[syndicatedjelly]

Kinda meta advice, but I'd be careful about converting your hobbies into paid gigs. It's a great way to make yourself hate your hobby, especially when it turns out it's not very lucrative and the customers are assholes. I learned this the hard way with photography.

People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side, like drop-shipping garbage or starting some weird self-help YouTube channel. In the world of engineering, I think it's way more useful to focus on your core skillset and learn new things around that.

That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.

[ferennag]

> That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.

Would you mind sharing more details? Story? What is the app? I am really curious :) If no, that's fine, thanks for the tip anyways. I will definitely check out the website. My biggest problem is coming up with ideas for an app/business.

[syndicatedjelly]

> My biggest problem is coming up with ideas for an app/business.

I'm in the same boat. For me at least, I assume that any app that's making money must have been created by someone with much better skills than me. Someone shared that website on HN a few weeks ago and they just blog about various solo developer projects that earn 4-6 figures a month. Seeing those projects gives me ideas and confidence to try something myself.

[kcindric]

Could you please share the link of the blog you’re talking about?

[Gunnerhead]

I’m very curious too!

[mr_o47]

I’m in the same boat as you. Its really hard to come up with an idea.

Its like when a writer starts to write something they have a writer block

[yowlingcat]

Not the GP, but you might get a lot from checking out IndieHackers. It has tons of case studies by folks who have put together side projects many of which have become quite valuable [1]. Another valuable approach might be to check out Acquire.com [2] and Centurica MarketWatch [3] from the buyers side to see what kinds of projects become very valuable base hits, even if they're not venture scale. Not affiliated with any of these, I just found them valuable sources of information when I was thinking about creating economically valuable side projects years ago.

[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/products?commitment=side-projec...

[2] https://acquire.com/buyers/

[3] https://app.centurica.com/marketwatch

[VoodooJuJu]

>People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side

Yes. I have no promotion prospects and no new-job prospects, so I do what I have to do to survive: make my own way, with my own "side hustles".

[syndicatedjelly]

Do what you gotta do. This is HN so I'm assuming most of the audience is in engineering and probably well-paid. Don't take it personally.