Re:Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money tha...
by j3th9n on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @11:45AM
(#25583201)
https://wifimask.com - WifiMask VPN. The little money that comes in is spent on server costs basically. I spent 3 years building it, spending too much time on trying to build "perfect" Apple apps, instead of quickly going online with an MVP and validate first. Besides that there are a lot of VPN's out there and competing with the "big boys" with big marketing budgets is hard, especially when they can provide things like Netflix US streaming. I can keep it online forever this way, it's "bootstrapped", so no screaming investors who want to see money, but I stopped working on an Android and Windows app, I see it as a lost case and these days I'm focused on my webhosting: joostwebhost.nl and secret future projects. ;-) (And I'm available as a freelancer) I learned a lot from it though, more then I ever learned at an employer. I'm pretty sure I can apply the knowledge to a future successful project.
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Re:Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money tha...
by tHap1 on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:35PM
(#25586421)
The whole internet's full of VPN service but there's still a big market for it. There's a service I used a couple of years ago that allowed me to basically connect to the internet through this particular VPN without having any data plan. I don't know how they did it but it still seems weird that the service worked this way on the contrary to what I understand VPNs actually do or how they work. After a little bit of googling, finally got the name it was called Your Freedom
Re:Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money tha...
by j3th9n on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @07:26PM
(#25588068)
Interesting, this was probably due to "DNS tunnel mode":
https://www.your-freedom.net/index.php?id=dns-tunneling
I will look into this more, thanks! :-)
Re:Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money tha...
by st1ck on Thursday December 31, 2020 @01:29AM
(#25590136)
I guess based on https://github.com/yarrick/iodine ? You could also run your own server.
Re:Ask HN: What's a side project you built to make money tha...
by rrrrrraul on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @04:33PM
(#25586393)
Good on you for sticking with it. I too tried launching a similar service in this market, you’re right, the “big boys” marketing is everywhere and drowns out smaller service providers. Keep going, good luck.