Six Months of Tiny Projects

From the author&#x27;s description of the One Item Store:<p>&gt; Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I&#x27;m happy with the final product, I think its actually really cool. But building it.. it was just a bit boring. There were lots of bugs, and I started to get a bit burnt out thinking about the endless list of things required for a good online store builder.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyprojects.dev&#x2F;projects&#x2F;one_item_store" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tinyprojects.dev&#x2F;projects&#x2F;one_item_store</a><p>This is a fascinating observation. In a couple of weeks he&#x27;s both built something from scratch and figured out that the work of doing it wasn&#x27;t enjoyable. It takes some people years to get to that point.<p>To figure out what you want to do, you often have to sift through a lot of fool&#x27;s gold - junk that looks appealing as an idea but isn&#x27;t appealing as a part of your life. The tiny projects idea offers a way to accelerate that process.<p>But the key here is to <i>finish</i>. To have an end point in mind and then reach it. 20% completion may get you 80% of the functionality. But by god, getting that last 20% could be the hardest, grinding work you will ever do. It&#x27;s going to be very difficult to finish unless it&#x27;s aligned in some fundamental way with your life.

With all my love to Mr. Levels[1], I&#x27;m personally glad the author decided to approach this as their little &quot;Tiny projects&quot; rather than &quot;Follow me as I build six startups in six months&quot;. I feel it nicely sets expectations to what I can get out of checking out each project and thinking &quot;well, it&#x27;s just a tiny project after all, why can&#x27;t I have made something like this ever month too?&quot;. The 12 startups idea was also inspiring to me but I disliked how the term so frequently leads people to (IMO) somewhat pointless analysis of &quot;Is this even a real startup?&quot; around each individual project.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;levels.io&#x2F;12-startups-12-months&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;levels.io&#x2F;12-startups-12-months&#x2F;</a>

Don&#x27;t pay attention to the negative nellies. Even these tiny &quot;worthless&quot; projects end up having value because they build a tool chest of skills and code snippets that make each subsequent project quicker and more sophisticated. Eventually you&#x27;ll Frankenstein pieces of a dozen of these together into something big.

There is an old story about pottery students. A school split a pottery class into two groups. They instructed the first group to focus on making a few exceptional pieces. They judged the second group based on the number of pieces they created measured by weight. The result was that the best pieces came from the second group; those that focused on quantity.<p>There is value in the experience gained when focusing on quantity instead of quality. Early in ones career it seems wise to spend some time on increasing quantity.

Build to learn. I love it. One thing I think many engineers and founders discover is they like creating more than they like running a business. A lot of places will look down on that mentality, but you don’t have to be a CEO. You can just be a person who likes to tinker and makes some money on the side.

I remember the origin of this idea. Glad to see him plodding along. I wish I had the stamina. Although I&#x27;ve done 3 things in 6 months that are finished and shipped, I really dislike the &quot;putting myself out there&quot; part. I just quietly move onto the next idea.

Job well done. If anything, more people should build their tiny projects in public and document their journey like you did. Dribbble used to be this place for designers, where a community came together to show work in progress and get feedback from one an other. (then it turned into a marketing platform). There isn&#x27;t really something like that for tiny software projects. If there was, I would be checking in on a daily basis.

I love this, and I believe this is what so many more programmers ought to be doing. There&#x27;s nothing like actually owning a product end-to-end to teach you about which engineering principles actually matter and when.

That is going to be my 2021. Definitely not a launch per week, but aiming to launch a new project every 2 months. I suspect some will even generate something like $1.60!

Just opened up a one item store for my surfing shower product!! Super cool concept.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oneitem.store&#x2F;pomo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;oneitem.store&#x2F;pomo</a><p>Couldn&#x27;t find the repo so added a feature request here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mixcocam&#x2F;status&#x2F;1329201542411538441?s=20" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;mixcocam&#x2F;status&#x2F;1329201542411538441?s=20</a>

I&#x27;m jealous of what Ben is doing. That&#x27;s the correct mentality when you&#x27;re a young, full stack developer, full of energy, with nice ideas and with plenty of time to &quot;play&quot; and showcase your skills. Wondering if he&#x27;s open to new tiny project ideas ;-) P.S. He is available for hire over at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benstokes.dev" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;benstokes.dev</a>

All of these projects (even the failures and the flameouts) are 100% fantastic. Some I look at and think &quot;That looks like shit!&quot; Some I look at and think &quot;I don&#x27;t see the point.&quot; Some I look at and think &quot;Wish I&#x27;d thought of that.&quot; But every single one of them, the shit ones, the pointless ones, the really neat ones, they all have value. Massive learning opportunities, the fact you published something, the fact you experimented. I cannot commend you enough for what you have achieved.<p>I get involved in &quot;weekend projects&quot; (sometimes they go a little longer than a weekend), and I find that without the pressure to deliver something useful it lets me explore whimsical ideas and learning opportunities I don&#x27;t get in my day job.

