Why aren't you charging money for your side project?

I charge people for my side project and at first I didn’t care about how much I made. After things picked up, I set higher goals for myself and suddenly something I loved turned into work. I no longer have as much interest in my project as I did when I first started.

The beauty of having a side project is that you can work on it whenever you want. By turning it into a business, you can no longer work on your own terms. (To some extent)

It introduces business psychology, for one. You get all this and more, for free:

- An expectation of support which is likely based on the purchaser's subjective past experiences in receiving support, rather than on what's available in your support section

- Pushback from your new customers-who-are-always-right

- Passionate and very specific suggestions for improvement, _for free_, from people who paid and therefore believe they are your target audience

- A complimentary covert contract governing the vendor-purchaser relationship, to accompany whatever you previously made very clear, which they did not and will not read

- A noticeable dilution of others' perspective on your personal values--"ah, they are just sharing that link with us because they make money off of it"

These are just some of the possible outcomes...

Which is not to say it's not worth doing, but there are lots of important factors.

If I were to charge money, the side project would become a business, and running a business takes a lot of work. Why would I bother? I don't need or want a second job.

If I am going to write code in my free time, for the sake of something I feel personally motivated to create, I would rather share the results back to the world under an open-source license.

I think for mostly the same reasons as already mentioned; if I ask money, it is a job. Unless it is donations, asking money creates obligations. I have asked money for side projects in the past and it worked but they became actual jobs. That is a choice.

Because then it stops being a side project and becomes an obligation, which would take all - or at least most of - the joy out of it.

I want people to benefit from it. My contributions will be a tiny drop in a vast ocean of noise of humanity and that's OK. Several people, NGOs and charities already make use of my projects, and that gives me a sense of fulfillment.

Why would I charge for my side projects? I make more than enough money to support my family from my day job. And my side projects are labors of love, not a way to get more money. Not to mention that by not charging for it, it increases the audience for the project, and knowing that other people find it useful is its own reward.

A lot of people just like to build stuff and put it out there in case it's useful for other people. Some people are inherently kind like that.

If I start making moolah on my side project, it turns into my side job, and now I have another unfinished project on my wall of shame and failures.

To counteract my own snark - there are two reasons to work on something and mixing them can pervert either of them alone. I wish I could mix my passion and my income, but I am grateful I can experience passion on its own, as a graceful failure.

Because I'm utterly, utterly selfish; allow me to explain:

A dollar, euro, naira, deutschmark, ruble, yuan or yen has an imprint of life and context based on its' cultural origins (and the minter who produced it).

My business project (still a side-project at the moment, effectively) is imprinted -- to the git commit-level -- with the authorship of myself (and hopefully other contributors in future).

Given the choice between offering that software DNA (including, admittedly, plenty of faults) to other people to use and remix as they like, or to trade it for monetary units that are relatively-characterless in compensation -- even a billion such monetary units -- well, it's not really a choice that requires much consideration.

(regardless of the choice, the two options are equivalent at a technology/runtime level; they're a series of compute instructions that run locally or over a network to achieve result(s))

Because people use them because they’re free. I’m happy with the few android apps, and few web apps with a few thousand visitors that I have. I made those when I was free (pun intended) so there’s no point charging for them. And I can afford a few bucks a month on hosting so not a big deal.

For every question, it's the positive that should be answered (like Russell asked how do we know there isn't a teapot floating in space somewhere between Jupier and Mars).

Why should we monetize any side project?

Why should we not have activities we do without aiming to extract value out of them?

Not sure what makes the grade of ‘side project’ for you, but i have a little project which has been useful at work.

I have had several people comment that I should develop my side project into a commercial product. I’ve demurred because the cost benefit projection doesn’t wow me, and the tech isn’t anything that couldn’t be copied if it was seen as successful.

On the other hand I am interested to connect with more like-minded developers. Maybe it will end up on GitHub.

