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Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by mattkevan on Saturday June 06, 2020 @11:58AM (#23440054)
I sell prints of public domain artwork on Etsy [0]. I’ve automated the print production and fulfillment, so all I need to do is set up the artwork and maintain the product listings.

It consistently brings in around £100-300 per month and if I put any time at all into marketing it could probably do a lot better.

I also maintain a directory of UX tools, resources and information [1]. It currently doesn’t bring in anything but it’s more of a repository for stuff I find interesting than a commercial venture.

[0] https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheDoveAndTheSeagull

[1] https://www.uxlift.org/

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by XCSme on Saturday June 06, 2020 @02:10PM (#23441122)
The uxlift directory is pretty cool. Any way to submit more tools/articles to it? I am working on a side-project that's like a self-hosted hotjar ( https://www.usertrack.net ), which might be helpful for the readers.
Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by mattkevan on Saturday June 06, 2020 @02:53PM (#23441455)
Oh that’s cool, thanks for sharing. I’ll post it when I’ve got a moment.

There’s a form on the site, but if you’ve got anything else you want to share just send it to [email protected].

I’m really interested in self-hosted, privacy-respecting alternatives to the big tracking platforms so this is right up my street. (Having said that, I do use GA, but I’m not happy about it.)

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by abetusk on Saturday June 06, 2020 @11:50PM (#23444619)
I've often thought about doing this or something similar. Can I ask, how long have you been at it? How did you pick your initial round of public domain pictures? What was your growth curve like?

And did you automate the print/production initially or do it only after you'd been around for a while? If you don't mind me asking, what print/production company are you using, how did you find them and why did you settle on them (vs. someone else, say)?

Any more information would be welcome.

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by mattkevan on Sunday June 07, 2020 @03:33AM (#23445502)
I’ve been doing it for around 4 years now. Growth has been slow initially because you need a lot of listings to be noticed - the bigger sellers all have over 1000.

I knew I wanted to do something with public domain art prints, so I researched other sellers to find the types of things that were popular. Lots of places like the Library of Congress, NYPL and the Rijksmuseum have open access policies, so I regularly hunt through their collections to find interesting stuff. The problem is always finding something in the public domain that’s also very high resolution.

For a long time I produced the pieces myself as buying top quality paper and a decent printer worked out cheaper than using a print company - and I quite enjoyed it. However I’ve decided now that the convenience is worth the extra cost.

I’ve also automated creating listing images by using Cloudinary and a few shell scripts. This has been a massive time-saver.

As for print companies, it’s a balance between cost, quality and price. The big ones like Printful or Gooten are cheaper and do everything from t-shirts to phone cases, but have a limited range of paper and sizes. Specialist fine art places have a huge range of paper and produce better prints but are much more expensive.

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by giarc on Sunday June 07, 2020 @10:44AM (#23447683)
Does etsy have add-ons/integrations like Shopify does? For example on Shopify you can integration with printful and the orders automatically get set to printful for fulfillment.

Edit Never mind, I see your response to another question.

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by yonig on Monday June 08, 2020 @08:38AM (#23455969)
Growth has been slow initially because you need a lot of listings to be noticed - the bigger sellers all have over 1000.

Have you thought about padding your collection for the sake of exposure?

Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by nabeards on Saturday June 06, 2020 @01:29PM (#23440807)
Could you elaborate on your automation toolset?
Re:Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd no... by mattkevan on Saturday June 06, 2020 @03:01PM (#23441494)
There are a number of print-on-demand companies, like Printful and Pwinty that integrate with Etsy and can print and fulfil orders. Annoyingly there’s no single one that does everything I need, so I use a few, depending on the customer’s location and the type of print they’ve selected.

I’m also working on a Jekyll-based site that uses the Etsy API to build a stand-alone e-commerce site from all my Etsy store listings.