Personally, I got to the point where I realized that trying hard to make software that's useful can turn a side-project into something stressful, essentially a second job on top of my regular full-time job, which I just can't do, too much risk of burnout. Trying to turn something into a side-business adds a lot of constraints. You're not just playing anymore, you have to optimize everything towards the goal of making profit.
However, I still think you can enjoy working on things that are useful, to yourself and other people, and not for profit. The projects I'm the most proud of are projects I've shared that have been used and appreciated by many users online. You just have to keep the project small and simple, and keep your expectations low.
I began my side-project [1] one year ago. I quit my very well-paid job 6 months ago to make my side-project my full-time job.
It is going quite well (I am nowhere near making the same money). Just 2 of us at the moment. I've learnt so much over this period. Like what you would get over 10 years in a big tech company while jumping over all the hierarchy.
Moreover, my very first side project turned me from a guy who knows only Python into a guy who can set up entire architecture on the cloud. Later, I became somewhat a "rockstar"/jack-of-all-trades engineer.
But I agree, unless you do your side-project just to do something then it is your hobby.
My advice would be: someone has to pay for your side project's product/service. Because only then you can show that it generates real business value. This is the only thing which should matter to your future employer. You generate business value.
I used to do programming projects on the side for almost 10 years now. Programming has been my hobby, passion or time-pass whatever you could call it.
At the beginning, these projects was my vent from the day job to learn new tools/tricks, try out random stuff, nothing specific. And I mostly don't finish it, I just move on, because I didn't have to complete those. Some were open source, many weren't.
And then one of my project that I spent hardly few hours on got some 1000+ upvotes on ProductHunt. So many emails, new follows, it was exhilarating. It pegged me into submitting my next project to PH as well. Though it didn't get as much recognition, it was covered by few tech journals, then some more followed. Suddenly I had users who were using something that I've created and I started charging for it. When it started making money, albeit little (i think at the most it was $100/mo), it changed things.
A thought arose, "I like building sideprojects, what if I get to do this full time!". It was exciting!
After that, I could never go back to working on my projects for just "fun". It always had to have some business reason. Can it work? Is the idea worthwhile? What is the revenue potential and so on. Suddenly, I'm not just programming, but doing customer support, marketing, trying to promote the project, etc.
Eventually, I wasn't doing the thing that I enjoyed and by pursuing it for commercial motives, it had become something else entirely.
I think many of us fall into this pit either by chance or being egged from outside. In my case, what I enjoyed was just programming. I conflated it with building a business. Unless you are famous or successful, almost anything that are pursued by passion alone, had to morph into something if you want it to support your life.
I just went full-time a month ago to try and build some profitable products. And I'm trying to get that "fun" part into the full-time thingy again. Can I truly work on things I enjoy, try new stuff and still make money out of it? Only time will tell. If the results don't come, so be it.
What holds me back is that "monetizing a side project" is another way of saying "running a small business", which is a form of having a job - but I already have a job, rather a nice one at that. Why would I waste my precious free time working a second, crappier job, when I could do things I enjoy instead?
If I am building something in my free time, it is because I am inherently interested in that thing, because the experience of creating it is enjoyable, and because I want it to exist, for its own sake, because I find it personally meaningful. With that kind of intrinsic motivation, who needs money? Why would I bog a pleasant hobby down with a lot of accounting and paperwork and bureaucratic drudgery when I could focus on the fun part instead, by writing the code I want to write and then just giving it away?
I had never really finished a side project until recently. First one was something I was going to sell. It took over a year because of changing UI and redoing a lot of stuff (unnecessarily) but I managed some sort of soft launch. My most recent project was writing a mix task in elixir. It solved a pain point I was having and gave me a better insight into the Elixir language. I'm working on another library for Elixir that I plan to use in a website I'm working on that I want to set up in hopes of making money.
Bottom line, both of the projects I've started and finished have had monetary gain to it. The product and then the task. The task is helping with contracting I'm doing so making my job easier is sure a big incentive.
I don't find motivation to work on side projects, I use it when I have it. Sometimes I'm done after a work day and I just want to play a video game, go outside, do whatever else that doesn't involve my computers. Other times there is a lot of motivation and I can spend full weekends and nights just coding away on a side project.
What I've learned over the years is to never force myself to do "work" for side projects. To be fair, my side projects usually don't get anywhere aside from learning/hacking on new things. My skills improve and I'm having fun and that's good enough. Pressure is for actual work that pays the bills.
This is exactly how I feel about my side projects. Sometimes our day jobs are not exactly what we’d like to be working on so it’s nice to “putter” on a side project to scratch that itch. If someone else finds it useful one day that is a nice bonus but is ultimately not what drives me to work on it.
I finished my side project a couple of years ago, released it, and then found I was able to quit my Python webdev job and go full time making video games.
The key difference is that my project was a video game (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwXl8lDrxn8) and that takes a lot of temptation to do what the OP is writing about, rewriting stuff in Haskell for example. The interesting bit when it comes to side projects (and now my full time projects) for me isn't actually the tools or the methodology or anything like that, but the end result. I spent my teenage years building games that I never finished, and it made me quite miserable, because I so just wanted to finish something. Anything.
