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Ask HN: What project can I start in my free time to make some side-cash?

71 points by redxblood ↗ HN
Im currently working no more than 6-7 hours per day, which leaves me with a lot of free time during the evenings.

What kind of side project could I start to make some extra money?

32 comments

[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 139 ms ] thread
tmaly
There are tons of opportunities out there. Checkout indiehackers.com for some ideas. OppsDaily newsletter is another good one. They send out daily problems that people are willing to pay for.
kamphey
Nugget.one has a daily idea. Note: you're going to get broad answers. If we had some details about your experience or hobbies or skills... you might get some fantastic suggestions.
baccredited
Learn how to invest your surplus dollars and start saving for financial independence. A simple Warren Buffet blessed approach is 90% VOO and 10% BND. Save 25 times your annual spending and never work again. Think of your extra dollars as employees and put them to work for you.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

vdnkh
Do you have any good guides for beginner investing? I save most of my salary but have no idea where to get started with investing.
ptr_void
I'd advice against that, I don't think stock market is for beginners unless you are into gambling.

Here's a good set of lessons, something that will give you enough info to know why you shouldn't put money into stock market:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK78nVl6dRdUemHszve34...

ShinyCyril
Playing the stock market is just one facet of investing, and a widely-discouraged one at that (e.g. market timing). Long-term investments favour index trackers so that you can gain from the performance of the market as a whole.
ptr_void
I've also heard: there shouldn't be any grantee for market as a whole to go up.
Abdur91
same here.I have been saving my salary since day first but dont know where to invest :(
quidzach
The biggest hole in this premise is that it assumes you own your home/place to live, or are willing to live in a cardboard box.

Sadly, most of us do not own or want to live in a cardboard box.

toomuchtodo
How about an Airstream or a sailboat?

http://www.bumfuzzle.com/us/

You are doing yourself a disservice if you think you must live in a high COI area to have a well paying job. Also, if you think you need to live in traditional housing to have a high standard of living or to be socially accepted.

jfoster
For some people perhaps, but I think there's quite a large portion of the population who are pretty happy with more traditional forms of housing and would like something simple & secure but also affordable.
gesman
Build something to solve your own problem.

Last time i did (wrote real time data backup and mirroring tool) - it brought about $200k in "side cash" :)

pshendry
Your own problems as a programmer tend to be shared by other people who are equally motivated to—and capable of—solving them. By picking a programmer's problem, you're picking an oversaturated market.

If the goal is really to make a reliable profit, then you should specifically look for problems programmers don't relate to. Make something for parents, old folks, hikers, knitting clubs, etc. They may not be as avid software consumers as programmers, but when you service is the first solution they've found, it's an easy sell.

a1exyz
Interesting. Ive run into this issue before. How do you get around it? I am not a parent, old person, hiker or knitter (a generalization but you know what I mean). Thus how can I solve their problems and solve my own problems at the same time?

Basically is there a way around this inconvenient truth?

Jtsummers
What hobbies, activities, or interests do you have?

What problems do those near you have?

Maybe your "problem" is that you don't know tech stack X very well. You're a competent (or good) programmer, you can come up with something good but need a motivator to further develop that skillset.

shanecleveland
But it worked for gesman ...
fosco
https://m.xkcd.com/1827/
shanecleveland
Point taken. Perhaps my reply could have been more constructive, as well.

The original suggestion to "solve your own problem" is a sound one. He doesn't say that it has to be a problem programmers have. And I doubt he was implying it would absolutely lead to lottery-winning results ;)

I believe that is better advice than finding a problem you can't relate to at all. As Jtsummers also suggests, choose something you will be interested in. Will you want to spend your spare time working on a solution for knitters if you have never touched a piece of yarn in your life?

I would also look at gearing any project towards the B2B market, as opposed to B2C market. I spend much more money with much less hesitancy for tech and software when it helps me or my employer make more or waste less money.

And I hope that most HN commenters can feel free to say "here's what's worked for me" when asked for advice without first offering up a disclaimer, and I suspect most readers can discern a lot for themselves.

mysterypie
> By picking a programmer's problem, you're picking an oversaturated market.

The majority of programmers' ideas on what they'd like to build fall into three categories:

(1) games

(2) tools (a utility, a compiler, etc.)

(3) social version of ______

Yeah, great fortunes have been made in all 3 areas. But every programmer is getting those same ideas, so you're going to have insane competition. In the case of (2), people do those for free. In the case of (3), because of network effect, out of 1000 people that try it, one will be winner-take-all. A good first pass might be to eliminate ideas for games, tools, and social whatnot.

> Make something for parents, old folks, hikers, knitting clubs, etc.

But intersect that list with problems where people are already paying significant money but getting mediocre results.

Eg., old folks pay $3000 for hearing aids, but elderly people often say that the results are awful. For many old folks, it's a speech discrimination problem -- sound amplification is not what's needed. What if you built a system that captures what the senior is listening to, and repeats it back in a slow, smooth, clear voice into his ear in near real-time?

For further refinement, you could eliminate extraneous noises and conversations from the input, use a voice and accent that the old person is accustomed to, and allow for automatic repeating if he tilts his head slightly left.

gesman
“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”
jakobegger
The market for programmer tools is only saturated with crappy tools. There's lots of opportunity in the not-quite-as-crappy-tool space.
austenallred
Write a book. I pull in an extra $2,000/month from https://secretsaucenow.com
pattrn
Your link and some brief review of reviews just netted you another sale. I'll bite. Halfway through your book -- it reminds me of "Traction" by the DuckDuckGo founder, except it offers significantly more tactical advice. The two books complement each other.

Thank you for the link and for your succinct writing style. I'm ramping up marketing for an app right now, and this was a perfect find. If my app's churn rate doesn't kill it (kidding), you may have a new testimonial soon.