ROUNDTABLES ★ 18 upvotes 2017

Ask HN: Who is selling/trading a side project? (September 2017)

Shared by @titusblair · Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019) · 3 community discussions

View HN Discussion (3 comments)

ORIGINAL RETROSPECTIVE

The Founder's Submission

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

Hey HN I like how there is a Who is Hiring every month on HN why not a who is selling/trading a side project?

Listing format: Name of side project - description - asking price or trade

Here are a few of my projects I am interested in selling/trading (I have a big project that is taking all my time)...

JobCompass.net - iOS/Android/Web App with loyal following since 2009. Featured in major media like Mens Health, Yahoo Finance, Mashable. Some sales of job listings and newsletter list.

StockBrokgerGame.com - iOS/Android/Web app with over 18,000+ players interested in trading stock and $10MM+ in game trades. Price: Make an offer or trade

Bookcelerator.com - Curated book list from Product Hunt, Good reads, Amazon with loyal following featured on Product Hunt. I have 10+ premium book summaries (not yet pushed to subscribers) and a list of 150+ subscribers. Price: Make an offer or trade

PitchPodcasts.com - A web app that helps podcasters find guests and people promote their skills/stories/startups on podcasts looking for quality guests. Price: Make an offer or trade

SYNTHESIS & DOSSIER

Retrospective Overview & Key Insights

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

An open Ask HN community consultation from 2017 where @titusblair convened hundreds of developers and bootstrappers to share real experiences, hard numbers, and tactics.

Core Principles for Independent Builders:

Participants share raw revenue figures, churn rates, and stack decisions that corporate PR never publishes.

Recurring answers reveal that distribution, not coding skill, is almost universally the rate-limiting step in developer businesses.

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.

PEER EVALUATIONS

Community Discussions & Critical Reviews

High-signal perspectives, counter-arguments, and peer founder insights debated on Hacker News (3 total discussions):

KU @Kurmily Peer Contributor

2017 Thread ↗

We're thinking about selling our social marketing startup Kurmily.io

Some short stats/info:

- 100+ of verified signups

- launched about 9 months ago

- 5000 reports in the current system

- organic traffic of ~60/70 visitors per day

- codebase in PHP/laravel

Difficulties we're having that makes us think of selling:

- we don't have enough time to fix the following two issues

- the current report is not clear enough to users, could use some polish

- not a lot of repeat activity per signed up user

Offers/more info on contact@kurmily.io

AN @androidrobo Peer Contributor

2017 Thread ↗

You can build up a huge backlog of ideas this way without feeling overhelmed. Some things come back to my mind months later, some things may are forgotten forever. But there are always at least a few ideas ready to be build.

MP @mpcovcd Peer Contributor

2017 Thread ↗

I buy side projects (no mobile apps) -- if you have traffic / revenue, drop me a line with the URL and some high level stats.

Read All 3 Hacker News Comments ↗

CATEGORY Ask HN Roundtables →

HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)

COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 18 points

TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 3 comments

TOPICS & TECH STACK:

#side-project