The Art of Building Side Projects

I've been making apps since I was in 12th, even though I had zero idea of programming. I remember making an app for watching Live TV channels. I'm not sure if people remember something called "Jar games", basically Java applets.

I had found a list of links which played live TV, a loophole found as 3G had just been announced. It fascinated me so much, I started building random things.

Post college, I just went ahead and accepted a "Business Analyst" job at Oracle. It was a good experience, but I knew I had to get a job as a dev. No one was taking me seriously back when I was interviewing, and I saw I had nothing to show on my resume.

Something was lacking.

So, I just started creating small projects just to fill in my resume. I made portfolios, calculators, started converting Dribbble designs to HTML & CSS and it actually worked. I was able to convince a startup to give me a job as Jr Frontend Dev. All I had to do there was make landing pages for their marketing team using a drag and drop website builder, but I didn't let this get me down. I did this for 6 months, started taking more work voluntarily. Doesn't matter what, I picked designing illustrations, doing SEO, training interns, I used to write copy, I proofread marketing material, I even started rebuilding a super complex legacy app my team needed. 2 years on I was still doing this, I realised I was doing everything I possibly could. Got bored.

Something was lacking, again.

I started building more nuanced side projects, but this time, I did something different. I decided every project I did would be to learn something.

Tarun Mangukiya (CEO of CopperX, Ex CEO/Founder of Iconscout) told me "If you want to learn XYZ, imagine a use case involving XYZ, just build it". This clicked so well with me, I took it extremely seriously.

• I wanted to learn making Charts, I made a Fake Stock market ticker.
  I wanted to learn how to scrape data, I made Gitstars, it scraped github trending repo and would show it in a nice lite site.

• I wanted to learn how a CMS works, I made a full fledged backend ready directory called Appydev, tools and apps for designers and developers.

• I wanted to learn how to stream video, I made a site called TVFlix to stream IPTV channels.

• I wanted to learn how virtual scrolling worked, I made a site called fluent icons, to show thousands of SVGs at once and it worked.

I repeated this for years tbh. I forced myself into situations that would help me understand "Why I need to build this" along with "How can I build this", it actually worked

Here's a list of some of the projects that got a tiny bit popular:

• SuperSaaS: $12K revenue in 2 months, still going strong supersaas.dev

• MiniPic: Personal utility minipic.app

• LinkPreview: 60K visitors in 20 days, #1 on HN linkpreview.xyz

• TiinyTools: Work in Progress tiiny.tools

• FeedbackJar: Abandoned feedbackjar.app

• Feedful: Popular but abandoned feedful.vercel.app

• Hawa: Open-source ambient sounds app dub.sh/hawa

• Imbox: Personal favorite dub.sh/imbox

• IconBuddy: Sold for $4K iconbuddy.com

• Postperfect: $100 in 4 days, sold it for $5K on day 5 (Shutdown by new owner)

• Onelink: 500+ GitHub stars, ported to other languages, featured on YT videos, used for AI Demos dub.sh/1link

• Logspot: Widely used, but no analytics dub.sh/logspot

• Fluenticons: Sold for $$$$ fluenticons.co

• Appydev (2019): Sold for $$$$ appydev.co

• Tvflix: Forced to shut down, got a DMCA notice

• Gitstars: #2 Product of the Day on ProductHunt (Shutdown)

Fast forward 9 years, and my resume now fills 3 pages, mostly explaining all these projects. These side projects have gotten me jobs with SF-level salaries in India. Most companies don't even ask me for a technical interview anymore because there's so much to show. It's crazy to think how much these projects I built for fun have helped my career.

If you're thinking about starting a side project today, seriously, just do it. It's totally worth it.

PS, the poster was made using Grok AI, and the title was inspired from "The Art of War by Sun Tzu"