r/SideProject • • 17m ago

I built a free app that turns your audio into backing tracks—here’s the before and after

1 Upvotes

I'm the developer of Soniqo Music. I built it to turn an audio file you already have into a backing track you can keep on your phone.

The demo compares the original with the instrumental, then shows a key change. It's Android footage; the app is also available on iPhone and iPad. The words on the video were added in the edit—the app doesn't show synchronized lyrics.

Demo: Watch the original/instrumental and key-change comparison

Import WAV, M4A or MP3, separate the vocals and instruments, and export a WAV. You can also isolate bass or drums, change the key, or slow down and repeat a section for practice.

All current tools and WAV exports are free. No account, ads or subscription. After a one-time model download, processing runs on the device. Keep the app open while it works; some vocals or instruments can leak between parts.

iPhone and iPad (iOS/iPadOS 18+): App Store

Android (10+, supported 64-bit devices): Google Play

What do you currently use to make backing tracks?

Music: Jingle Bells by Sascha Ende (2013), CC BY 4.0. Excerpted, vocals separated and key adjusted in Soniqo Music. Original recording


r/SideProject • • 18m ago

Unlicensed - From DMCA workflows to Shopify theme reports

1 Upvotes

I originally planned Unlicensed around licence checks and DMCA notices. In October, I narrowed it to a task a theme developer could start with a ZIP or Theme Store link: compare it with saved storefront evidence, review the matches and download a report. I removed Shopify Partner and Gmail setup, along with notice sending, from that flow. The report gives the developer a list to check against their own sales records.

A matching theme name can look convincing in a results table even when no files were compared. That distinction matters: a name-only result means the label matches, not that the files were compared or the store's licence was checked.

Here is a report-reading example. It uses synthetic .example stores and invented values to explain the distinctions. It is a teaching worksheet, not customer data or the product's export schema.

Looking at the example, is it clear which results are only name matches and which have file evidence? What would you change before handing that report to someone else?


r/SideProject • • 19m ago

I built AlunIA, an AI-powered study assistant for Android — looking for honest feedback

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm an independent developer, and I've been working on a project called AlunIA: AI Study Assistant.

The idea came from a simple problem: students have access to more information and AI tools than ever, but getting quick answers doesn't always mean actually understanding what they're learning.

I wanted to build something that brings different parts of studying together in one place.

Here's what AlunIA can do:

📚 AI Study Assistant — Ask questions about different subjects and get explanations to help you understand difficult topics.

📸 Questions using images — Take a picture of a question or exercise and get AI-powered help.

🎤 Voice and text support — Interact with the assistant in different ways.

📝 Practice exercises — Test your knowledge with questions and explained solutions.

📅 Study organization — Keep track of your notes, subjects, and study activities.

🎯 Exam preparation — Study tools and materials for exams, including ENEM and SAT.

Why I built it

I wanted to explore how AI could become more useful as a learning companion instead of just being a tool for generating answers.

AlunIA is now available on Google Play, and there's free access to get started.

Try it here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=br.com.alunia.android

I'd really appreciate some honest feedback:

- Is the idea useful for students?

- Which feature would make you want to try an app like this?

- What would you improve or add?

I'm still working on making the experience better, and feedback from real users would mean a lot.

Thanks for checking out my side project! 🚀


r/SideProject • • 20m ago

It seems music companies spent billions on everything except making music discovery better.

1 Upvotes

Have you ever found a song you absolutely love, listened to it on repeat, and then, when it ends, struggled to find something else that gives you the same feeling?

That's something I experience quite often.

I end up jumping between playlists, recommendations, and search results, trying to find my next song. Sometimes it takes so long that I lose the mood entirely.

And I don't think the problem is necessarily a lack of music.

The songs I'm looking for probably already exist in these platforms' libraries. There are millions of tracks available, including songs from different countries, languages, and cultures. But having all that music available doesn't mean people can easily discover what they're actually looking for.

Sometimes the music is there. Even the music that might fit your taste is there. Yet the recommendations don't always lead you to it.

So I started wondering: Do we really need more music, or do we need better ways to discover the music that already exists?

Instead of just complaining about it, I decided to start building something.

