ROUNDTABLES ★ 8 upvotes 2022

Ask HN: How to sell a small side project?

The Founder's Submission

Direct narrative and submission text authored by @sircon on Hacker News:

I was approached to sell a small side project and made me think on how to actually do this.

In this specific situation, the price I wanted for the project was too much for the buyer and he suggested to pay in partial payments. I don't know this person and don't know how trustworthy he is.

How could I make that work? How can I protect myself? Selling a domain is easy using an escrow service, but how to send code and other assets safely and so on?

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

Distilled analysis of the business dynamics, operational challenges, and strategic takeaways:

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2022 where @sircon convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:
1
Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.
2
Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.
3
Practical recommendations on bookkeeping, payment gateways (Stripe vs Paddle), and freelance-to-product transitions.
Community Debate Themes:

Hundreds of active indie hackers contributed case studies, pricing heuristics, and pitfalls to avoid when moonlighting on side projects.

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (9 total discussions):

MU @muzani Peer Contributor

Get a lawyer to help with the sales agreement. Assume that they're not trustworthy (they rarely are). But they'll do the same with you.

Ensure that assets belong to you before the full payment, but also ensure that they get everything after full payment. Both of you should sit with the lawyer and discuss it.

SP @spdebbarma Peer Contributor

Take a look at Tiny Acquisitions[0]. I stumbled upon it on Product Hunt a few months back, and is possibly a good fit for your needs. All the best! [0]https://tinyacquisitions.com/home

TW @twobitshifter Peer Contributor

You would still need to set up some sort of escrow account that holds both the assets and the money. Once the payments are complete the escrow agent will hand over the IP, domain, etc.

JI @jimmyvalmer Peer Contributor

If your price is under 50k, and he wants to pay in installments, then I'd just close the discussion. Dude is your yanking your chain.

DY @dyeje Peer Contributor

There are some websites for this Flippa, MicroAcquire, FEI International, etc.

HISTORICAL ERA Pandemic Bubble (2020–2022)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 8 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 9 comments
TOPICS & TECH STACK: