Is anybody building non-business projects?
There is a lot of posts here on IH on how somebody created X, and that is now generating Y revenue.
I don't see any posts about side-projects without any business value, yet this is something I'm creating ATM:
- project WireVPN - my personal VPN based on Wireguard to interconnect my personal devices, because public VPNs doesn't have this feature
- project WoL - small webapp sitting on the server in the VPN mentioned above - it sends the magic packet to wake my "big gaming PC". I had use-cases I needed to do that, while outside the apartment (also a reason I set up my own VPN)
- project synCHRO - extension+webapp that constantly synchronizes my Chrome tabs to a remote server - I can see my Chrome tabs on other browsers, use-case I personally need too
Does anybody do this? I'm really not that interested in creating businesses here, is that OK?
Yes, I keep working on www.Colorsandfonts.com, I made it to give back to the community of devs and designers back in late 2017, I was still learning HTML and it has gone through many faces, this is the latest one.
A part of this I have also made:
Which started as a theme for VS Code and keeps growing for more interfaces.
These two projects are completely free.
I had another one called www.wickedblocks.dev, but I sold it.
Many projects started as a side project for a creator to help him with his issue. And after time, the author sees that his problem is not only for him but for many other people. As an author, You can transform your hobby project into a business project in that time. Depend on you and your time. The transformation is not only adding a "sell button", but a lot of many other things from marketing, support, planning, growing etc... or just putting your code to Github and being the open-source developer. IMHO both ways are correct.
My girlfriend and I often see things (coffee tables, table lamps, rugs, clothing, planters, etc) in tv shows and movies that we really like, but r/HelpMeFind and r/findfashion aren’t always able to help us.
I’m making IMDB for product appearances in media, so I can just go to a series’s page and look up where I can get the planters that appear in the coffee shop in episode 2. The most “business-y” it would probably get would be throwing affiliate links on the item pages.
This has serious potential tbh. How far in are you? How do you find the exact items in the series/episodes to then list?
I’m glad you like the idea! A working MVP is about 80% functional; I want to make sure the data layer is relatively solid before I start soliciting data.
There are a few different ways I’m approaching gathering the data for as much coverage as I can get:
Cool! The last two were my best suggestion.
Lmk if you want to bounce ideas around, I like this so much that I may use my contacts in the TV and broadcast news business to make something similar for the country I live in :) small population though, so if you're open to some collaboration it would be sweet!
Even though most people wanna make a few bucks in the WBE Space we have many people one their projects as a side gig and I don't think their number one priority is to make money 🤑
Thanks for posting this, Srigi! I love IH because it's a place for people build cool businesses and make some money, gain freedom in the process.
But too often "personal projects" or things we do outside of work that aren't meant to make money are overlooked. What's the point of building businesses if we end up with a bunch of free time we don't know what to do with?
I recently started Paternal. It's quite simply a Discord community built by Fathers, for Fathers!
It's a paid community which could in theory turn into a business if it takes off. But I didn't create it with the intention of building a business. More just to make sure the people who join are invested in becoming better Dads, want to be active in the community, etc. The quality of free communities can go downhill fast if they're not intensely moderated which I don't want to do haha.
After becoming a Dad and realizing I wanted to meet more people who were like me.
I want it to be a place for Dads to...
Or just have a place to go to complain about your kiddos haha.
Anyway, it's been a really fun project. It's still a small community (mostly my close friends, so far) but I have to say, it's been great for my mental health to have a place to chat with other Dads, hear what others are going through and realize none of us are alone in the challenge that is parenting.
I think it's actually funny that both personal projects and businesses should start at the same place: working on solving a challenge that you [grow to] enjoy tackling. It's up to you whether you want to keep it personal or do something more serious 💯
Hello friends. I decided to open moving company like https://abamovingflorida.com/local-moving/broward/sunrise-movers which I used before my moving to Miami from Chicago. I think such companies can be ueful for many users who need to move and deliver a lot of things. I think its profitable idea.
Most of my stuff these days is related to AI.
I just tinker with Kaggle competitions and playgrounds mostly, there’s a few other sites that host competitions which I enter if my Mac hardware is up to the task.
I’d like to build something that generates money, as I have no income at the moment, but it just feels forced and I’m really not motivated to work on apps, be they web or native iOS, at all anymore. 🤷♂️
Yeah I think that's totally fine. I think a lot of people on IH want to build businesses as an alternative to working. I think you're still an Indie Hacker if you're building non commercial products