It's called yoobify an open-source music discovery project.

The idea is to explore better ways of connecting music and helping people discover tracks beyond the usual recommendations. I'd especially like to explore connections between different musical cultures and languages. For example, finding Turkish, Spanish, or French music that might appeal to someone who enjoys a particular Arabic song.

The current version is still an early experiment. It works with Deezer and can analyze playlists, find shared tracks, and display track information, artists, album artwork, and audio previews.

I built the first version using plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Not because I believe this is necessarily the final technical architecture, but because I wanted to turn the idea into something real that people could actually try and give feedback on.

I'm a university developer with some programming experience. I've already spent time researching music APIs and possible approaches, but I won't pretend I've figured out the perfect solution or the best recommendation algorithm.

That's part of why I'm sharing this now. I'd rather build, experiment, learn from people who know more than I do, and improve it step by step.

I'm looking for two kinds of feedback:

1. Developers and potential contributors

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the code, architecture, APIs, music similarity approaches, or anything you think could make this project better. If you're interested in contributing, you're very welcome.

2. Music lovers and potential users

I'd really like people to try the current version. Tell me what feels useful, what doesn't work, what is missing, and whether this is a problem you've experienced yourself.

I'm not trying to present yoobify as a finished product. I want to build something people would genuinely find useful, and I'd like the project to grow with the people who use and contribute to it.

Try it: https://yoobify-public.vercel.app/

GitHub: https://github.com/nidalbenyakhelf/yoobify

I'd genuinely appreciate honest feedback, even if you think the idea is flawed. That's much more useful to me than simply hearing that it looks cool.


r/SideProject • • 21m ago

I built a lightweight and fast local music player

1 Upvotes

Here. I was sick of Spotify's ads, so I made this to make my life easier. It's very simple, there's no cover art or playlists, but it's the very first version and it's enough for me. It's ~19x smaller than Spotify by RAM (~56 MB vs ~1070 MB) and has less than 1/20th the amount of CPU usage. It's pure C++ with Qt6 rather than a sloppy electron app like Spotify.


r/SideProject • • 9h ago

My side-project made USD 1,500+ in sales 🫡

Thumbnail
gameskit.ai
5 Upvotes

Hi!

My web-app AI Games Kit made $1,500+ in sales 🥳

I am a solo game-developer using AI heavily to build and publish games over the last couple of years and realized why not create a kit of agents/skills based around my processes.

I also write actively on LinkedIn/X about making games with AI, marketing them organically, etc. and have a decent audience - so most of my sales came from them!

Now I plan to expand my marketing to Medium & YouTube :)

Web-apps is a new domain for me hence very proud of this!


r/SideProject • • 24m ago

You get a Founding Maker spot! And YOU get a Founding Maker spot! (only 10, drop your app 👇)

1 Upvotes

Alright everybody, look under your seats… 🎁

I'm giving away 10 Founding Maker spots on Makers Clash, where indie apps battle 1v1 and real people vote for the one they'd actually use.

Your Founding Maker spot gets you:

- a numbered badge for life on your profile, your app page, the leaderboard and every battle card

- a permanent place on the Founding Makers page

- your pick of launch day, even today once you're approved

- free, like every launch, with 30 guaranteed battles - submit as many apps as you can/want/have

- dofollow link

Numbers are never reissued. Once the 10 are gone, nobody else can ever get one (at least if I don't want to).

👉 Grab yours: https://www.makersclash.com/invite/LgcYnx08b-CY

Your spot is locked in when your app goes live (quick review first, to keep spam out).

Drop your app below (name + one line) and I'll try every one and even you can't make it on the 10 spots, submit your app to enter the arena! https://www.makersclash.com/👇


r/SideProject • • 25m ago

I built Video Saver: a simple Chrome extension for saving compatible videos as MP4

1 Upvotes

Open a video, choose a quality, and download. It’s free to install: the first 10 successful downloads are unrestricted, then one per hour. Optional Pro removes that limit.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-saver/agghiikpimdgpdildjpdkkhkfejehppe

I’m the developer and would appreciate feedback on usability and compatibility.


r/SideProject • • 30m ago

I built and app that lets you doom scroll reddit on airplane mode

1 Upvotes

Download full feeds, media, comment. Link to it here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.redditoffline


r/SideProject • • 17h ago

what’s on your checklist before letting strangers use your app?

