Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?
In this virus season alone I&#x27;ve made $8000 in sales.<p>You&#x27;ll find various subreddits where people are buying around 5-10spools a month. Imagine how much virgin plastic is being added like that to the environment.<p>I&#x27;ve been creating filament and selling it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;endless-filament&#x2F;make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;endless-filament&#x2F;make-your-filament-at-ho...</a><p>This activity also help recycle waste plastic.<p>Production cost of filament is $7.5 per 5kg and filament roll has 850 gram filament and can be sold for $20-30 per spool<p>It&#x27;s trivial to get the quality right.<p>You can sell rolls on Amazon, eBay and Etsy or your own Shopify store and use Facebook ads&#x2F;Google Ads to advertise your website.<p>That said I didn&#x27;t use any ads to sell filament! Only few days ago I started Shopify store and paid $5-10 in Facebook ads. Since we accept credit card, it&#x27;s not too much of a risk for buyer to buy it from us (even when are new)<p>I work from home so I take 5 minute break and walk to my garage and check if the filament machine successfully is running on auto pilot<p>Thing is filament doesn&#x27;t have huge demand, neither it has very less demand. So you can dominate local demand by creating quality filament.<p>I focus on fulfilling local demand, I&#x27;ve gained customers who need large supply of filament of ABS, TPU and Nylon12.<p>If people do actually come to compete with me, it&#x27;s a win win. More plastic recycled = less plastic entering landfill.