[afandian]

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.

[wiz21c]

This.

Will add my experience.

The project is not the problem. The problem is the mindset. A mindset for business has, at least in my experience, a very different set of goals than one to make a hobby project, not even a product.

If you make a business, money must be your driver, your hobby time is just a mean to achieve an end. So it's transformed into a background task.

Also, don't forget that if your business fails, then you'll most probably have to stop your hobby project as well (too many bad memories...). You may have to kill your baby, which is very difficult to do.

A business oriented person transforms opportunities into business/money; another opportunity, another business. A programmer raise his program-child. If one has to make another one, he'll have to kill the previous one (unless he has infinite time to work on both :-)). Making hobby project assume you're emotionally involved in it. That's not compatible with business I think.

Ah, and doing business, you'll attract other people who're in for the business. The kind of people who'll put a price tag on what you do (which will be so less worth than what you think, very tough to ear)

So, be sure you have the business mindset.

[_bxg1]

I don't think it's impossible to mix the two successfully, but I think it varies greatly by what the project is. Some things monetize very naturally, other things would completely lose their appeal if you tried to contort them into a product that people pay for.

Example: I did a project for a hackathon at UT when I was in college. The idea was that in this day and age it's still hard to get a file or snippet of text from one device to another unless they share some kind of account sign-in or something. People still email things to themselves.

So I made a website called "Catch" where you can upload a file or a text snippet, get a throwaway 6-digit code with which you can download the thing from any web browser, and after ~15 minutes the artifact is deleted from the server. The whole appeal of it was having absolutely minimum friction.

When we presented our project one of the first things they asked was, "how will you monetize it?". It was something where any sort of sign-up or payment step completely defeated the purpose, so the answer was, "we won't".

But I don't think that's the case for every fun-project. Especially if you take a freemium approach or show ads.

[hkiely]

There always different types of projects. Some are platforms where If you can get multiple thousands of users, you can generate revenue from advertisements. From there you can scale into different business models such as freemium. The key issue is to know what problem you are solving and who you are solving it for.

[gordon_freeman]

Mind sharing the link to your Hobby project for me to check it out? :)

[afandian]

I'm reluctant to because I've had zero time to dedicate to it for a couple of years and there's a laundry list of improvements I have been intending to make.

But, with that caveat, it's https://www.folktunefinder.com

It's a mix of clojure and java. And there's a half written rust search backend waiting for a rainy day...

[stevage]

I have a list of 30 things you need to change about it immediately!

[Igelau]

This is great. Perfect for when you need to find that Slip Jig you can't remember the name of, or when you quickly need a list of alternate titles for An Phis Fliuch.

[mgreenleaf]

This is really neat. Thank you for sharing! I love folk music, and this is an interesting way to discover new pieces and play around with them.

[cbzehner]

Thanks for sharing what you've been building. Very cool!

[1123581321]

So cool. Thank you for being willing to share!

[gordon_freeman]

Very cool project! Thanks for sharing!