 0 marketing so have not been able to see how far monetization can be taken - right now it's quite low.


any email I can contact you at? thx


Feel free to reach out to me at snpukwana at gmail


http://doodlec.am/

I wish I had time to build it, but I don't. It's a simple idea, where we had moderately good execution and big ideas for the future. Future plans were to expand to Doodle Packs, with themed artwork (also for sale, perhaps).

The image detection code (doodle placement) was pretty hacky but functional. The app has about 10,000 downloads, maybe 1,000 active (close to 0 marketing). I envisioned updating it with new doodles, better image code, sharing options, etc, and re-launching in the next couple months...but realistically that probably won't happen. Maybe you could make it happen? :)


I'm too busy for something like this too, but I want to work on this pretty bad because, well, embarrassingly I'm a Catwang user.

I think the 'insert randomly' is a nice feature, but if I were to work on this, I'd focus more on letting users insert their own content. Catwang sells 'Doodle Packs' but I think they're missing a couple of things which your image detection is approaching: the ability to make your own stickers (out of friends, perhaps) and the ability to draw on the image (like Snapchat).


It'd be neat if it inserted real pictures, not just doodles.


I'd entertain offers for iGarageSale for iOS and Android. Though I've pulled the apps from active sale, you can still get a pretty good idea of what they provided at http://www.igaragesaleapp.com/

Was the #1 app for finding garage sales (~10,000 paid downloads and ~10,000 free / lite downloads), but my primary startup has taken off and I didn't have time to maintain.

There are some pretty interesting use cases left unexplored - e.g. social aspects or other verticals (apartment rentals).

If you're interested in making a serious offer hit me up at igaragesale [at] performantdesign [dot] com.


http://VisualizeUs.com - social bookmarking for pictures.

* Last month stats: ~2.5 million pageviews, 846,000 uniques.

* Highly engaged community with ~210k signed up users (all organically, 0 paid marketing) and 7 million pictures in db.

* Expenses ~$400 (hosting and outsourcing).

* Making ~$2k/mo profit, mainly from advertising and photo stock affiliates.

* Established since 2007, lots of SEO potential and very poorly monetized.

It's not exactly a side project, it has been our main business for the last 5 years, but we've got bored. We still believe it has a huge potential though so we're looking for someone who can take it to the next level.


Has Pinterest made a major impact on your business?


Absolutely yes, although we opened VisualizeUs like 4 years before Pinterest, Pinterest quickly took the advantage for social bookmarking for pictures.


It has, specially in terms of traffic, although we have a very loyal community that really likes VU. It has also had a major impact on that market in terms of investment. We have been bootstrapped all the time, but other projects in the same area has started to see a lot of movement in terms of investment thanks to Pinterest mainly.


I have this photo-portfolio-profile-builder: http://pflio.herokuapp.com/

It supports custom themes (there is just one for now) and more customization can be build upon it with little code.

I wrote it for a customer who wanted a simple portfolio website (just the pictures and some pages for textual information), so I made this CMS-like thing to edit the page and it could be marketed for more customers etc.

But I don't have any hope it will get a customer, so its interface is still uncomplete (and it is in portuguese), but it works (with a custom domain). What would you do with it?


http://adcraft.io/ In-game advertising for Minecraft servers

http://snaproulette.io/ Chat Roulette for SnapChat


I'm interested in AdCraft. Reply with your info or find my email on my profile.


http://snapnote.io/


Can you e-mail me with details? My address is in my profile. Thanks!


it looks pretty good. Why do you want to sell it?


It was written to scratch a personal itch; never as a business. I'd be happy to see someone else pick it up and do something with it.


How do you delete an image once it's uploaded?


I'm selling PaleoPax.com. I've moved to running MonthlyBoxer.com fulltime, and don't have the time or skills necessary to grow PaleoPax. Right now the Paleo Starter Kit sells for $49 including shipping, and averages $15 profit per sale. Without any marketing effort besides spending ten minutes to get an EveryMove account set up, I'm selling ~30 per month. Product contracts are all solid, and I'd be willing to continue doing fulfillment for PaleoPax for $2 per box. That'd mean a buyer would make $13 per sale and only have to deal with driving traffic.

Email is alex@monthlyboxer.com


A workflow tool to help merchants meet regulatory PCI requirements in order to process credit cards.

http://www.ComplianceChimp.com

You can login with Github (no password) to test it out!


http://quickseat.me/

Simple battle-tested assigned chart app for companies or venues to sell tickets to venues. At least $1m in sales has gone through it. I'll sell the code or the service for cheap, I don't have time to market it so it's just sitting there.

The coolest feature is that seat updates are "live" (using polling) to everyone, so none of that "you have 15 minutes to complete your order" crap you normally get when buying tickets. It's now a cross-platform HTML5/JS frontend, originally I made it in Flash.


What's the best way to get in touch? I'd like to hear more about the project. My email is in my profile.


Proposal: I have the cash and reasonable business/tech experience, but not the bandwidth to run a "full-time side project" ( does that term make sense to anyone other than me? ). Would consider putting up capital to fund purchase and an initial operating budget if a willing and capable partner presents himself or herself to operate the site. I would take a "board of directors" - type role ( periodic advice and oversight, but not involved day to day ). You would be the CEO. If you'd be interested in something like this, shoot me a message and we'll talk.


Hi, Whats your email ? :)


Contact info sent


http://longr.co (a longer tweet web app) brand new. it supports markdown, the post i wrote couple of days back. http://longr.co/1h34Wk I am primarily using it now as my blog. but sole problem here is i love it so much, that instead of selling it (unless you are gates cough) i am more inclined to use it as my blog :)

btw should i open source it in the event i can not sell it? would it be worth to open source?

But hands down, it's one of the most refined web app of its sort.


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