Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project

Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by alin23 on Sunday May 01, 2022 @04:41PM (#31228467)

We think alike :) I’ve used the same strategy to turn Lunar (https://lunar.fyi) into a $5k/month business and to have the luxury of not having to sit through an interview or work for someone else in the near future.

I like both coding, design and reverse engineering so I do those with passion. But I leave taxes to Paddle and promotion to happy users.

I write rarely on my blog [1] and only if I feel I have gathered enough new information that could help other people with their endeavor.

I’ve yet to hire people for something, but as the project gets more complex, I feel the need to do that:

- some short frontpage animation that could explain the most used app features would be a nice addition but I’m no After Effects expert and I’m not keen on learning that

- doing statistics on the monitor data [2] and finding the best sensible defaults for each monitor would improve the user experience, but cleaning up data and having to relearn pandas would take time

It’s hard to justify the price of paying someone to do that and I always feel I should do it myself. But in the life of every side project that becomes a business, there comes a day when we have to admit that it’s not healthy to try to do everything.

[1] https://alinpanaitiu.com/blog

[2] https://db.lunar.fyi

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by nobody_nothing on Sunday May 01, 2022 @06:15PM (#31229244)

Quick idea: what might be nice instead of (or in addition to) an After Effects animation would be some interactive HTML sliders and buttons. When a website visitor slides them, they can see what effects the settings would have on their monitor -- potentially even applied to the website itself. Just a thought!

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by alin23 on Monday May 02, 2022 @03:03AM (#31232157)

That sounds nice! I always liked http://ciechanow.ski for its interactive articles. I'll explore this idea, thanks!

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by simsla on Sunday May 01, 2022 @07:15PM (#31229672)

Very impressive! At first I thought it wasn't interesting for me, but the features just kept on coming.

Will have to try the super brightness as the weather keeps improving. I've always loved working outside, but brightness is a bit of an issue.

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by alin23 on Monday May 02, 2022 @03:30AM (#31232294)

XDR Brightness is one of those things you can't go back to not having it.

I love working in botanic gardens and on the porch when I'm in the countryside, and XDR Brightness has made this experience much more enjoyable.

It may sound counterintuitive but I usually turn on Dark Mode when enabling XDR, because:

    - I mostly work with text which gets a ton of contrast at 1600 nits
    - the screen doesn't get hot as most of it has dark pixels
    - the battery lasts longer because energy is not wasted on bright white backgrounds

Lunar's contrast enhancer is what allows this XDR in Dark Mode thingie to be useful: https://files.lunar.fyi/enhance-contrast-slider.png

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by leros on Sunday May 01, 2022 @08:23PM (#31230080)

Huh. I thought about making something like this a few years ago. I'm amazed to see the idea turn into a successful business.

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by alin23 on Monday May 02, 2022 @03:23AM (#31232261)

There's even some competition: https://lunar.fyi/#comparison

I'm forever grateful to the ddcctl [1] project which enabled all these monitor control solutions.

[1] https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by lanecwagner on Sunday May 01, 2022 @05:56PM (#31229089)

does paddle make taxes a lot easier than stripe? I've been having issues with VAT taxes

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by danielskogly on Monday May 02, 2022 @02:03AM (#31231886)

I’d be curious to hear what kind of issues you’ve been having, as I’ve quite recently opted for Stripe over Paddle for the SaaS I’m working on (instorier.com). This Twitter thread [0] from some months ago finally tipped me over to Stripe, but considering we haven’t fully launched yet, I’m eager to know more.

[0] https://twitter.com/thekitze/status/1481579421031092233

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by kirso on Saturday May 14, 2022 @08:26AM (#31377294)

Man I love the idea behind Instorier! Is there a `story` behind it?

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Re:Things I don’t want to do to grow my side project by alin23 on Monday May 02, 2022 @03:00AM (#31232141)

It completely removes the need to handle taxes. Paddle acts as a Merchant-of-Record (kind of like a reseller) so they handle VAT and sales tax in all states for you.

I also don't need to invoice them. I just get my monthly payment in my Wise account (through ACH for 0 fees on the wire transfer) and never worry about the finance part.

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