HN Explorer

Ask HN: Do you have side projects you want to sell?

25 points by illdave ↗ HN
Hi HN. I recently launched Hoverboard.io, which helps you show off projects you've built. I'm thinking about what direction to take it in, and one possible idea would be to allow people to list side projects as potentially being open for sale (and then making it easy to find projects that are for sale).

I personally have a few older side projects that I'd be open to selling, but I was wondering if other people are in the same position. Are there already any places that do a good job of offering that service? Is this something that anyone would be interested in?

31 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 66.8 ms ] thread
kellros
Possibly for both buy and sell.
helen842000
Yes, I'd be interested. I think sites like Flippa & Apptopia don't really cut it.
illdave
Thanks - hadn't seen Apptopia before (which, at least on the surface, looks really good).
NameNickHN
Why do you think that is?
helen842000
Flippa is over-run with low quality, built for adsense type spam. The apptopia site looks good but rarely works. It totally ignores search queries - just displays whatever it wants.

I'd be interested in taking on projects where it's being sold because the owner wants to find it a better home - not just for the $.

mansigandhi
Yep, and I've always wondered how to go about it.
tocomment
I like the idea of letting users list their projects for sale. It seems like it's a niche ripe for disruption. flippa is awful!
rahimnathwani
I understand that Flippa is/was very popular. I've never bought/sold on it myself, and am curious about the negative comments here.

Why is it awful?

tocomment
The site itself isn't bad. I guess it's just an inventory problem. Most of the sites for sale seem pretty scammy. And I'm just not seeing many SaaS businesses for sale which is what I'm interested in.

Instead it's mostly blogs, adsense sites, and sometimes dropshipping.

grrrando
I'd be interested in listing side projects for sale.

And, side note: I like the site. Wish I could more easily peek at other users based on tags or location - the search works but it's not quite friendly enough. A feed of recent blog posts would be great too. I would focus on these things - pretty basic expected functionality thats 90% of the way there - before adding in another feature. Also, as a matter of taste, I feel like almost everything (except the paragraph point-size) is about 10% too large, which these days is almost always related to a dashed-together "mobile-first" responsive build. Looks great all around though, nice work.

illdave
Thanks for the feedback - yep, I didn't make it clear but improvements to search and an activity feed are all high up the to-do list (the activity feed - which showcases blog posts from people you follow, and from the posts that they recommend - is actually mostly built, but needs to be implemented elegantly). Search could definitely do with some improvement, I'm not happy with how that works/looks at the moment.

Thanks again for the feedback - really appreciate it.

makerops
I have two actually, one is a fully functioning designer t-shirt site with inventory, that still is up and produces revenue (1-200$/mo), and the other is a defunct android/iphone/web app, that is b2b (I didn't have to time to sell to business owners w/ a 9-5). Apptopia is one site fwiw, but I have never used it.
ekpyrotic
Can you please share more information with about the T-shirt biz. (Personal email in profile).
atwheeler2
Would be interested in hearing more about the t-shirt site, email in my profile.
alex_hanh
+1

My side project is http://drop.sc - profitable and self-sustained.

I don't have the time to develop the site and I'm not really into Starcraft anymore. The site is very popular amongst the Starcraft 2 community.

An old version is available at https://github.com/alexhanh/drop.sc

Interested? Shoot me an email at alexhanh@gmail.com.

infinitone
I'd def. be interested in the idea of selling side projects. I think Flippa is more and more become infested with fake SEO/web 1.0 marketing sites and its hard for a real site seller to sell.

I have acouple sideprojects that would put up for sale.

Both self-sustained, profitable. One is: Studygig, http://studygig.com

If you are interested, contact me.

atwheeler2
Hi there, i'd be interested in hearing details on studygig. Looking to expand my portfolio (as you can see from this thread!)

Email in my profile...

jwb119
"Sell HN" would be an interesting thread. I like this idea.
illdave
Actually, that's a good point - a Sell HN thread could be an interesting experiment. Should we go for it?
deftnerd
I love the site. It would make a great simple personal landing page if you could you add third level domains (username.hoverboard.io) and let people CNAME their domain name to it. I recently paid $20 to flavors.me for their service that your site could also do, but yours seems more targeted to the startup/dev geek rather than the musician/graphics person.

I see there is a http://hoverboard.io/username/blog.atom link available. Could you make a http://hoverboard.io/username/projects.atom link as well that would just list the projects, description, and URL?

This would allow integration with various landing pages or IFTTT recipes and things like that.

illdave
Thanks for the kind words - sure, adding an atom feed for projects shouldn't be too difficult (although I can't promise I'll roll it out soon, but I will add it to the todo list).

Pro accounts with custom domains are planned for the reasonably near future too - that one is quite high up the todo list.

Kanbab
I'd be interested in buying "side projects".
gregcohn
I'd be interested in commissioning side projects.
projuce
That is an interesting concept
glitch273
Isn't Adhoc Labs in the business of creating side projects to see if they are viable? Or are you talking about side side-projects? :)
gregcohn
We do a lot of experimental iterations, sure, but that's not the same as stimulating others with different interests and talents.
foobeer
I really like the site. I remember checking it out from your original Show HN and being really impressed. It seems like from the comments there is a need for a better place to buy and sell, but it seems like it goes away from the elegant portfolio look and feel of hoverboard.
wanghq
Good luck to your project. I wanted to verify similar ideas and built http://www.ex-prj.com/. Unfortunately the project itself will become to an ex-prj.