Ask HN: Do you have a side project you're getting tired of?

9 gdulli 7 5/22/2025, 6:24:44 PM
Does your project make too little money and you're getting sick of maintaining it?

I don't need to make a full salary anymore and rather than work a traditional job I'd enjoy maintaining a few projects that were profitable but no longer worth the time of someone who had bigger hopes for them.

I like running the day to day of something that people use, and I'm not looking for any kind of unicorn potential.

Feel free to contact me at the email in my bio to discuss.

Comments (7)

guywithahat · 30m ago
Unfortunately none of my side projects have a community, and if they did I'd probably offer it to someone in the community. You might have the best luck looking for projects which aren't being updated anymore but still have issues listed, and maybe contacting the author?
RadiozRadioz · 2h ago
Typically I get tired of a side project when I stop learning from it. There's a honeymoon period at the start when you're rapidly prototyping things and figuring it out. Then you get to the point where you've explored the problem domain, figured out what works, and have a clear path ahead - the rest of the work being to just implement the vision. This is the part I get bored.

Something switches in my brain when I've figured out how to solve a problem, it starts to seek a new problem because it considers that one "done", even though most of the work remains. Perhaps it's because that work is more "painting by numbers" after the problem is figured out. Does anyone else experience this?

gdulli · 2h ago
That's similar to how it is with me for my personal projects. But I always focus on the technical aspect or the subject matter alone without attempting to make money from it.

For some income I'd be fine with maintaining something long term, I'm just not the person to bootstrap a project into that.

whatamidoingyo · 2h ago
Are you looking to buy projects?
gdulli · 2h ago
Yes, or maybe there could be another type of arrangement, but I don't expect anyone to give away their project for free.
busymom0 · 33m ago
I've being having a very hard time getting any traction for a recent productivity app I made. I am just not sure why it's not getting downloads. I think the concept is pretty cool. It's an iOS app which lets you block addictive apps until you exercise.

I have redone the app icon 3 times, changed the App Store metadata and keywords several times and fixed bugs. I have tried sharing it on reddit, here on hacker news etc but it's gotten no traction :(

Not sure if I want to get rid of it though.

coolcase · 13m ago
If you could get some YT influencers to take it a look (or sponsor them) I think that might work than app store optimisation. There is too much competition on app/play stores even 10 years ago when I last looked.