Side Projects

This post was originally published on golifelog.com.

I’ve started a few side projects this year, and I’m a bit angry I didn’t launch any of it. At the recent company Christmas party, I talked to a freelance employee. He has been in the startup and hacking scene for years and got a whole load of projects under his belt.

Talking with him made me shift a bit of my focus, before I always thought about launching something to generate some money for my freelance “project”. Over the last couple of years that was the main goal, but I’ve got another network client recently (needing a new laptop, moving offices, setting up a new network next year) which will pay some bills.

My idea is now to get playlistmerger.app out in the wild in the next months. The server costs aren’t really high, and I think it would look good on my portfolio. My coworker even suggested getting it out as an open-source project, to gain more visibility. Maybe that is the way to go.

Anyway, another side project or hobby is my YouTube channel. I’ve been consistently pumping out two daily videos for months now and though watch times and likes are not there yet, I can see some growth on the subscriber side. I was even invited to a modded Minecraft back in October, which I really enjoyed (and still do) and brought me to get out of my comfort zone and talk (over voice chat) to other people.

YouTube is still far from generating income for me, but I’ve been doing it since 2012, so no stepping down there. We’ll see how it progresses.