Ash HN: Why it's so hard to get money from side-project? | Hacker News Reader

Ash HN: Why it's so hard to get money from side-project?

7 pointsuvu9 comments

I created 2 side projects.

- https://myanpx.com and - https://www.myanmardevjobs.com

Added Google Ads. Since the traffic is very low I got a few dollars only. But, every day I read about all those indie hackers who got so much traffic and got lots of money and living by themselves. But, how did they do that? Why it's so hard to get income from the side projects?

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This is a larger problem with the world.

So many people have been promised dreams of modest wealth or more via side hustling.

But those dreams are an illusion. Passive income, for most of the population, is an illusion.

I don’t want to knock anyone for trying side projects. You might even get rich, but the odds are low (so make sure you enjoy it somewhat in case it doesn’t pan out).

Money for most people in their lives will come from steady, well-paying, full-time work.

Is your sole business plan "collect ad revenue from Google"? Unless you have a particularly good way to bring a lot of traffic to your site, ad revenue is not going to do much for you.

Consider that most people here are not looking for dev jobs in Myanmar. How do you plan to get people that are to that site? And is the number of people looking for dev jobs in Myanmar enough to bring in a bunch of ad revenue? (Hint: Answer is no.) Also, especially for a dev site: We're running ad blockers or tracking blockers at the very minimum. I don't see any ads on your site.

With a job site, for example, you'd likely bring in more trying to cash in on headhunting bonuses. Maybe let anyone post a dev job, but have a paid dev job offerings which are placed more prominently and let the company include more content/photos/whatever.

Note that I had no idea what "myanpx" was before I opened the URL. Even after opening the URL, I didn't know where the name came from, until I realized your other site was "myanmar dev jobs", and so it was probably meant to be "myan pics", whereas I initially read it as "my anpx" out of the URL.

I added paid feature when they do the job posting. But, no one is using the paid feature. I should expand the border the site? I still don't know how to make money from it.

For Myanpx, yeah I chose the name wrong. I should buy a more meaningful domain name in English.

When I was doing that 2 side projects. I am very excited and now after running that 2 websites over 1 year. I am like, 'wow no one is using it. Why it's so hard to get customers.'

You need a very specific set of users that you can explicitly identify and know how to reach online that have a specific problem that your side project helps solve. Can you identify such a user? If not then that is your first job to find one. If yes then your job is to go talk with that user and find out if they are willing to pay and if not, how you can you tweak your project so that they will pay. Rinse and repeat

Go talk with the user is not that easy. Should send out survey to them?

I made a similar mistake early on: I underestimated the business side of things. It turns out business majors did actually learn important stuff in their classes—market analysis, how to validate products, how to price and sell, which are much more important to making products which make money than engineering.

"I made a similar mistake early on" - Can you please share me, how you improve those?

You study business, you read books like the Lean Startup Method, you apply to YC a few times, it's a completely separate skill than programming.

Your side projects need unique features and design. It's not that easy to get customers. But, when you got customer or community. You can surely live by yourself.

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