What's an idea or creation that you've had success with locally that I can copy?

176 points by js7 11 years ago | 105 comments

What's an an idea that you have implemented successfully in your local area that I can bring to my local area?

Had a hard time getting to a government office or other facility that lots of people have to get/go to on an irregular basis?

Write a blog article about it, but don't just provide the address and phone number, provide VERY specific instructions that one actually needs and doesn't get anywhere else, almost like turn-by-turn GPS. For example: "park by the X retail location, go inside the doors of the building under the Y sign, walk 50m just past the elevators, go up the stairs 1 level (the elevator takes forever), and you're there. You can park for free 1 block East on Y street."

I've done this for a few government offices. The earnings aren't high per month, but they have been consistent for 7 years, pretty good for an hour's work. It's doubtful the Yellow Pages, navigation providers or government website will provide such useful and detailed instructions.

amit_m 11 years ago | |

Can you share some numbers? e.g. approximate unique visitors and revenues per month per page.

Scoundreller 11 years ago | | |

I'm usually reluctant to share any numbers, but it's a few dollars per month per article (on average). It adds up over the years and has been very consistent, which is why I like the segment a lot. Unique views is not a useful number in my opinion, it's all about total revenue. I suppose it's the hyper-local aspect that drives up the ad bid prices on Adsense. The content is also a great example of "Evergreen Content", unlike, say, a review of a World Cup game from yesterday.

I really see it as publishing my thoughts and notes, and things I would have liked to have known in advance. Typical entrepreneurial thinking, "Solve a problem that I actually had", but at a micro scale. Sometimes I end up reading one of my own articles in a few years time because I've forgotten the precise details of the process when I have to go back again.

(This has been one of my highest-upvoted posts on HN so far)

kephra 11 years ago |

We did make a free beer mobile application in 1999, when cell phones had been still big, called Happy Hopper. The idea of the service was: You send an SMS to our server, we send you an SMS back to a pub in town, together with a riddle to solve in that pub. Solve that riddle and you get a free beer and the address of the next pub. The SMS also served as a ticket for the bus.

Success of this service was based on working with our local brewery, and local radio station to advertise it, and of course public transport. Happy Hopper did run two times during the Freimarkt and Osterwiese fair. So you also need a date, where you can expect lots of people who enjoy to get drunk.

js7 11 years ago | |

That sounds great haha. I live in Ireland so it's bound to be popular!

ehurrell 11 years ago | | |

As a fellow Irishman I agree, it could work very well with tourists too, a drinking tour of Dublin where you have to solve the leprechaun's riddles markets itself!

yitchelle 11 years ago | |

What a great idea for Vatertag in my corner of Germany. Some of the folks here still celebrate it as a day for drinking with other fathers during a really long walk in the forest.

playhard 11 years ago | |

Brilliant!

bemmu 11 years ago |

Send local goods to foreign subscribers in monthly surprise shipments.

akumpf 11 years ago |

I haven't created one personally, but if you're in a maker desert (where there isn't great access to spaces/people/tools to build and hack things), consider starting a maker space.

I used to live a few blocks away from one in Seattle and it was awesome. Just a couple workbenches, a 3D printer, hand tools, wifi, and some electronic components can go a long way and get people in the community stoked. :)

pbhjpbhj 11 years ago | |

>consider starting a maker space. //

I've thought of this many times - mainly cause I'm too poor to buy all the tools I want and even the tools I have I wish it were easier to lend them so they don't die of rust before their otherwise useful hours have been used up ...

But, I've always thought that this would need to be a government supported social enterprise, never that it could make enough money to pay for rent+wage(s) and equipment, upkeep, insurance, etc..

Anyone actually done this and willing to share some figures (privately if needs be)?

Thanks.

chatmasta 11 years ago | | |

Our college has a "maker space" and it's been a tremendous success, to the point that engineering "recruits" cite it as a reason for choosing the school. Obviously this was school-funded, but my point is that the administration saw a direct value add from it, and continues to pour funding into the program. You may be able to pull data about municipal maker spaces in other cities, and use it to convince your own city to fund a project to build one.

mattmanser 11 years ago | | |

We have a hackspace here that I've (shamefully) never actually gone to.