I remember the first game I ever finished was a clone of Snake. There was nothing remotely interesting in the implementation or in the design, but I was so flipping pleased with myself, I had finished something! And that let me slowly build my projects up to more interesting endeavours, and eventually to one that could be sold. Starting small was the key for me, as I learned two things: 1 - what was 'too much' for me to try and tackle at the time and 2 - self-discipline, not chucking the project the moment I got bored, or had a 'better idea'.
I'm not there yet. For me 'side project' is more a way of living, than a one-time effort to quit a day job. Even if my side project becomes main occupation some day, I'll come up with another side project to learn new things.
My side projects are free open source libraries, not saas products.
They give me exposure; I got my current job partially by being “known” in a particular area.
The most important aspect of my side projects is that they let me relax and be myself. And I have discovered that chasing money doesn’t motivate me. I already do it 8 hours per day. That’s more than enough for me.
I've tried a lot of side projects but none of them panned out, because I couldn't focus on them long enough to get them to a state where I can leave my day job to fully work on them.
Doing successful side projects requires taking small steps and a good amount of focus over long stretches of time, even if the rewards don't initially come.
Also, have a hard look at what it is you enjoy about side projects. I found out I like the figuring out things part of it (including talking to potential users and solving their problems), but everything after that (marketing, maintaining, improving) drained me.
There is a very real evolutionary component to side projects. They are usually born out of an idea, a will to experiment or just because they sound fun. And they are fun, not necessarily due to reaching a certain goal, but as a way to spend time. You could argue that time is wasted, but not every intellectual or emotional pursuit has to be oriented on externally viable goals. Time you spend on side projects could also be time you spend on playing a computer game, crafting something, or any other hobby-like activity. Even though the remnants of old projects can sometimes feel like tombstones or failure markers, for some reason we don't feel the same way about, say, an old save game file.
But most importantly, I want to circle back to the evolutionary aspect: side projects are explorations. The subject of that exploration can vary hugely, but at the end there is a result. The result may be that the project is not viable or not fun. Or it might be a lesson about programming that will improve your performance further down the road. Occasionally, side projects survive and get to pass on their genes in the form of continued development, or partial re-use, or even a commercial spin-off.
All of this is fine, and it's part of the process many programmers go through. I would like to invite people to embrace the impermanence and whimsical nature of side projects from the get go. Learn to love what you're doing, instead of thinking about what the world will be like when you're done with a project.
Agreed; many side projects are just for fun, to create a tool that you want & you don't care if others want it (though you may or may not choose to share it having created it), to ship just to show your friends, or see how it does in the wild without caring about whether it generates cash; just hoping that a few people find it & appreciate what you've made.
Personally I'd hate to run my own business, since that means moving away from the code (even if you get another person to take care of the non-code stuff; you still have to go out and find the right person for that / get involved in things that you wouldn't otherwise choose to). That said I'd love to create something, put it out there, and have 5 people come back and say "thanks for this; you've fixed a problem that I was having"; to get 100 people say that would be even better; any more and I'd probably start to get upset as there would become expectations to start implementing things the user base was asking for, rather than just doing my own thing; which for a hobby project is all I'd want.
A lot of my side projects relate to my day job; I use my spare time to create tools which make my work life simpler. Sure the IPO belongs to my employer, but it means I remove frustrations from my working day without having to justify spending company time on the tools which allow that, and I can share these tools with colleagues so that my friends get the benefits too. That makes for a pleasant life.
I think starting a side project with a goal of revenue is not practical. For me, doing side project is doing something that you can't normally do in day to day job. So, it has to something that I love to spend time for. On the other hand, I always think about making many part when I start something new. My side projects are generally about making games and mobile applications, search engine optimization, writing programs that transform data from one form to another. When I finish a side project, I don't hesitate to putting some ads and make passive income. It is lovely to make money while you are sleeping from something that you have enjoyed creating it.
I absolutely use my side projects as a vehicle to learn new things... though I always try to pursue ideas that at least appear to have a possible path toward monetization at some point (though I haven't had much success with turning much of a profit from any projects thus far) :)
For my current side project, which I've been working on for a year (and is probably a month or two away from being "beta-able"), I've learned Clojure, Elasticsearch, ES6, mithril.js, Ansible, and have expanded/refined my skills with RabbitMQ, Postgres (or SQL in general), and distributed architecture (not to mention getting to figure out how systemd service and timer configuration files work).
I've really been working hard on it because my current day job doesn't involve any programming, and by the time I get home in the evening I'm really jonesing for some code.
Have my side projects made me a better developer? Without a doubt. Am I any more employable? No, not really - I still haven't figured out how to improve my 'Cultural Fit' via side projects.
However, I still think you can enjoy working on things that are useful, to yourself and other people, and not for profit. The projects I'm the most proud of are projects I've shared that have been used and appreciated by many users online. You just have to keep the project small and simple, and keep your expectations low.
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