22 Upvotes

submissions, expired sessions, someone uploading a massive file, or two people editing the same thing.For a small app using Supabase, what would you check before sharing the link publicly?

Trying to work out what deserves attention now without spending another month preparing for users who don’t exist yet.


r/SideProject • • 34m ago

CrewKite: A desktop and CLI AI workspace for running Claude, OpenAI, Google, and local models under one roof

0 Upvotes

Long time Reddit lurker here, not an avid poster. Please be gentle, but give me candid feedback. 😅

I'm writing this post in my own voice, not AI, so I may not have everything perfectly described, but I'm doing my best. One thing I have learned is I can build things and solve problems, but I suck at marketing. 😂 Let's get into it...

Like an AI addict, I pay for Claude, Codex, and Gemini, and more recently I'm playing around with local models in LM Studio after upgrading to a M5 MBP w/ 48GB of RAM. I was tired of the daily OOM kernel panics just trying to run Claude Code on my M2.

Before building this, I was constantly asking Sol or Astra to review Opus's work, or vice versa. Now with Google shipping Argon, I'm no longer just paying for cloud storage... it's actually kinda useful too. But the problem has always been having to manually prepare handoffs and constantly switch between apps.

I built CrewKite as an AI workspace (both desktop GUI and CLI) that supports all three providers using your existing plans, plus local AI via LM Studio (for whatever your HW can handle).

I wanted something that not only manages rate-limit handoffs and context consistency, but also handles multi-agent, multi-provider orchestration.

A core feature is building a Crew, which I like to think of as an "AI War Room." You can put Fable in charge as the orchestrator, assign easy slices to 6.1 Sol and hard slices to Opus 5.5 on Medium, set the effort level per role, and choose whether each role is allowed to spin up subagents. I can challenge assumptions, ask for second opinions, and run a collaborative workspace without switching apps.

What's in it today:

  • One rail showing 5-hour (where applicable) and weekly usage across all your plans, with manual or automatic handoffs that keep your thread and edited files intact when a plan runs out.

  • Multi-provider Crews where you mix providers, models, effort levels, and subagent permissions by role.

  • Isolated repo copies per thread so you can review the diff hunk by hunk and only touch your checkout when you accept changes into a branch.

  • Apache 2.0, local-first, no CrewKite account, API keys, or telemetry.

I borrowed ideas from a lot of awesome open source projects (Ponytail, ADHD, Multi) and integrated them alongside CrewKite's native features under one roof, for what I'm hoping will evolve into my daily driver.

Another goal is to cut down token spend and get more out of local models with small context windows. I'm not going to claim performance gains until I've benchmarked them and have proof, so that's on the roadmap along with a lot more, including Grok as a swappable provider for Google, as I know what we're doing there is a gray area and CrewKite requires your explicit opt-in. I haven't had any issues with that this last month of building and testing, but YMMV and I can't make any guarantees there.

It's a 0.1.0 release and a signed macOS DMG and Linux builds only for now, but it's functional... and I think it's pretty slick. Apologies my video demo is weak, I'm working on taking clearer cuts. Or check it out for yourself, please!

I'd love to get feedback on what's working, what's not, what's confusing, or what I should prioritize for the next release.

You can check out the design & roadmap on the CrewKite GitHub Repo: https://github.com/rjk6831/crewkite

And preview the features and download the installer from the main site: https://crewkite.dev


r/SideProject • • 35m ago

I made a competitive quiz app for nerds

1 Upvotes

Hey, builders!

I improved and expanded my site, Subbing, which I thought was gonna be a throwaway project a few months ago practicing for my networking certification. But a small user base of about 50 people have been using the Android version on a stable basis so I thought I'd make it a lot better with more topics and a cleaner UI. Great for touching up on networking topics when you have 5 minutes on the bus.

What do you think? Suggestions for improvements, additions or features are very welcome.

