How do you find side projects?
Trying to find some side project but really hard to find one.
If nothing else side projects consume time, so it must be able to hold your attention and focus. Therefore, it must be interesting in some way for you personally, otherwise you're just going to shelve it immediately.
As an example, the last side project I've worked on was a decompilation/reverse-engineering of a PlayStation game. I was inspired by existing projects such as Super Mario 64 decomp and REDRIVER2, so I picked a game of my childhood and started hacking. This somehow snowballed into stumbling upon an entire, seemingly unexplored field of software engineering (delinking), which I've leveraged to do many acts of outright heresy in the name of science. To me, this topic is like a hardcore puzzle, one that is intellectually rewarding to solve (plus, I get to melt the brains of any software developer I meet with it).
The point is, while a side project can be a lot of work, it isn't actually work. You're doing it not because you get paid for it, but because you want to. Find something that scratches your own itch.
After 7 years as the market leader you can expect
- $50 billion TAM => $100 million ARR
- $10 billion TAM => $20 million ARR
Usually you start with a small TAM so you can enter the market with some B2B sales. B2B sales are easier because you have a verify specific ideal customer profile (ICP). Later you can decide to expand your TAM so you can become interesting for VC funding. This is ideal for verticals like salons, restaurants, etc. and actually where the growth is at the moment.
Another approach is to just do something everyone needs but is annoying to handle yourself like AWS SES wrapper (Loops, Resend, ...) or Auth+Organizations (Clerk, Stack-Auth, ...). This is ideal if you target tech startups.
Another approach is to to combine two or more products into one. Requires a lot of code. This is super risky, but can be a gold mine if you target sales, marketing, HR, etc.
The last "approach" is special software for enterprise, but you need to work there to know what is needed. It is very hard to come up with an idea for special software. I know one startup who did this and the founder was writing his doctorate about a very niche enterprise topic.
PS: If you need a SaaS boilerplate, grab mine https://achromatic.dev (Next.js) to skip the first 2-3 months of your journey.
A problem you experience + Something cool and fun to work on (tech stack/market etc) = Build something
Example.
I live in Norway, and I need to paint my house. A lot of painters out there, some legit, some crap. Prices vary with 50%, so market is not efficient. They need to come and check out the house, then need to follow up, etcetc. Really annoying. So I built a local page for my town, https://maletjenester.no/, where people can paint their house using 1 click, the platform handles the rest. and I am the first customer :)
I like to use open source software. When I end up using a project that I find nice, I start contributing.
I like understanding how software works. When I use some cool software, I learn how it works. Some projects make it easy to write my own client, for instance: an IRC client, or a Mastodon client, etc.
I would say: write something you think you would use, and write it for yourself. At the very least it will be a good learning experience.
If it’s for money, side projects aren’t worth it. I went down this road for years, and DID make money, but ultimately it’s not worth it.
If it’s to learn, great! Start by solving problems you have. Doesn’t matter if it’s reinventing the wheel, solve it in a way you come up with yourself.
Here’s an example: I do our household budgeting on a spreadsheet, it’s okay but not very user friendly. So I can make a web-tool I can share over local IP so my partner who can’t spreadsheet can contribute. That’s a side project.
Also, do something different to your main job role. I work in web development all day, so my side projects are low level programming graphics projects, or game mods.
And the projects have to make a large amount of money to be better than a typical software developer salary.
Consider then that you’re probably already working 40 hours, where are you finding the time for a sustainable side project that generates income?
That takes months, years to get to any reasonable amount of income.
That being said, I have made money from side projects, I made 1/5 of my yearly salary in about 1 month of conception (from a software sale).
But that was a pure fluke, right place right time right tool right amount of luck. I’ve been making side projects for years, 9/10 of my projects lose me money lol
Even if your goal isn't to grow into a company, it is not always a difficult slog. My best side project accidentally made money. I wrote it for my kids, put it online, and forgot about it. As it was all client-side functionality, it was just a free static HTML page from my perspective. But 2 years later, I find out people had found it and were using it constantly, so I added some paid features, ran it for a couple years, and sold it.
You’re much better off focusing down on your career and maximising your paycheque.
Doing it solely for money you will just burnout. A 40 hour week + life commitments + a side project to make money is not sustainable for anyone.
Doing a fun side project that somehow makes money is fine, but think of the overwhelming amount of failed side projects out there. Statistically it’s very unlikely your side project will make much money.
Personally, I've seen way too much anti-employee politics and policy in the corporate world to trust that maximizing checks is right for everyone. I say that as someone who did that for much of my career, too. If you have ambition to do more, you should. If you are happy to just collect checks, you should do that. But people should decide for themselves because what burns one person out would make a different person thrive.
I’ve found the best approach is to reduce work hours per week/fortnight by 1 day, and spend that day on side projects and learning.
If you approach side projects with the intent to learn and share your creations, I think the money can follow.
That way you can still juice up your career, but potentially open up a diversified second income stream. If the finances look good, you can even reduce work hours and increase side project time
Even if it already exists but there are things about it that annoy you (and others), build a better version (competitor).