Why did you start your side-project?

I started buildfaster.co because I wanted to help developers save precious time by selling them easy-to-use and beautifully-designed themes.

BuildFaster sells HTML themes that are easy as pie 😉

I started https://melbado.com/ because I had a hard time finding early adopters and beta testers for a previous SaaS startup. And that even though I offered steep discounts. And it was still too early for ProductHunt. That's why I have developed a platform that is specifically designed to attract first users for startups.

I missed going out to the bar (hey quarantine) and exchange with people. I wanted to get back to the old type of web with blogs where people shared meaningful, personal stories. So I built midnight.pub

I created by first side-project like 6 years ago, and all of my projects around that time were "just for fun" but one of them organically picked up pace (SEO?) and reached >1M users out of nowhere. It was always a personal project so I didn't monetize it for ~4 years, especially because it wasn't costly to maintain and my goal from the project wasn't to earn money. Later on, I monetized it with ads but just enough for me to recoup the costs of running it.

Would do it again? 100%.

Thank you, most of my side projects are out of my own need, but I have not gotten far with them in terms of revenue. FlatGA was built out of my struggle with Google Analytics interface. Recently built GrowMyTwitter to help me grow my twitter account, available for others as a small paid service.

I wanted to create a way for teenagers and college students to stay social and have fun with each other even though we currently have to be physically separated due to coronavirus. Salad Bowl is a recreation of a game my friends and I used to play in person, but now in mobile app format, so now we can play remotely via video chat!

I wanted to make something refreshing for people who get tired of playing games (trofy.io)

to feel free. yeah... We work for someone, when we leave we had absolutely nothing. I love to earn $500 from my project more than $2000 from another. last week I working on simplecheatsheet.com and now developing bubblask.com and maybe launch next week. 2 weeks for a project :)))

I had just finished working on a previous side project, and wanted to find some users to share with, but I didn't want to pay for ads and I didn't really want to show it to friends and family. I remembered the website StumbleUpon, and how it let random people come to visit your website. I tried to find StumbleUpon, and discovered that it no longer exists, so I recreated the basic functionality - click button, get a random website, on https://stumblingon.com

I started vimtraining.com as a personal repository of vim commands and workflows, and eventually using it as a scratchpad to test new technologies.

I started http://soleinsider.com/ because i have a passion for collecting sneakers

A year ago, I launched sales of my application and thought how

to increase conversion on the app landing page

(https://demo.bootstraptor.com/blueprints/)

Here I came across a social proof/FOMO widget idea(it shows to

users recent customer activity which boosts conversion due to

FOMO effect)

I figured it would be easy to create my own widget (since I

know JavaScript well) and not pay any service. in addition,

prices were quite high and reached $100 per year and even

higher :(

The first version was very simple. However, everything worked fine and it took me only three hours for the first MVP.

Now it's working project: Proven.ly

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-i-made-a-social-proof-widget-for-my-own-site-and-turn-it-to-profitable-side-project-a6bc018463

A year ago, I launched sales of my application and thought how

to increase conversion on the app landing page

(https://demo.bootstraptor.com/blueprints/)

Here I came across a social proof/FOMO widget idea(it shows to

users recent customer activity which boosts conversion due to

FOMO effect)

I figured it would be easy to create my own widget (since I

know JavaScript well) and not pay any service. in addition,

prices were quite high and reached $100 per year and even

higher :(

The first version was very simple. However, everything worked fine and it took me only three hours for the first MVP.

Free Social Proof Builder backed w/ Google Sheets: https://proven.ly/

I started cvlogin.com because I wanted to help the youth create a resume. I realized that many had a big problem with writing their resume. That's why I wanted to solve the problem as simply as possible. With the first version I support 7 languages. You can create a resume via a page, simply create a template and download it as a PDF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZedIq-xrhjc

I'm working on https://pluckd.co because I was fed up with bullshit politics from my 'real' jobs. Just talking about it is so enervating...

At my previous job, directors fought over departments because the more teams you had, the more clout you commanded. That meant a target in your back if you ever caught one's attention.

Now, in my current company, I see once again people receiving instructions to find faults in other teams' projects just because their bosses don't like the team behind it.

The project is certainly not there yet, but I'm trying to build something that's capable of identifying such conflicts. I'm starting by making an analytics tool that allows for your team to know how it's viewed inside your company

I started nomadmail.io because I wanted to send newsletters in the easiest way possible.

More and more people are leaving established organisations is the search of more fulfilling, fun and humane jobs. A work that would allow them to take/have control of their lives and the thing they are building.

I started The Future of Work with the intention to help those makers, founders and IH avoid the same mistakes the established organisation has been making for a long time.

The Future of Work It is a newsletter for people who want to change the Future of Work.

I aim to share ideas, thoughts and practices on how people and organisation can create a future where work is more fulfilling, humane and equitable.

