One route is to pick a niche hobby/interest of yours and build off of that. Find pain points and then write up an level of effort estimate for a software solution.
Often there is little or no competition in these uber-small markets. Because you are your own customer, you might have a good idea of your monetization options.
Even if you fail monetarily, at least you solved your pain point.
I occasionally read HN comments, and once I see something people are touching upon in their comments that can either be automated or shown using an app, I post that idea and see the upvotes.
In general, just as a comment on a post that reaches top 30 on HN within the day, its pretty low-key, I don't advertise it, if the comment reaches >10 upvotes, its probably worth it
I write down 5-10 quick ideas per day just by surfing around, reading articles or building upon current techniques or current features. 99% doesn't become anything, the 1% is usually a combination of other ideas put into one.
I solved a problem that I had at work. I needed a tool to make interacting with HTTP APIs easier, and didn't like any of the existing ones, so I created Insomnia [https://insomnia.rest/].
It took a weekend to build a proof of concept, then I released it to the public. As I improved it, the user base grew slowly. Then, a year later, I was able to quit my job to pursue it full-time. If you're curious, I have an Interview [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/insomnia] on Indie Hackers with more detail.
I've built a few internal tools for work that have also become publicly-used tools. Nothing generating salary-replacing revenue. But the point is that you may already be doing it, or it may be staring you in the face. Great "ideas" don't have to come from moments of creative brilliance.
I use Insomnia everyday. Thank you for making it! I shared it with my coworkers and described it as the REST client I would make if I were to make a REST client. Happy to hear it's working out for you :)
I would be tempted to try it if you could name a few reasons it would be better than Postman.
I know the "if it works for you, stick with it" saying, but I would really like to give it a go if it would have better features I may not be aware about!
Congrats on the app and being able to work on it full-time! That's a big achievement!
I've been wanting to write a blog post on this for a long time, but have failed to come up with a concise way to describe the benefits. I usually say something like "Insomnia is better at being an HTTP client because that's all it does". If you use the less-HTTP-client-like feature of Postman like automated testing or mocking, and enjoy it, then Postman is the tool for you. However, if you don't need those features, Insomnia offers a better experience (my opinion) by means of a simpler, nicer, and easier interface. Oh, and Insomnia is also open source :)
Postman's links would replace the response of your request instead of opening in a new tab/window and you would lose the entire response body. This was incredibly annoying and caused me look for alternatives. It came down to Paw or Insomnia and Insomnia was free. The user experience is _far better_ than Postman's. For example, it saves API requests/responses, so you can always see what the last X requests/responses were. Most of my team has moved from using Postman to Insomnia now.
I've found that Postman doesn't always play very nicely with CORS because it's limited to what Chrome is willing to let it to, Insomnia doesn't have this problem at all so I've made the jump
Insomnia is the best graphical HTTP client for me. I've been using it and recommending it since the HN announcement. At my previous workplace it sticked and now they also use it everyday. Props for a great product.
> You agree that Floating Keyboard Software may collect and use information gathered in any manner as part of the product support services provided to you, if any, related to Insomnia REST Client. Floating Keyboard Software may also use this information to provide notices to you which may be of use or interest to you.
Wait what? I guess I won't be going anywhere near this thing.
I'm not quite sure why this worries you but I can tell you what it means. Information collected is generic app usage data like number of launches, most used features, etc. The notices include help tips, feature suggestions, and prompts to upgrade to a Plus plan.
The main issue I had when trying Insomnia was, everytime I have to create a new request or manually duplicate existing one. With Postman, I can simply edit the existing request and when I execute, I will have both the old and new one in the history. Maybe, It is an issue only for me. But for me this feature is a deal breaker.
You don't need a "great idea". We built an incredibly crude v1 of Cronitor because my friend and co-founder needed to know if an important cron job failed. This meets no definition of "great idea" but has been a fun, challenging and profitable side business for over 3 years now.
Not that I've had any time to do them, but I have often written up entire business plans just based off of profiting from something that makes me angry.
For example, when I had a contract programming business 10 years ago I absolutely despised the RFP process. I still have a business plan sitting around built entirely around that flow. I still hate the RFP process, but I figured if this thing is going to still be a thing I may as well make money off of it.
If I ever had free time to just sit and build stuff day after day you'd end up with this entire incoherent set of businesses based on things that I couldn't stand. :)
My side projects tend to be libraries for other programmers. I usually get ideas by using existing libraries but being unhappy with the interface / api they offer. I love designing good apis that express the underlying concepts well, while hiding implementation details, and while many niche libraries have a good solution for their problem domain, many are lacking in api / UX.
1. Projects that yield nothing financially.
2. Projects that help me establish me as a .. idk.. thoughtleader(?) in certain specific niche fields.
3. I've written 2 libraries in particular that netted me a number of consulting gigs. For about 2 years I was able to travel around the world supporting myself with this, and I worked for companies on location in 4 continents. This was a pretty great time of my life, but I got bored working on a single project.
