Re:Ask HN: Can my side project make money?
by ABrandt on Sunday October 24, 2010 @11:19PM
(#1828331)
Congrats on getting something up and running! Now the hard part...iteration.
Right now you have the feeble skeleton of what could make money. As you try and turn this into a business, don't try to just layer on premium features. For example, arbitrarily adding paid usage limits probably won't work in its current state. Build it into a business. Let your app grow. Stretch it and pull it in all sorts of directions until you have something people want badly enough that they'll pay--aka achieve product/market fit.
With that aside, I think you need to identify a particular use case for this technology. Is it for personal note taking? Relaying secret information to a third-party? Playing a global game of 'telephone'[1]? You can't find paying customers until you know what they'll use it for.
Right now you have the feeble skeleton of what could make money. As you try and turn this into a business, don't try to just layer on premium features. For example, arbitrarily adding paid usage limits probably won't work in its current state. Build it into a business. Let your app grow. Stretch it and pull it in all sorts of directions until you have something people want badly enough that they'll pay--aka achieve product/market fit.
With that aside, I think you need to identify a particular use case for this technology. Is it for personal note taking? Relaying secret information to a third-party? Playing a global game of 'telephone'[1]? You can't find paying customers until you know what they'll use it for.
-- [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_game