Hacking side projects: Napkin to $1000 per day | Hacker News Reader

Hacking side projects: Napkin to $1000 per day

waynechang.com

31 pointsttol18 comments

I could not follow this article at all. He does not even say what his project does: "I had potentially identified [market demand] related to ecommerce, and then I spent 3 hours building it before opening it up for business."

The remainder of the article is about using a Google Docs spreadsheet and PHP to fulfill the "ecommerce demand" by hand. Once he saw the business could be sustainable, he began to automate the fulfillment process.

That is a novel, low-risk approach, but it's difficult to wrap one's head around it when you don't know what he is actually doing.

I'll agree that it certainly would've helped to know what the product is, but it's still a good read -- especially nice to have pictures :-).

Thanks for reading. The product I chose is not all that important to the article. I believe the value lies in the process related to executing around it, and wanted to share with others.

What you're basically saying is, don't build stuff until you need it. I agree with that. Unfortunately, without knowing at least what the business is, it's really hard to understand WHY your process worked the way it did. Personally, I found the article intriguing, but quickly lost interest when I saw that it was basically a rehash of standard advice. Providing a bit more information about the business behind it might have given it a bit more soul and made it sound less like an empty content piece.

I agree most with this comment.

The article reminds me of get-rich-quick books. "Look at me, I spent relatively little effort and am making XXX amount of money off of it." It's just missing the tagline: "AND YOU CAN TOO!"

As you say, building minimally and only as you need it is good advice. I think the financial snippets are nice and illustrative too. But, the lack of information on market analysis, finding the niche, or information on what the product actually is - all greatly reduce the usefulness of the article.

why is the product not important to painting the overall picture? I read it for a few lines and when I couldn't decipher what you were talking about exactly, i just close the window. The value lies in explaining the concept clearly and not by a link bait title and a blog post that talks vaguely about something.

I don't suppose he mentions (or anyone knows) what the product actually is?

Page view generator? ;)

This blog post would be a very poor and inefficient page view generator -- putting up pictures of cats would be a lot easier than writing and documenting my side project! :-) I just wanted to share the process I went through; I hope it helps some people.

Without knowing what your product is, the numbers and information you put are exactly worthless. They have no significance for me. Any reason to do that?

linkbait, buzz intro, not really useful info, beginner php code and timewaste, and seo honeypot on "Bldng a sstnbl side proj"

I thought the post was novel. As much as I want to know what the product is, it's still good advice.

His process for finding markets rather than ideas would be a much more interesting topic.

It would be nice if the author would have acknowledged a reason for not sharing more about the product. Readers might get over not knowing WHAT, if they had a little of the WHY explained to them.

Could probably find the domain for $200 =)

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-whois/?email=ac6994646bd3...

Cached: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...

I would like to know how do you find the 3-hours to build product and market it to $10K/ year.

I'll be very happy if I make $10K only.

I am shocked and appalled by the types of comments on this thread. Wayne has shared some very powerful business concepts here.

NO there is not any exceptional technology here. Instead Wayne used his technical skillset to quickly hack a high-leverage SIMPLE solution that WORKS.

It takes genius to make things simple.

NO wayne is not sharing the market opportunity he discovered. His new business is not strong and robust enough to invite competition.

He discovered a DEMAND CHANNEL.

Maybe if he used the phrase "customer development" you guys would be nicer?

It's the same thing.

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