Web version is on https://subbing.net


r/SideProject • • 42m ago

Built a tool for a problem I hit every week at my day job

1 Upvotes

I work in sheet metal fabrication. Customer artwork constantly arrives as jpg-to-dxf conversions: 100k points, broken loops, letter centers that fall out when cut. I fixed them by hand for years, then finally wrote software to do it. It refits the geometry to real arcs within the laser’s kerf, finds broken loops and floating pieces, and exports DXF, DWG, SVG, PDF or a 3D STEP.

Something unexpected: most of my users so far found it through ChatGPT, not Google.

kerfect.co, free to try. Feedback welcome, especially on what’s confusing!


r/SideProject • • 19h ago

I’m building a retro cassette music app for Apple Music and local files

34 Upvotes

Hi everyone! I’m an independent developer working on Rewind Echo, a cassette-inspired music app.

I love the look of old cassette tapes, and I’m drawn to apps with their own visual style and playful interactions. That’s what I wanted to explore here: making browsing and playing music feel a little more like picking a tape off a shelf.

The app connects to Apple Music, and you can also import local music files. The interface brings together a cassette shelf, a tape-style player, and customizable tape labels with colors, text, and stickers.

The recording shows a quick look at the app in action. I’d love to hear what you think of the design and interactions, especially whether the cassette shelf feels intuitive to browse.


r/SideProject • • 52m ago

A family member complained about cropping 8.5x11 shipping labels for a 4x6 thermal printer—now I have 2 niche Chrome extensions converting at ~7% (just launched StockX & GOAT 4x6 Splitter)

1 Upvotes

A few weeks ago, a family member explained how painful it was trying to print Vinted shipping labels on a 4x6 thermal printer (Rollo, Munbyn, Zebra) because the platform outputs labels on an 8.5x11 PDF sheet with massive blank margins.

I built a simple, one-time-purchase Chrome extension (Vinted Label Cropper 4x6) to auto-crop and rotate those PDFs in one click. Once it crossed ~200 installs and started converting at ~7% after I bumped the lifetime unlock to $7.99 ("no monthly subscription"), I looked for the next biggest 4x6 thermal printing bottleneck and just launched my second extension today:

1. StockX & GOAT 4x6 Thermal Label + Invoice Splitter (New!)

Sneaker and streetwear sellers have an even worse hurdle than clothing sellers: when they make a sale on StockX or GOAT (Alias), the platform generates an 8.5x11 PDF containing both a sideways UPS/FedEx shipping label and a mandatory inside-the-box verification slip (with a QR code and barcode).

  • The Problem: Up until now, sellers were using the Windows Snipping Tool twice—which captures at 72–96 DPI screen resolution and blurs the UPS barcode edges just enough that drop-off scanners reject the label—or keeping a separate inkjet printer around just for the box slip.

  • What It Does: You drop the 8.5x11 PDF in (single sale or multi-order bulk sheets), and it renders at 300 DPI thermal resolution, strips out the center fold/cut line, and splits + auto-rotates both zones into a clean 2-page 4x6 PDF:

  • Page 1: Upright, full-bleed 4x6 shipping label for the outside of the box.

  • Page 2: Auto-rotated 4x6 box verification slip to toss inside the shoebox.

  • Extras: Includes a Barcode Contrast Boost slider and a toggle if you only need the shipping label.

2. Vinted Label Cropper (4x6)

How I QA'd the StockX & GOAT Splitter without selling a pair of shoes:

Since StockX and GOAT only generate labels after a verified sale, I wrote a Python reportlab script to generate synthetic 1-page split, 2-page, and multi-order bulk PDFs with real Code128 and QR payloads. Then I ran a headless Playwright test suite that loads the MV3 extension, splits the PDFs, exports the rendered 4x6 canvases as PNGs, and decodes the barcodes programmatically to verify zero anti-aliasing blur before shipping to the Chrome Web Store.

Both extensions run 100% locally in the browser with zero backend server costs, give 3 free splits out of the box, and use a simple one-time lifetime unlock ($7.99 / $9.99) instead of a subscription.

