Ask HN: How to turn a “toy” side project into a business?
We launched http://hallway.chat ↗ a couple weeks ago and since then hundreds of teams have signed up. They're all free users, but daily usage is pretty high.
Hallway started as a fun side project / "toy app". It creates temporary video rooms in Slack for teams to connect and make working from home less lonely.
I wanted to ask if anyone has any ideas about how to think about turning this into an actual business given there seems to be some interest?
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I started a side project in 2013, and when I (for other reasons) left my job at the beginning of 2019 I decided to go full time on it. I timeboxed myself to one year to show salary-like profits.
Things that snuck up on me:
1. I thought it'd be the same work as before, but more of it. But when your side project is promoted to your full time job, you want to keep it that way. You start focusing on different things, like making sure you make enough money to keep going. My project used to be ~90% free, and after six months of "that's okay, I'll just build more paid features" it didn't work out (that's a whole post on why) and I was forced to move a lot of free stuff behind the paywall, which comes with all the user backlash you'd expect.
2. Apart from building paid features, learning how to do so and funnel people into them is half a full-time job in and of itself. YC's free Startup School was a fantastic resource here.
3. The more people pay you, the more you feel beholden to them. You'll spend more time doing customer support than you want because of the guilt. You'll think you can resist this or engineer it away, but it just keeps coming.
Before: - 10k MAU - Net negative $300 a month
1 year of full-time later: - 13k MAU - Net positive $500 a month
Uplifting result, but not salary-like, so I'm moving on and demoting it back to a side project. Nonetheless I don't regret this; if I hadn't done it I'd always be wondering "what if".
- Actually phone up at least one new sign up per day. Ask why they signed up, what they use it for, how it compares the the others they have used and what would they pay for - unlimited time, number participants whatever. They will try to be nice - assume they lie. most importantly how did they hear of you. Pay attention to the vocabulary they use. What you are trying to get here is your elevator pitch - but told to you by your customers "Video chat right in Slack"
- You now have some idea of channels to market - ten people signed up because of a facebook post or because of a linkedin article or a google search - so choose a channel - facebook / linkedin / SEO. Just produce ten articles or pay for ten adverts - and see what traffic changes you get - stick at it - you are looking for a channel to market. Somewhere somehow there is a way of reaching a potential audience - with a sales pitch you learnt from above you want to find where that sales pitch reaches the most of your potential audience
- pricing - this matters less than the above especially as you are aiming at busiesses - I would say Slack has a pricing norm so you may want to charge per user but aim for 30/55/75 or there abouts.
- keep trying new sales pitches, and vary the channels you try slowly.
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This isn't the answer you want. But I have a hobby side project that I've kept going for a decade, and which gets high enough use to feel like it's worth keeping going.
It costs server money to run, a couple of take-away-coffees per week's worth. In the past I did agonise about putting ads on it, or otherwise monetizing it.
But at some point I decided that as I was lucky enough to have a paying job, the marginal returns I would get by trying to monetize the site wouldn't be worth it, and I was happy to pay for it like any other hobby. The grateful emails I get every couple of weeks make it worthwhile.
That was a very liberating decision. Mix business with pleasure and it stops being fun.
This is an ad. This isn't a genuine request for help. They have everything in place to monetize this.
They've got two massive companies that I know of using their service: Pivotal and Coursera. They've already got a pricing model in place so it's already monetized.
This is an add. People up voting this and acting like it's a sincere request for help have had the wool pulled over their eyes.
I'm honestly expecting to be down voted for this, and that's fine, I can understand why my reaction would be seen as negative, unconstructive, and so on, but posts like this go on indiehackers.com, not HN (unless they're genuinely a hobby project on the side.)
(Twirls moustache)
Microtransactions. "Excavating your hallway. Time Remaining: 90 minutes -- Want it now? Buy TNT for 10 Gems!"
Gems can be bought for cash, or you can have some mined by paying Stars. The mine yield is somewhat random and the dwarfs need frequent breaks, but it sometimes includes loot like stupid hats you can use in the video. You only get Stars by referring people, connecting social media accounts, signing up for mailing lists, etc.
Gotta go now -- I can hear the RCMP riding in and these maidens aren't going to just tie themselves to the railroad tracks. Let me know where to send the bill for consulting!