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Ask HN: How to become ramen profitable

33 points by smithmayowa ↗ HN

  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.

24 comments

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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 ). 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/

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.

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.

joshontheweb
Also invest in some beano!
nbrempel
rinsing beans thoroughly helps too which s/he mentions
a3n
Yes, rinsing helps greatly with that. I think getting rid of the boil water helps too, but I've never done the A/B test.
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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.
a3n
I'm not sure what's meant by "hot pot." The above recipe can be done with a "crock pot," although crock pots are expensive relative to an iron pot. Can be bought used, or donated from friends/family. Bottom line, adapt to circumstances, and try not to live on ramen.
zhte415
Buy an electric pressure cooker and do it all in that.

Cheaper and smaller than an oven, and no need to soak beans overnight.

fatboy93
To add to what you said, rice should also be cheaper. Add rice to the mix or cook it separately,

Cheaper, better good with a nice calorific yield.

Heck, half the time, it's my go to food.

a3n
I do cook rice, in a rice cooker, when I make bean stew. I mix a bowl together in the microwave.
0x00000000
If you want to take it to an even greater extreme here's what I do. Get a 20lb bag of rice, dry beans, frozen vegetables, maybe eggs. The rice lasts me about 2 months and all together can cost as low as about $15-20 a month. You can rotate between making a few different things such as soup, beans and rice with different seasonings, and fried rice. If you want, all of this can be cooked in only a rice cooker. Get used to eating less, your body will adapt.
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 ;)
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[dead] salesguy222
Daytrading with some strategy can make you about $200 a month, on a risk of $2,000 in capital.

That's ramen profitable in Chiang Mai, Belgrade, Albania... USA if you live in a car.

wingerlang
6700 THB per month in CM? I can't imagine that would be a nice way to live.
[dead] salesguy222
It would definitely pay for food and rent if you are "living like a Thai"

Millions if not billions of people all over the world are living on $200 per month after tax, including me right now, so it can't be all that bad :)

SirLJ
If you risk $2000 to make $200 your going to get broke pretty fast, not to mention the capital required to do so...

In stock trading, the idea is to risk no more than 1% or 2% of your capital and to have a system that will win slightly more than you loose and the compounding will make you rich overtime...

[dead] salesguy222
Haven't gone broke yet, never even lost money on a trade, and if i do, then i will go find another $2,000 to muck about with haha
anotheryou
side gigs, but they are annoying when you got something better to work on