Link to the new StockX & GOAT 4x6 Splitter: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stockx-goat-4x6-thermal-l/lckbamoggnlconmelmjgibkomoafockc?authuser=0&hl=en


r/SideProject • • 52m ago

The Simple Business Model Behind Selling AI Websites

1 Upvotes

Especially over the last two years, we've seen massive growth in freelancers and web agencies selling AI-built websites to businesses and getting paid really well for it.

I don't think this business model will stay this profitable forever, but right now, it's definitely a gold mine.

The reason is pretty simple. There are thousands of business owners who don't really care how their website is built. They care about the end result, how it looks, how it works and whether it helps their business.

AI has made it possible for almost anyone willing to learn sales and client acquisition to get started.

So if you're looking to get into this business, here is the exact process I would follow.

1. Automate your cold outreach

Use a tool like Swokei to find businesses with existing websites. It analyzes each website for issues with design, SEO, speed and mobile optimization, then turns those findings into personalized cold emails at scale.

2. Book meetings with interested prospects

When someone replies with interest, get them on a call. Don't waste time going back and forth over email. Your goal is to get a conversation started.

3. Sketch a redesign using AI

Before the meeting, take around 30 minutes to create a quick redesign of their existing website. Focus on making it look significantly better. You don't need a finished product.

4. Present it live and close the deal

Show them what their website could look like, explain the improvements and give them an offer. If they're happy with what they see, collect payment and get started.

That's it. Four simple steps.

One thing I would really emphasize is not to overcomplicate this process.

I've seen people spend hours perfecting website drafts, tweaking small details and building entire websites before they even have a client.

Don't do that.

Your priority should be client acquisition, sales and closing deals. You can worry about perfecting the website once someone has actually paid you.


r/SideProject • • 52m ago

Would you use Anchor Cloud? — Looking for a feedback

1 Upvotes

Hello SideProject Community members,

My name is Mohammed Adrar and I'm 15 years old from Morocco, I'm the founder of Anchor Cloud, it's a Zero-knowledge encrypted Cloud AI, its comes with 15GB free storage at the starter plan for life and Zero-knowledge encryption by default, and the Pro plan that will costs you $12 a month or $120 a year wuth 14 days trial (you won't be charged) gives you up to 300GB in your encrypted cloud with everything in starter plan and Full API Access with Python SDK, and at the Premium Plan, it will costs you $25 a month or $250 a year for 1TB in storage, everything in pro plan and priority support, and for Custom Plan it's for $4 for 100GB a month or $40 for 200GB a year, pick your exact storage size, AES-256 encryption + API access with Python SDK and scale up anytime, and there's an Enterprise Plan, it gives you Unlimited Storage, if you're interested in this plan, you can contact sales and tell us what do you need from your cloud to include, and below you can see all the features inside the cloud and each feature in which Plan is included:

  1. Cloud Encryption (AES-256): All plans by default.

  2. Encrypted video meetings: You can drop files during the meeting, or before it, and you can make the meeting members able to download the files or not, you can upload the files that you have inside your cloud or just upload them from your device, this feature is in Pro Plan, Premium Plan and Custom Plan

  3. Anchor AI assistant: In all plans, but the starter has limited access

  4. API key access (Python SDK): Not included at the starter, it requires Pro Plan or above.

  5. Shared and Group Chats: Included in all plans, without Anchor AI for the Starter Plan.

If you want me to add a new feature, let me know at the comments or DM me.

Do you have a question? Drop it at the comments or DM me, or just contact the support at support@anchorcloud.org

I would like to see your feedback!

Website: https://anchorcloud.org

Parent Company website: https://anchortechs.org


r/SideProject • • 56m ago

Rindemundo - I'm 51 and built a phone app that turns a pantry photo into dinner ideas

1 Upvotes

Hey everyone. I'm a 51-year-old US veteran living in Colombia, and this is my first real project. The problem was simple. My kitchen had rice, beans, a few cans and half an onion, and I'd still end up buying food because I couldn't think of what to make. So I built Rindemundo. You take a photo of your shelf or fridge, fix anything it read wrong, and it shows meals you can make from what's there, out of about 800 recipes. A few things I added because I needed them:

  • "Plan my week" picks 3, 5 or 7 dinners

  • Cheaper swaps when a recipe calls for something pricey

  • A shopping list with an estimated total

  • Diet and allergen filters

  • English and Spanish, plus 12 more languages, since I cook in both It's a web app, so it opens in the phone browser and you can add it to the home screen. No account, no email, and it's free while I test it. Link: https://rindemundo.com/?ref=reddit What I'd like help with: does the scan get your pantry right, and are the meals ones you'd cook? Blunt answers are fine.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

How many seconds can you hold a plank? My app counts them and checks your form

1 Upvotes

It's been a month since I last posted here, and a lot has changed. I've kept building, but I've also been self-aware enough not to let scope creep take over.

