Ask HN: Anyone make good money selling side-projects?

No, it's probably not. It might be if you had great sales/marketing skills to reach the suckers who might buy that.

But you already told us you don't.

Have a go, but you should stay focused on getting a job. It's, unfortunately, a numbers game. I don't know your situation, smaybe you don't really need to yet.

But I did something similar when I got laid off in 2008, and in hindsight it was a massive waste of time and a way of making myself feel better without doing something actually productive to get a job.

Keep interviewing while building, you'll need to be making revenue to sell at a multiplier. So I'd think about building something you would enjoy running. Google and read about the slow SaaS ramp of death. It's probably not an immediate solution to not being able to find a job.

Check out Rob Walling and StartUpsForTheRestOfUs, great podcast and lots of great advice.

Check out his stair step approach. Basically start out with a simple product. An info product, plugin or package and then keep leveling up to get to a SaaS.

Good luck, keep those resumes going out.

Remember that 99% of value comes from providing solutions to peoples problems, often quite down to earth ones. Keep that in mind.

Pre-launch is tough.

Code can be imitated but traction is priceless.

15 years ago it seemed a good idea to build a large number of content sites on a range of topics because these would collect "link juice" and you could either link to your own money sites or sell them to somebody else who wants to do the same. Many of the people who were doing SEO back then are doing paid ads now so it is probably not such a great idea.

Typically you'll need revenue and can sell at a multiplier. Just building a ready made product with no revenue isn't going to pay for the time you spent coding it. An info product might be a better first step to making income in the near term.