[gk1]

Also known as "freemium." Give something away for free (even at a loss), and convert some percentage into paying customers.

Only works if all of the below are true:

1. You contain the costs (time + money) of the free product.

2. Conversion (to paying customer) value or rate is high.

3. The free product gets a large volume of users/visitors. The OP got a nice boost from HN, which certainly helped. Not all projects will get as lucky.

[brightball]

Yea, the costs there seem to be contained because the entire "side project" was basically giving away the discarded concepts.

The work had already been done, the primary result sold and this project was basically just a way of recycling instead of trashing.

Good concept though.