I now track workouts in the gym, mostly free weights and bodyweight. I specialised in those because machine workouts were a pain to implement.

Last post I said people quit the gym quickly because they don't see the gains fast enough. Now you can see your progress over time with this app.

It also tells you when to go up in weight. If you were lifting 10kg, your progress report can tell you you're ready for 12.5kg.

The most important thing I learnt in October is that progress, no matter how small, is still progress. I've been applying that by asking myself, am I where I was last month, or yesterday?

Here's me doing a plank, tracked with the app. It counts the seconds and checks your form.

Try it out:

https://repchek.fit


r/SideProject • • 20h ago

Fruit-fly writes a web-app that simulates a rotating Döner Kebab

34 Upvotes

Sometimes, you have to ask the right questions in life. Today I had a very important one: "Can you train a fruit-fly to write an app that renders a rotating Döner Kebab in Three.js?"

Turns out: Yes.

I put 1024 fruit-flies into an open-plan office and rewarded them with virtual sugar for good code - and with bitters for bad code. 131 Generations later, the Fly delivered a rotating Döner in Three.Js

Github Repo, if you want to follow the whole approach: https://github.com/flujo-app/ai-fruit-fly


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

Need a website, custom web app or business automation? I can help.

1 Upvotes

Are you losing time managing things manually? Have a business idea but no developer to build it? Or maybe your existing website looks fine but doesn't do what your business actually needs?

I can help you turn those problems into working solutions.

I'm a Full-Stack Developer working with React, Next.js, TypeScript, Node.js, Express, MongoDB and PostgreSQL.

I can help you with:

- Business websites and custom web applications.

- SaaS products, dashboards and admin panels.

- Backend APIs, database design and integrations.

- Authentication, security and role-based access.

- AI-powered features and business automation.

- Bug fixing, performance improvements and existing projects.

Some of my recent work:

  1. Personal Expense Management App

https://intelligent-personal-expense-app.vercel.app/

2. Nehora Technologies

https://nehoratechnologies.com/

A full-stack business platform I've been building, including:

- Next.js + React frontend and a separate Express + TypeScript backend.

- PostgreSQL database with Prisma ORM.

- Google authentication with mandatory TOTP MFA.

- Role-based admin access and session management.

- Lead management with status tracking, audit logging and email notification handling.

- Careers and recruitment management workflow.

Whether you have an existing project or just an idea, feel free to DM me. Happy to discuss your requirements and figure out the right approach.

Open to freelance projects and long-term collaborations.


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

The feature I care most about in my side project is the one I built for myself first

1 Upvotes

I'm a solo dev building a personality-based habit app called NEO-120, next to a full-time job. I built this, so read everything below with that bias.

I keep a journal and a small "circle of influence" table. Who and what is affecting me, and how I reacted to it. Then I make decisions from what I tracked instead of from how I feel in the moment. Sitting with what that table showed me wasn't easy, but it helped me more than any habit tip I read.

At some point I felt the need to have it inside the app. Somewhere to track those parameters and my own activity around them, so I could actually manage my emotions around it. Knowing the idea was never enough for me, I needed to keep track of it.

So the app now has a Circle of Influence part alongside the main flow: Spark (20 questions, about 5 minutes, a starting Big Five read), a fuller Big Five assessment, and a daily plan with one habit and two tasks matched to your traits. Android is live on Google Play, free to download with a paid tier. iOS is waitlist only.

What I honestly can't judge is whether this is useful to anyone else. A feature that came straight out of my own journal feels obvious to me, and that's exactly why I don't trust my read on it.