Really cool. Most people wouldnt post if they were 6 for 26 but honestly this is so insightful. I was planning on doing something similar with having 4 weeks to finish 4 upcoming projects. I knew they would probably take longer than the time allotted. This is helpful feedback.

That&#x27;s really cool and inspiring. I began the year with a similar idea of creating small projects weekly, although my goals were less ambitious. In the beginning of it I already felt in the &quot;insane schedule&quot; hole and realized that it wouldn&#x27;t work, so I changed plans to at least creating a blog post each week. With that, I could create a better habit and manage to (almost) handle it.<p>This approach didn&#x27;t block me from creating small programs&#x2F;game clones in this period, which I&#x27;m keeping in my blog[0] as well, but seeing projects like yours motivates to push harder for bigger projects.<p>I wish you luck on keeping your pace as well!<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cgreinhold.dev&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cgreinhold.dev&#x2F;</a>

I would be just to afraid for certain ideas like the shop thing.<p>One credit card fraud going through my system and i might in a big dept if i did this under a company format which doesn&#x27;t protect me from personal liability.<p>While i like the idea very much of getting exercise in this way, i&#x27;m wondering what the main motivation is?<p>I would like to earn money through my own company but only with my product i like and find &#x27;worthy&#x27;. Trying out small concepts over and over again, might not bring any fruit in finding the thing you are passionate about and then the question arrives if it wouldn&#x27;t be much more beneficial to optimize your own career instead.

<i>&gt; I&#x27;m anxious for the month I can&#x27;t find any new social platforms.</i><p>I doubt that&#x27;ll be an issue for some time, there are so many startups out there either trying to be the next big one or specifically to address the needs of a niche set of users.<p>Once the project hits a certain level of public awareness new social projects will be contacting the author to ask to be included, there will be no &quot;looking for them&quot; involved (though perhaps some due diligence checking to make sure the platform isn&#x27;t in some way a project they&#x27;d rather not be associated with).

imo I don&#x27;t agree with the &quot;buy domain name right away&quot; since it may cause you to lose motivation&#x2F;drive. Having the thought &quot;build it first then when it&#x27;s done buy a domain&quot; is my thought. As I often buy domains and end up not using them&#x2F;not finishing the project... still I can see the issue of securing a nice domain name.<p>I think that would be great to make some project that has returns even a seemingly low sum of $200&#x2F;mo. That&#x27;s like a fifth of what I need to live a month, not bad.<p>Facebook ads for market interest check is an interesting thought albeit maybe expenisve.<p>edit: the other thing stories like these(pertaining to EarlyName) seem to gloss over is the legal aspect. It is easy to throw up a payment form but who is it paid to and say you&#x27;re sued for whatever reason... does the few hundred a month justify an LLC sort of thing. That&#x27;s the part that sucks&#x2F;part of a business I guess. Some options like fastpring I think. Maybe general ToS&#x2F;Privacy is enough<p>It is funny it&#x27;s like a &quot;solve that problem when you actually have it&quot; sort of scenario. But I do wonder about creating some general LLC that can be an umbrella to random micro saas projects.

Not sure if I read it (or if I was just thinking it), but if I were him I&#x27;d also use Earlyname as a sort of PH type of service. Social (media) websites want to be promoted and get users. Having an influx of early users via Earlyname would help with that. So on the longer term, I&#x27;d focus on framing the message to new companies as well. It also means he wouldn&#x27;t need to search all the time for new social (media) sites.

One Item Store actually solves a real problem that a lot of people have. I know nothing about web development, and spent days getting a &quot;one item store&quot; WooCommerce&#x2F;Wordpress site set up a couple of years back. The performance is woeful and I&#x27;ve been hacked multiple times. Your sites are so snappy and I&#x27;m assuming secure-by-default as they&#x27;re static.<p>On the other hand, though, your sites look more like Craigslist ads than actual eCommerce sites. The font choice is ugly, and the lack of things like logos, contact&#x2F;about pages don&#x27;t exactly fill the user with trust.<p>If you polished it up a bit, I think you could have a real winner on your hands.

Wow, OneItemStore is awesome. Any chance there&#x27;s a way to peak at the source? I&#x27;m just starting to dip my toes in front-end anything and simple projects like OneItemStore still seem quite daunting.

&gt; Earlyname helps you claim rare usernames (like @ben or @alice) on new, emerging social platforms. Currently it is generating $200&#x2F;month.<p>Very unethical. This should have never been automated.

Impresive! I am also interested in the time management done to achieve this projects. As someone wanting to have time for side projects I am having a hard time dealing with time.<p>I work 9 to 5, and want to have time for a lot of essential activities like: reading, jogging, be informed, visit family, hangout, play some games with friends online and sleep well (aka 8h).<p>I am starting to assume that it&#x27;s impossible to cramp all these activities in 24 h so I should organize the activities in a week.<p>How do you guys do it?

