Ask HN: Why have a side project?
After running a project about side projects for about 5 months, we've noticed that the reasons people have a 'main project' are often similar and boring. Money, necessity and social pressure.
With side projects, the reasons why people have them seem to be as varied as their projects. It can be a fair bit of effort to grow and maintain a side project, so I'm curious...
Why you do it? What makes your side project tick?
An open Ask HN community consultation from 2013 where @mhndrcksn convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:
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HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 5 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 13 comments
I used to do side projects to earn extra income, but it became difficult to predict, and kind of a pain in the ass with invoicing, overdue clients, bug fixes, scheduling headaches (evenings and weekends working for mostly 9-5 companies), fatigue, family life, vacation time, etc.
The work dried up, partly "naturally", but also partly because I wasn't pursuing new work. I've been in a somewhat dead-state for almost a year, and have recently stumbled on two ideas that I've made my "passion projects". Neither idea has a (directly foreseeable) method of making money, but both ideas are near and dear to me.
I work on these ideas when I'm not too tired in the evening, or can find a stretch of time to concentrate on the weekends. So far it's hit or miss, but I'm progressing. One idea challenges me mentally, and has a near-epic scale result at the end of it's very long yellow-brick-road, it's a vision that in addition to all of my coding effort will take 10-20 years to come to fruition.
The other idea is effectively a CRUD system for a specific market demographic that's not being serviced the way I think it should be.
So far, neither is ticking, but give me time, and they will. :)
1) It gives me hope that it could turn into something more. You could consider this along the same emotional reward people get from buying a lottery ticket. Whether the odds are worse or better are debatable :)
2) Allows me to learn technologies that interest me but are not used in my day-job.
Simply: side projects trains your skills in other areas that your current job don't.
I just like to build things, especially things that may make a buck or two.