Being a developer gives you a tremendous opportunity - you can build awesome software pretty much on your own. Whether you want to hone your skills, make some money on the side or build your very own startup - working on side projects is a great idea! In this post, I'll give you some tips on how to start.

Solve your own problem

This is the easiest way to begin. Think of things that annoy the hell out of you and write an app to solve them. Even if there are existing apps that do it, write your version exactly for your needs!

Based on my experience, writing apps as a solution to your own problems gives the most motivation to keep working on them (and trust me, there will be a lot of hard times where you'll want to give up).

If you can't think up of your own problems, ask someone from your family and friends, I'm sure you'll find plenty of ideas that way!

You can later take a step further and try to reach a wider audience as well as monetize it if you think you're creating a lot of value for someone!

Solve a big problem

Another path that you can take is to solve a big problem that many people have. This, on the other hand, is the way to go if you're thinking about creating your big venture. Find out where you have the biggest advantage, do the research about the problems users are facing and get to work on the MVP. There is only one thing that I should mention...

Being a developer won't be enough

Just being a developer won't suffice if you're thinking about launching a larger commercial project when there's a lot of competition to fight with. Pretty much you have 3 routes that you can take:

Full stack developer-designer-copywriter-businessman...

You'd be surprised, but this is a completely viable option. There are a lot of founders out there launching products entirely on their own. They aren't afraid of wearing many different hats, from doing market research, through designing UX all the way to launching their IDEs and puttin' that code.

Make sure to check out Indie Hackers. It's a wonderful community of people looking to launch their projects. You can learn a ton from their know-hows and experiences!

Of course, becoming at least decently informed in all of these areas will take you a lot of time, but the payoff is huge - you can take sole ownership of your project and launch it exactly according to your vision!

Teaming up with people with complementary skill sets

If you prefer to specialize in your area, then you'll need to find people that can handle all the other things required in the project. You shouldn't look for the army of people though - an optimal size of the founding team is usually no more than 3.

Try to find people with knowledge in many different areas, for example, designers who can also take care of the copy. Maximize the amount of knowledge in as many areas as possible in an as small amount of people as possible.

Hiring freelancers to do the hard stuff for you

If you have money laying around and don't want to bother finding co-founders or learning new stuff, you can try finding freelancers and delegating the rest of the tasks in the project.

Some popular sites in which you can search for them are:

• Toptal
• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Fiverr

Just for fun

There is of course nothing wrong with working on the side project just for the sake of fun! Want to try out that new framework? Great, go ahead! Only make sure you won't end up with a situation mentioned below:

Summary

As you can see there are plenty of ways and reasons to start a side project. Pick one that suits you most and get to work!

PS

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