&gt;&gt; 1-2 months is a more reasonable tiny project timeframe. It gives you enough time to build something with substance, and test the idea thoroughly.<p>This is a similar timeframe that Basecamp uses for internal initiatives. I&#x27;ve been pushing for us to switch from 2-week sprints to something closer to 6-week features. If you&#x27;re building on existing product or a brand new one 1-2 weeks is just not enough time for meaningful progress.

This is such a great way to keep the sword sharpened. I am really excited to see and quite inspiring that the author even embarked on this mission.

This is a good exercise in estimating workload.<p>While the article says one week is insufficient to make something meaningful, I&#x27;ve found personally that you can write useful software even in a single day, as long as your feature scope is finely targeted. Actual real life needs of real people are also more interesting to write software for.

&gt; Today, people have created over 1400 stores, selling everything from t-shirts, to human beings.<p>Selling human beings!!! really?

Some of the legal considerations that would apply based on the author&#x27;s comment about things required for a good online store builder:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecommerceguide.com&#x2F;guides&#x2F;ecommerce-legals&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ecommerceguide.com&#x2F;guides&#x2F;ecommerce-legals&#x2F;</a>

Nice! Just build it!<p>It&#x27;s a blessing to see that there are people who can just build things instead of whining around like: ohh it&#x27;s not a business... ohh it won&#x27;t make any money... ohh it&#x27;s not so simple to build a product... mkay

This is great! You should put out a book.<p>Also a meta-site on &#x27;minimal way to do X&#x27; on all the random tech you&#x27;ve had to setup and assemble would be useful.<p>I guess that&#x27;s 2 more tiny projects. Hmm, I guess they&#x27;d be tiny meta projects.

Thanks for sharing this, you&#x27;ve inspired me to make some tiny projects as well :). Will Earlyname be your last project for a while, or do you plan on continuing at this pace?

If anyone is thinking of replicating this challenge, I would recommend focusing on building tiny projects within a specific domain or set of customers, to boost creativity.

I find this inspiring and think I might do this myself. I have a huge list that makes me anxious to work on, but doing so publicly might force me to do some of them.

I am in awe of your ability to come up with ideas like that. And very quickly too.<p>I&#x27;d love to work on a side hustle like that but my ideas percolate over a long time.

Really inspiring, I feel like your projects grew in complexity over time, which is all the more consistent with the tiny philosophy.

Does anyone have advice for taking a simple project like this and hiring a designer to make it look a bit more polished?

I applaud this. Its progressive learning improving and continually stacking learned patterns. Congrats.

Which facebook one did you buy? I saw an ingenious one a few years ago called checkfacebook.com

I wish I could give this more than 1 upvote.<p>Pure initiative and positivity.<p>I love it!

Looks like is tough to make a living on the web

Snormal is really cool even at this stage!

Please mentor me you&#x27;re a genius

snormal is really good

The gist of the article is: The OP created a tiny project, launched it on Product Hunt&#x2F;Hacker News, and moved to creating another project. I&#x27;m glad he acknowledges the problem with this:<p>&quot;A Product Hunt launch can easily get you a spike in traffic, but afterwards I really don&#x27;t know what I&#x27;m doing&quot;.<p>Here are some tips to help with this:<p>1) Explore more &quot;steady&quot; acquisition channels. Yes, PH&#x2F;HN are &quot;spike-y&quot; channels and they&#x27;re often not enough to have a business generating sustainable income. Read &quot;Traction&quot; by Gabriel Weinberg (I&#x27;m also doing some research on this topic [1]).<p>2) Maybe flip the script and do the opposite? Choose 1 or 2 promising projects, and do &quot;six months of exploring user acquisition&quot;. Test SEO, FB&#x2F;Google Ads, partnerships, affiliates, appstores and so on.<p>Good luck!<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpayingusers.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;firstpayingusers.com</a>

I don&#x27;t understand why the other comments are being so negative, this is <i>awesome</i>. There&#x27;s a Jony Ive quote along the lines of &quot;when you build something, you get the actual thing, but even more valuable is how you&#x27;ve grown and changed from building that thing.<p>Best of luck on your future projects, great on you to make awesome stuff and grow as a person!

In chase the creator is reading:<p>Regarding OneItemShop:<p>I think you should provide an optional way to specify a proper imprint (legal requirement in germany) instead of only a contact email.

&gt; I believe there&#x27;s a big advantage to this &quot;micro-bet&quot; approach of launching many tiny businesses<p>These aren’t businesses. These are websites. Most people on HN can build a website. It takes some coding and some tech knowledge. Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on.<p>While what the author did was neat and fun for him, let’s not pretend this is the path to a successful web business. I’d bet there’s few “micro-bets” that are generating any meaningful amount of money.

Don&#x27;t worry young padawan, your enthusiasm will dwindle in time.