Ask HN: Do you have a side project you're getting tired of?
Does your project make too little money and you're getting sick of maintaining it?
I don't need to make a full salary anymore and rather than work a traditional job I'd enjoy maintaining a few projects that were profitable but no longer worth the time of someone who had bigger hopes for them.
I like running the day to day of something that people use, and I'm not looking for any kind of unicorn potential.
Feel free to contact me at the email in my bio to discuss.
Typically I get tired of a side project when I stop learning from it. There's a honeymoon period at the start when you're rapidly prototyping things and figuring it out. Then you get to the point where you've explored the problem domain, figured out what works, and have a clear path ahead - the rest of the work being to just implement the vision. This is the part I get bored.
Something switches in my brain when I've figured out how to solve a problem, it starts to seek a new problem because it considers that one "done", even though most of the work remains. Perhaps it's because that work is more "painting by numbers" after the problem is figured out. Does anyone else experience this?
That's similar to how it is with me for my personal projects. But I always focus on the technical aspect or the subject matter alone without attempting to make money from it.
For some income I'd be fine with maintaining something long term, I'm just not the person to bootstrap a project into that.
I've found that having users and fixing/building stuff for them can get the passion back, even if it's minor things where I don't learn anything technical.
Just getting the feedback, implementing it, deploying the next day and sending "hey, I loved you feedback, so I implemented your suggestion, lemme know what you think".
I personally enjoy this.
The same thing happens to me. I wonder if we could create a market for "micro exits" like what OP wants.
I feel the same way. Projects are only fun as long as you are challenged and learning new things. Once it becomes routine, the fun is gone.
I have not found a solution to this apart from just getting done with the boring things as quickly as possible.
You're describing the difference between a hobby and a job. And it's perfectly OK to have a hobby. It's desirable to have a job.
In other words, a job offers you money for adding value to society. Most of us need this yo live. Adding value is usually "work" because it involves many things, most parts of which are not fun. (If they were fun, there'd be little value, people would just do it themselves.)
A hobby however is the "fun" part without the "work" part. The value added is usually marginal. For example I've been doing ceramics as a hobby. It's lots of fun and the rubbish monstrosities I create are not really valuable.
If I applied myself, I could churn out bowls that are sellable. But frankly, where's the fun in that? Making 4 identical vases for sale would rob all the joy from it.
Understanding the difference is key to your long term satisfaction. My work gets me paid, so I need to do all the boring bits, and the better I do that the more I get paid. I get satisfaction from doing the job well, and having happy customers, but there's a lot of grind involved. Maybe 80% grind to 20% fun.
My hobby is the reverse. 80% fun, 20% grind. I get satisfaction from pushing my skills to the next level, even if the results are far from perfect, and frankly not sellable. (I'll give away pieces to someone if they like it, but I won't sell it.)
So, to answer your question, yes everyone experiences this. It is quite literally the definition of "work".
Story of my goddamn life right here
I got tired of mine in the sense that I want to stop improving upon it and not worry about writing it such that others may use it one day.
The project is basically a script that scrapes events from various Eventbrite organizers and Meetup groups I am interested in, filters them down by a variety of parameters, and writes them out to ICS files that Proton Calendar can read from. Its been an interesting project because it really reveals how much detritis these sites throw at you in spite of your preferences, and it has helped me basically have something to do with my evenings no matter the day of the week.
What I'm tired of is trying to make it flexible so I can open source it. Screw that! As soon as I gave up on flexibility, the number of lines of code dropped significantly. I occasionally update the code when I discover something new that I want to filter by, but otherwise it can now just exist and I can just run it manually every so often.
I got this: https://red-bot.io
It's chatbot creation platform based on Node-RED (a low coding tool), basically allows to create a multi channel chatbot visually. It also has a backend for the bots (the place where at some point you might want to manage the bot's users, configurations, etc) and a good plugin system (the idea was to try to make it the equivalent of WordPress for chatbots).
It got some traction at some point, at least a couple of time it was cloned, rembranded and tried to resell as their own. But it allowed me to get my current job (the company got in touch with me for this open source project).