So definitely more than beer money for that last one, but it might have been a fluke. Generally it's not my aim to do this for my side projects. I make enough money, so I do it because I enjoy it.
I solved my own problem. I cut the cord two years ago, but I love to watch college football. When doing research this year to figure out where to stream each game, I realized that a lot of people would be doing this same research.
I built [https://wherecaniwatchmy.team] as a site specifically for determining which streaming service is best for watching a specific sports team.
I'm no entrepreneur, but I think it's something that could actually turn into a basic side income.
I was working as mobile game developer and came across a 3rd party tool called Particle Designer which was just fun to play with so I created an app out of it called Magic Fingers which didn't take off for a year and now has around 2 million downloads. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magic-fingers-lite/id4988704...]
I am trying to improve my deployment skills so I just pick something dumb, currently an emoji only messaging app build it then run the deployment experiments I want to try. Always fun.
This could be anything that you naturally find interesting - books, art, armadillos, roofing etc. Engage with other people that also find this topic interesting.
It'll take several months, but you'll uncover more problems than you'll have time for. And the best part - you now get to pick a problem you care about, and build a solution for it.
Let's have a little fun and pick apart the first topic you listed. Books. What exactly is there still to be done in the realm of books?
Publishing? There are big companies or now you can self-publish. There are many video tutorials, courses, and blogs all dedicated to self-publishing, so even the online education realm of things seems to be taken.
Writing books? Ok sure you can write a book just like you can produce a single piece of any kind of content, so that can't count. Software to assist in writing books? From my quick search, there's Scrivener, and a bunch of other platforms and apps.
Want to write a book without typing? Hmm, there's already a bunch of speech-to-text apps like Dragon.
Buying books? Amazon.
Audio books? Audible.
Collecting books? Hmm ok, may be something in there. Site that lists the top 100 books from prior years? Or a top 10 per genre, per year (historical).
The reality is coming up with an idea is already hard. Coming up with a business is much harder.
Would love an idea in this space.
A) the question asks specifically how to find a "side project" idea, not necessarily a full fledged business all though it could turn into one.
B) The whole point of being involved in a specific community (e.g. fantasy books written by Terry Brooks) is that issues will crop up naturally that you, as a dev, may be in a position to solve. Theorizing on problems in this thread is the exact opposite of my suggestion.
C) The topics were half in jest (see 'armadillos'), and were just meant to kickstart the OP's thinking process.
The process of coming up with an idea shouldn't have to happen in a vacuum. The point it to solve problems you encounter and help solve them.
You're totally right. Just frustrating -- Guess if I want to do something in that space, I need to get more involved in the community, like you said in "B".
I can't say I have any great ideas, but they sure keep popping into my head involuntarily. It feels weird to me for people surf the web without frustration, never thinking to themselves, "what if this, but without the annoying/hard to use stuff?" If you do do that, then those are ideas.
For us, the idea came from working at a startup doing something completely different. We were developing a software to leverage the Cloud as primary storage. At the time I joined, I wanted to understand the space better and how our competitors were positioning themselves. I looked for tools that can show top performing content across blogs and social media networks, I wanted to see what type of messaging was resonating with people and driving the most traffic and engagement. I found a few but they lacked the simplicity and ease of use that I had in mind. Most would return the results in an excel/table format or just give you a link with some stats and force you to manually visit each link to see the actual content and what people were saying. After I left the company, I decided to pursue this idea and build a social media management platform that can solve this problem (among others). In a nutshell, the idea came from a problem I encountered in the past. Our platform is going live in a couple of weeks https://socialweaver.com.
A friend just asked me about a service like this; I will share your platform with them. (btw, the number of channels stated in your blog post does not match the numbers on your pricing page.)
You don't find it, it finds you. You first have a problem or see a problem that annoys you, later you discover how to solve that issue and make a world little better place. Finally you get hands on and create a side project with the idea that solves the problem.
Or simple you like to do something by passion and spend time on it.
I missed turntable.fm and I found the current alternatives lacking so I built a better one: https://www.jqbx.fm if you're interested.
IMO there's no shame in working on your own derivation of an existing idea (take FB as one example). Sometimes a tweak here or there can be the difference between a good idea and game-changing one. Also it gives you the chance to 'edit' an existing product which is both a fun and thought provoking experience that can really hone your skills.
I just signed in and sync with spotify
I'm about 50/50 soundcloud / spotify
Are you planning on adding soundcloud integration?
Given the recent soundcloud layoffs and financial trouble I would understand if you were hesitant about putting in that time
Hey! Nice job I really like the idea and how it works.
One thing I have noticed that sort-of breaks the experience for me is that every song change, room change, or anything else that stops music automatically changes my current device on spotify to the incorrect device.
So constantly change it back to my work computer rather than my home computer it a huge pain currently.
Are you changing it via Spotify or via the app? If you do it through the app it should save a cookie and stick with the device you selected from that point forward (the way to change devices is by clicking on the 'desktop' icon on the top right of the header next to your username). If that doesn't do the trick- let me know so I can look into it more. Thanks!