I started https://www.docsapp.io/ because I wanted to learn Scala with real world problem solving. I had bad experience to use Atlassian Confluence and I can feel SaaS is eating the world so I build a developer hub for SaaS/Product.

I like working in the terminal, and I wanted to bring the analytics I really need in it. I wanted to get better with Golang, too.

So I came up with DevDash: highly configurable dashboard in the terminal for developers.

I made site2static.com because I need to create any (landing) page as fast as possible, and I found landen.co, but the free-tier is limited, my bandwidth is capped, and I can't set up a custom domain

I started https://getadvice.github.io/ to help others devs/entrepreneurs and to see what new ideas are out there.

I have a lot of ideas and like to implement them, but I just dread the deployment process. It got a little easier since I started using Kubernetes on Scaleway, but I still lack logging, monitoring, alerting, etc. I wanted to have a configure-once all-batteries-included Docker container deployment solution, so that I don't have to worry about setting up and integrated a lot of dedicated tooling just for running a simple webapp.

I started working on www.postiatic.com because I felt like the content I put on Twitter can be used in other ways also - hence building a blog/static website, share it in a newsletter and build a place I can fully own.

I started bountifulpotential.com because I became a father. Plus, I've seen/heard parents treat their kids like they're disappointing failures, and also met far too many adults who live miserable lives, but don't dare to do anything about it.

I wish I had more time to work on it...

During quarantine, I challenge my self to create a complete project from scratch, that is, A Web Site, A Dashboard, A GraphQL API, Documentation, Integrations (React Library, JS Vanilla, and a Rest API), Payments Integration. A full-stack app.

Another reason was to create a product for internal use in personal projects and professional work to help launch features with the support of feature flags

With this was born UpStamps

As a developer transferring my code/build/configuration files between computers with shared-folders/links/copy-paste etc was a mess. So I made a simple command line file copy tool with file-indexes.

HelloEle.com

I started Daily Dev Tips to keep sane during lockdown, and it's still very fulfilling to keep busy with it. https://daily-dev-tips.com/

I started Nodewood because every time I started a new app, I had to build the basics again, and I always skipped out on things so that I could get to "the meat" of the project. Then I'd have to go back and fill in what I skipped out on later, if I was lucky, and people were able to see past how bare-bones my MVP was.

Nodewood is the JavaScript SaaS Starter Kit that I wish I had six months ago. It provides the API and UI scaffolding, user authentication and management, and subscription management, among other things. Because the boilerplate is the project, I've focused on making these basic features rock-solid and high-quality.

It's been a lot of fun to work on, and I hope it ends up being as useful as it has been fun, for myself and others.

I honestly jempost.com because I originally wanted to have my own in house software to post on LinkedIN, Facebook Groups, and Twitter. Now, I am motivated to allow others to use it and show the awesome features that I am rolling out in July.

This is honestly a great platform for those who sell on Gumroad, Etsy, etc.

or for Tech recruiters, startups, and digital marketing agencies.

After switching my MacBook out for a ThinkPad, I really missed the awesome Focus App on Windows, and so I built Lazar Focus.

This is a small Windows app that blocks distracting websites and apps when you need to focus.

It works on the most popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox, new Edge, Brave) without any plugins required. It logs all of your focus blocks, keeping track of all of those productive hours.

Most recently, I have implemented an automatic time-tracking feature: Even when you're not in a focus block, Lazar Focus can now automatically log the apps you use during the day, 100% privately on your own PC, so that you can more easily bill clients or fill in timesheets. This feature will ship in the next release within a week or two.

(If you would like to keep on eye on LF's progress, I would be most grateful if you could follow https://twitter.com/lazarfocused )

I started BigIdeas to help entrepreneurs validate their ideas, i had a tonne of ideas , in fact i still get tonnes of ideas but I didn’t know the best way to validate them. I had my own startup and loved it, i attended a couple of accelerator programs, and i really enjoy helping and advising startups, so i started with a wordpress platform where users could submit their ideas and then the community could upvote and provide feedback, but later pivoted to create a smart report that evaluates questionnaire answers and then creates a custom report helping them evaluate the idea, but it wasn’t quite getting the interest i wanted so i decided to go back to basics and offer an advice and product cost analysis services. I will eventually try and reintegrate the smart report and the upvote platform, but still trying to get market fit, which is hard!
I am at https://bigideas.guru if you want to check it out. I am always looking for feedback.

Hey, I was checking out Fifty the other day, I like it. Good product.

I started Designtack to make social media content creation easier. Honestly, I found social media content creation, a very tiring work and so, that's why I built it. I am sure there are people like me on the same boat, haha.

Well, talking about Colors & Fonts I just wanted to make tiny resource for designers and developers, it was supposed to be only one page with gradients.

You can read here about it

Then Wicked Templates I started it to because I just teally enjoy to build landing pages and change they layout, testing new things and so on, and if I have to play around a new CSS framework even more.

I really have fun working on them and if I can make some cheese even better.