Why I'm tired:
- the only money were coming from consulting, most of the users were hobbyst, not really keen on paying for services - eventually ChatGPT was released and this changed everything, so I stopped developing to see what would happen (and now there are some opportunities actually)
guido.bellomo@gmail.com
I've being having a very hard time getting any traction for a recent productivity app I made. I am just not sure why it's not getting downloads. I think the concept is pretty cool. It's an iOS app which lets you block addictive apps until you exercise.
I have redone the app icon 3 times, changed the App Store metadata and keywords several times and fixed bugs. I have tried sharing it on reddit, here on hacker news etc but it's gotten no traction :(
Not sure if I want to get rid of it though.
If you could get some YT influencers to take it a look (or sponsor them) I think that might work than app store optimisation. There is too much competition on app/play stores even 10 years ago when I last looked.
Have you tried paying for Facebook ads for it? My app gets traction that way.
What category is your app in?
And how much do you spend on those ads? I haven’t looked at ads because I thought it would be too expensive for an app which is already not making money.
Im getting tired of my side project. I always knew it would be really hard, but everything takes longer than expected. It’s a tool that writes software, so you can imagine the complexity and all the hurdles I’ve had to overcome. So far it’s been years! It’s a labor of love and I think it’s going to be a game changer so I have no choice but to keep ploughing forward. It’s at Ac28R.com if you’re curious.
I do have a side project that I'm working on since May 2023. I do software, and two partners work on biz dev. We bootstrap in our own time so it's painfully hard to get any progress. Both on biz end and on tech end. We have 3 customers, and a few prospects, and the market we evaluated is big enough to sell to. With people who actually want to buy. But time does not want to stretch, and I don't have it in me anymore to work until 5am :) I'd probably get heart attack if I tried. I'm not tired of it, I'm tired of not being able to push it, it seems $ can buy you time to work on a thing, but we don't have it.
Unfortunately none of my side projects have a community, and if they did I'd probably offer it to someone in the community. You might have the best luck looking for projects which aren't being updated anymore but still have issues listed, and maybe contacting the author?
I have reached a terrible point on my project: I now have to market it.
Until this point, I was happily working away at the technical side: Designing, manufacturing prototypes, talking with suppliers and other people who contributed to the product, learning how to write firmware. All fun stuff.
Now that I actually have to reach people who can benefit from the product, I am feeling entirely sick and tired of it.
That’s the fun part because it’s so hard.
Writing software is easy. It can be figured out, no matter how hard it seems.
What does your thing do ?
Is there a service that will distribute my iOS app for me (hopefully for a per-release fee and not a monthly subscription or revenue share) without going through the stringent App Store requirements? The current choices seem to be: Create an LLC or be prepared to get doxxed.
I think you need to limit your scope a bit. A 'side project' could be anything. If you want meaningful responses, you need to give enough info (platform, language, tech stack, etc.) so we get a decent idea if our own project might fit your situation.
You're right, I am unfocused. What would be ideal for me is something in the Python/data/backend world in a fun subject area. But that's pretty narrow and another part of me wants to see many options so as to possibly surface something outside my comfort zone or something I'd never have thought of. I'm just looking for something non-traditional to do next and maybe it's unrealistic that some perfect idea will jump out at me.
I'm lucky that I learn to self host stuff. Once i get tired of working on a thing I can just stop... knowing that it will run without any intervention. don't have to worry about switching providers for anything, since I do all the infrastructure myself
Are you looking to buy projects?
Yes, or maybe there could be another type of arrangement, but I don't expect anyone to give away their project for free.
i have an iOS app that made a tiny bit of money but I am just not knowledgeable enough in the niche to market it.
havent spent much time optimizing keywords/app store listing since I am more interested in my current projects
what kind of projects are you looking for specifically?
I've been looking for such a product/project but I don't think it'll be easy to find such a thing. The process from $0 to $x where x > 1 is the most challenging part. x -> x * 2 is much easier as going from 0 to any number, you are essentially breaking the PMF barrier. Someone who did that probably understands business enough to be able to monetize the project into profitability or sell this baby at significant premiums (ie: 5 figures or more).
Most of what I found on Flippa and other markets:
1. AI drivels.
2. Suspicious customers. (ie: probably fraud).
3. Hype driven.
4. Real customers but more like consulting than SaaS.
5. Insane premiums for the value.
I've shot you an email.
Email sent