I was changing rooms via the app, and just sitting and letting the songs play while in a room, and the only way to hear them would be to manually change it on my Spotify app.
Back in 2014, I had a number of side projects on the go and I ran out of money to pay my email marketing bill. I created https://emailoctopus.com to save some money, and that's ended up being my most successful side project to date!
My side projects ideas usually revolve around a problem or just plain curiosity. Some stick while others don't. Most of them, however, are tools that help with work stuff. My last side project that i still use almost every day since 2013 is pgweb - https://github.com/sosedoff/pgweb
I was frustrated running into seg faults while working on an OS project for my undergrad. I wanted a tool to quickly prototype bitwise operations without having to write and compile C code. I made bspl which is a REPL to do exactly that [https://crates.io/crates/bspl]. Like others have said here, the project usually finds you. And it's up to you to drive it to completion.
129 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadOften there is little or no competition in these uber-small markets. Because you are your own customer, you might have a good idea of your monetization options.
Even if you fail monetarily, at least you solved your pain point.
It took a weekend to build a proof of concept, then I released it to the public. As I improved it, the user base grew slowly. Then, a year later, I was able to quit my job to pursue it full-time. If you're curious, I have an Interview [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/insomnia] on Indie Hackers with more detail.
I know the "if it works for you, stick with it" saying, but I would really like to give it a go if it would have better features I may not be aware about!
Congrats on the app and being able to work on it full-time! That's a big achievement!
> You agree that Floating Keyboard Software may collect and use information gathered in any manner as part of the product support services provided to you, if any, related to Insomnia REST Client. Floating Keyboard Software may also use this information to provide notices to you which may be of use or interest to you.
Wait what? I guess I won't be going anywhere near this thing.
The app is completely open source, and you can see everything it's doing here: http://github.com/getinsomnia/insomnia
For example, when I had a contract programming business 10 years ago I absolutely despised the RFP process. I still have a business plan sitting around built entirely around that flow. I still hate the RFP process, but I figured if this thing is going to still be a thing I may as well make money off of it.
If I ever had free time to just sit and build stuff day after day you'd end up with this entire incoherent set of businesses based on things that I couldn't stand. :)
1. Projects that yield nothing financially. 2. Projects that help me establish me as a .. idk.. thoughtleader(?) in certain specific niche fields. 3. I've written 2 libraries in particular that netted me a number of consulting gigs. For about 2 years I was able to travel around the world supporting myself with this, and I worked for companies on location in 4 continents. This was a pretty great time of my life, but I got bored working on a single project.
So definitely more than beer money for that last one, but it might have been a fluke. Generally it's not my aim to do this for my side projects. I make enough money, so I do it because I enjoy it.
I built [https://wherecaniwatchmy.team] as a site specifically for determining which streaming service is best for watching a specific sports team.
I'm no entrepreneur, but I think it's something that could actually turn into a basic side income.
This could be anything that you naturally find interesting - books, art, armadillos, roofing etc. Engage with other people that also find this topic interesting.
It'll take several months, but you'll uncover more problems than you'll have time for. And the best part - you now get to pick a problem you care about, and build a solution for it.
Publishing? There are big companies or now you can self-publish. There are many video tutorials, courses, and blogs all dedicated to self-publishing, so even the online education realm of things seems to be taken.
Writing books? Ok sure you can write a book just like you can produce a single piece of any kind of content, so that can't count. Software to assist in writing books? From my quick search, there's Scrivener, and a bunch of other platforms and apps.
Want to write a book without typing? Hmm, there's already a bunch of speech-to-text apps like Dragon.
Buying books? Amazon. Audio books? Audible.
Collecting books? Hmm ok, may be something in there. Site that lists the top 100 books from prior years? Or a top 10 per genre, per year (historical).
The reality is coming up with an idea is already hard. Coming up with a business is much harder. Would love an idea in this space.
B) The whole point of being involved in a specific community (e.g. fantasy books written by Terry Brooks) is that issues will crop up naturally that you, as a dev, may be in a position to solve. Theorizing on problems in this thread is the exact opposite of my suggestion.
C) The topics were half in jest (see 'armadillos'), and were just meant to kickstart the OP's thinking process.
The process of coming up with an idea shouldn't have to happen in a vacuum. The point it to solve problems you encounter and help solve them.
Or simple you like to do something by passion and spend time on it.
IMO there's no shame in working on your own derivation of an existing idea (take FB as one example). Sometimes a tweak here or there can be the difference between a good idea and game-changing one. Also it gives you the chance to 'edit' an existing product which is both a fun and thought provoking experience that can really hone your skills.
Are you planning on adding soundcloud integration? Given the recent soundcloud layoffs and financial trouble I would understand if you were hesitant about putting in that time
[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/chance-the-rapper-soundcloud/
You can also try the 'click here to retry' button which should do the trick if you do in fact have Spotify premium.
One thing I have noticed that sort-of breaks the experience for me is that every song change, room change, or anything else that stops music automatically changes my current device on spotify to the incorrect device.
So constantly change it back to my work computer rather than my home computer it a huge pain currently.