Off the top of my head:

1. Charging then creates an expectation that doesn't otherwise exist. That may not be something you can or want to commit to;

2. There is an overhead in charging. Payments infrstructure, billing and so on. This isn't "free";

3. Earning an income from your side project may well violate your visa status (particularly appropriate for those on US temporary work visas);

4. A side income may violate your employment conditions; and

5. Contributors may be less willing to volunteer their time to a paid product.

because I'm doing it for other reasons. trying to make money off it always ends up dominating the discussion and frankly I don't really care. why would I waste my time?

more importantly customers only ever want products that's are adjacent to the systems they already use. systems haven't changed that much in a long time and I'm really bored with chipping away at the edges when there is so much more interesting space to explore

I think that, some day, money might be good enough that there can be micro-economies around side projects without bringing in all of the bloat, complexity, and expectations around current software revenue models. In my imagination, it would be less than project developers "charge" and more than users are able to easily "give" something back - even if just a little bit.

As soon as I start trying to take money (or compensation of any kind) it becomes a violation of my work status.

Once you take money, you are running a business (even if you mislabel the money as a donation). That means having to register with the tax authorities, adding a ton of accounting related overhead and very likely spending money on all of that overhead (e.g. when hiring an accountant to offload some of the overhead).

At some point you realize that you have to ramp your business up, just so it pays for the cost of accepting money. Then it's no longer a side project.

I'll just leave this here:

https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/software-development-cost/

Charging money hugely reduces the appeal and adoption of a project.

For a project that wants growth, even requiring signup is a big drag.

My project: https://eventcount.io/

That's a question a typical rich person would ask.

By definition, you don't earn money from a side project.

And you need a business model to make money from something. Usually side projects don't have a proper business model.

I have a couple simple Android apps. I think they're too simple to warrant charging money. I did try with one, but it never took off and didn't make any ad revenue either. So I made it free.

I got so much, even personality-defining stuff from the internet for free through the decades. I feel I have a lot of debt to pay back - be it software, advice, opinion or other content.

The number of forms required, in my country, to (legally) make money from side projects - although not prohibitively large - would be akin to taking on a second self-employed job.

I don't want to host people's data or have to provide support. As long as it stays free and self-hosted I don't need to do either of those things. (ArchiveBox.io)

I think donations is one way to go.

Since I'm on Linux, I use a lot of software from people outside the big tech camp, such as the awesome kitty terminal.

There was a bug in it which unreported and when the developer fixed it in less than 24 hours, I signed up to give him 10 dollars per month. About 800 other people were already signed up and giving donations (possibly smaller).

People just like to give back, so make it easy to do and they will. But you need to make a product they use every day.

I slap ads on them since 2012, no effort, people get it for free, businesses get to put their products in front of potential customers. I know HN hates ads but they have allowed me to do drive-by projects that don't require maintenance and are pure passive. This way I can have a full-time job where I learn new things and work with other people without the pressure of running my own business.

I have projects that I could change from an open source CLI to a subscription SaaS, but what's the point of that? That's what Silicon Valley is doing and I hate it. I'm not desperate enough for money to do that. The other part is that bootstrapping a business to the point where you can quit your dayjob - while still working at your dayjob - is very difficult.

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.

Focusing more on growth and product market fit.

Charging people money increases support costs (people get more upset if things don't work right). Getting paid 'beer money' to deal with additional support load isn't worth it to me.

Getting users IMHO is more important than bringing in minimal revenue (that an early state company would).

because it's too dang expensive to charge anything less than far too much.

- you have taxes, accounting, support, legal documents, incorporation issues, paid assistance for bookkepping and other non-core things, etc etc ad nauseam.

I've use a lot of free-to-use apps over the years, and most of my experience is from those. I hope my projects help others the same way others helped me.

(And I also hate ads)

Making something you can charge requires a lot of extra software work, and like other people said it creates a responsibility on the creator's part.

Getting users is hard

My side projects are relaxing hobbies. I give them away as gifts, but if I charged for them, it would turn a relaxing hobby into a job.

I was asking myself the same thing, and I am definitely going to change that soon.

It's not good enough. I will when people ask to pay for it.

The end result would be nobody using it.

Not everything needs to be monetized.