FlowReads
Find books that help you grow
As a serial maker, developer & dad of 2 children, I never have enough time to work on my projects. These days, I'm focusing most of my spare time on improving React Milkshake (www.reactmilkshake.com) and MakerMove (www.makermove.com), so there just wasn't enough time left to continue with FlowReads. That's why I decided to put it on sites like SideProjectors and try to sell it.
Luckily, there were some people who were interested in taking over the project, so I ended up selling it for $2500.
I know this is not big money, but here's why I'm happy with it:
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I had fun building the project
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I learned a lot
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It didn't look like the project was gonna make me a lot of money
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I wanted to fully focus on other projects
Here are some learnings I got from building and selling this project:
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Earning money with Amazon affiliates on books is hard (average earn on a sold book was like $0,80)
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Building applications with Firebase saves a lot of time if you need authentication. I'm now mostly working with React, Firebase & Firestore instead of building a complete API myself.
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ProductHunt upvotes do not say anything about your business. FlowReads became Product of the Day, but after a couple of days, all the traffic was gone. I think a lot of upvotes can mean that people like your idea, but it's not a validation for a profitable product.
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Selling a side project takes more time than expected. (Transferring domains, social accounts, documentation, code, etc.)
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$2500 can buy you nice things
Launched a new side project called FlowReads on ProductHunt and it became product of the day! It’s a simple web app to discover books that can help you grow. I have built it with React and used the Google Books API to get the data.
I was a bit surprised that it did so well. I’ve spent waaay more time on RaterFox, but that never made it to the top 5. And now I built a project in just a couple of weekends and people seem to really love it. It shows again that you don’t need to spend months or years on development. Just built the simplest version possible and launch that first to see if people like it.
6 Comments
I can second your sentence about upvotes on PH not mattering much. I had a similar experience with HN where it was on the front page but the actual number of long term users was very low.
not gonna lie, you had me in your last point. Also, having so much on your plate, it's a wise choice. I learned something today. Thanks.
Hey Jake,
Love how react milkshake is designed. Great that you are so transparent about selling your side project.
I would love to know how that process took place, I am writing a guide for makers ( but really anyone ) that are looking at either selling or buying a project.
Thank you.
I got in contact with someone who was interested via sideprojectors.com. I hade more people reaching out, but mostly with questions, which was just time-consuming. Luckily the buyer was willing to pay the asking price of 2500. The payment went through Escrow. This was my first time selling via Escrow and I like the platform, because you can set milestones and get paid for every milestone you delivered.
Escrow.com reduces the risk of fraud by acting as a trusted third-party that collects, holds and only disburses funds when both Buyers and Sellers are satisfied. You can read more about the process here: https://www.escrow.com/what-is-escrow.
The buyer had set up an agreement, which we we both signed and uploaded to Escrow.
We did the transaction is 4 milestones:
When a milestone is marked as accepted I received a payment. After the total transaction, I still had some contact with the buyer about hosting and some small questions. Overall the process was pretty smooth, but it just took longer than expected.
I hope this gives you some insights into the process of selling a project, if you have more questions please let me know.
Wow..thanks for the detailed response. Loving it. Congrats again.
No problem :)