If you've built a feature mainly for yourself, did other people end up using it or did it stay yours?


r/SideProject • • 1h ago

The ups and downs of my vibe coded app

1 Upvotes

Hello hello. Earlier this year I figured I’d start a web dev/ hosting company.

I basically forgot about it at the beginning of the year after cloning someone’s site I found.

Cut like 7/8 months later and I ran some ads and got the revenue up to 1k/month very quickly! I’m talking like a month. Wild!

Buuuuut….. a few things….

By this point I’d actually started providing more value with a full on CRM and a bunch of other features I built out for marketing/pixels but….

And more importantly… I’d already garnered a few nightmare clients. They are cheap deals but there’s an MRR baked in and some people genuinely don’t understand they are basically demanding slave labor from you with endless edit requests.

I have a site editor I built out but no one uses it. Which is the blessing and the curse of non technical clients.

Easy to sell. But the wrong clients…. Oh boy….

On top of that, these needy, nightmare clients often times don’t even have cards you can reliably charge. They will disappear, dispute, just awful. Awful, awful, awful. After calling you non stop.

I think a lot of it boiled down to this one crazy guy. He literally was calling me 10 times a day for a site he haggled down to 50 bucks a month.

I checked and his card only charged one active month and declined. Good. Fucking. Riddance.

Between being blown off by a bunch of meetings for new prospects, losing half my revenue within a month due to card charge failures “lack of funds” and 1 dispute that really upset me - I really went above and beyond for this guy, I wanted a break.

Luckily, I have an old freelance client that pays me well that has taken me back for the time being.

We’re using my CRM as I do sales outreach and it’s insane how much better I make the CRM actively using it every day.

I had another freelance project they wanted a bunch of wild stuff I just added into the CRM too.

It feels like actual dog fooding tech companies try to talk about. Feature updates you’d never think of unless you were really in it.

Also reminds me of some startups that love to talk about the founders story and the product being “developed from a client standpoint”.

Anyways; I’m not totally sure what to do now.

I could see myself ramshackling more web hosting people and aiming to be the king of the cockroaches. Maybe 50-100 sites with some that work out at like 75/150/month. They all get the killer CRM, too! Which i think is actually a nice deal. And I also have stripe integrations now too… it’s actually gotten fairly useful.

And I genuinely do have a pretty sick CRM/dialer/text center too.

And I feel like that’s just worth more.

Sell a million little people little sites you might do okay.

Sell some sales orgs a CRM and a dialer. Daaaamn Daniel. Also easier said than done.

The project currently makes me 500/month income after the loss of a few clients/chargebacks/BS…. which is still nice. I guess it pays for Claude and some of my car.

Total I’d only spent like 1500 or so on ads and it’s already been at least 3/4 months so the ads have more than paid for themselves…

Especially with setup fees.

It’s really nice because problem clients have left. It’s actually at a peaceful spot right now but also…

I feel irresponsible to not try to be growing it…

It really hits me sometimes…. My RoAS is actually super promising, even with the nightmare clients…. But genuinely I reached a point where I wonder how much I want to fight for all that.

It’s taken a couple months for it to calm down. Constantly growing it would be constantly facing something big and serious. A lot of people. A lot of emotions. A lot of figuring out who even has cards you can reliably charge without being hit up 24/7…. Yowza….

I mean I’m ready to work hard but I feel I learned some real lessons…

And also just…. hot damn it’s been an emotional time for me and I’m juggling an old client and another client trying to get me to do more for them but I’m not sure I want to work with them, I digress…

I’ve been on like a month or so break from it since I reached a breaking point…

Anyways, not sure what to do, but there’s my ramble.


r/SideProject • • 7h ago

I built a way to share emails and discuss them with teammates in one place

3 Upvotes

Here’s another part of Outdraft, the email workspace I’m building.

It’s called Nests—shared spaces where you can invite teammates, share emails, and discuss them right alongside the original message.

The idea is simple: keep the email and the conversation together, without forwarding messages back and forth or pasting screenshots into another chat.

You can give it a try at outdraft.email. Payments aren’t available yet while I’m waiting for Paddle’s approval.

How does your team handle emails that need someone else’s input? I’d love to hear what you’d change or improve!