You could try contacting them and ask how they did it:

http://nottinghack.org.uk/

stevekemp 11 years ago |

Fetish based dieting advice. I'm serious.

In brief you need a market of "kinky people", and you need a market of people who wish to lose weight, stop smoking, or similar.

You agree on challenges, you "punish" them if they fail, or succeed, on a case-by-case basis.

Very hands on. But there are a subset of people who will be in your target audience who are extremely wealthy..

thenomad 11 years ago | |

There's already an exercise equivalent. Google "Slavercise". Appears to have lasted a few years at least...

nhebb 11 years ago |

An o-shibori (hot towel) service. They're common in Japanese restaurants, and when I visited Tokyo in the middle of summer, I looked forward to the hot towel almost as much as the meal. You could resell or lease the equipment and provide daily laundry / sterilization service.

stoev 11 years ago |

Web crawler that collects comments on social and media websites and lets users analyse and visualise them. It's not very hard to build and provides a great service to businesses releasing PR articles and seeking feedback on them.

meritt 11 years ago | |

There's thousands of implementations of this idea already.

disputin 11 years ago | |

Don't know about Ireland, but in the UK you'd need to pay the NLA (newspaper licensing agency) if you want to use news content. And London is crawling (sorry ;) with media monitoring companies.

veb 11 years ago | |

Couldn't you use something like Google Alerts, but don't tell your customers that, just show the results in a more prettified and "tailored" way to them. ;-)

amanthei 11 years ago | | |

Or, use mention.com and export beautiful analytical reports directly.

grimtrigger 11 years ago | |

http://getredditalerts.com

mwww 11 years ago | |

http://www.mention.com

EdwardDiego 11 years ago | |

That's a great idea, with some very interesting facets to play with.

subhashp 11 years ago | |

Stoev, Great idea! Where can I get a PHP script which does this?

js7 11 years ago | | |

I can write you one if you can't find one

psychometry 11 years ago |

Self-storage is getting big and can be done anywhere: https://angel.co/self-storage

porcuk0r 11 years ago |

Christmas tree delivery service by bikes: http://kantaa.hu/karacsony

xur17 11 years ago | |

I thought about doing something like this last year. It was in more of a suburban area, so we'd use cars / trucks, but the idea was to allow people to order trees online, and then deliver them a few times a week at set times (between 9-12am on Saturday, etc).

renuxa 11 years ago | |

nagyon jó!

supercoder 11 years ago |

Middleman for a service that would connect men with women who would be intimate for an exchange of money

hypron 11 years ago | |

I've heard that this isn't easy.

tuxidomasx 11 years ago | | |

Do you know of any obstacles/challenges to doing this? Something like Backpage escort listings where you just offer craigslist-like functionality for the occasional listing fee. Seems like it'd be pretty straightforward, but I may be overlooking something.

gadders 11 years ago | | |

Ha ha! Anything goes when it comes to hoes*

* Please don't hate me, I'm quoting lyrics.

nicholaides 11 years ago | | |

And at the same time, some people say it is. I think you and they are both right.

wiradikusuma 11 years ago | |

You mean like my website? (http://www.ngajakjalan.com)

Theodores 11 years ago |

A local arts group with a big 'open studios' event once a year, an artists directory with mini portfolios, gigs, poetry readings, workshops and other events. With a bit of help from whatever groups are already there plus the council it should come together. A newsletter is what makes it all work plus a half decent CMS. Local artists cannot do these things by themselves much like how cats can't herd themselves.

As well as money from ticket sales there is also money as per the directory model. A side benefit is that you will have a wonderful social life with all of those gallery private views to go to.

hesselink 11 years ago |

This site (http://www.worldstartupwiki.org/) is tracking startup ideas that haven't been implemented in certain locations yet.

abestic9 11 years ago |

Taxi/bus company rate comparisons. Most transit companies provide fare information on their website, as well as a search function which rarely includes a CAPTCHA, so getting updates is easy.

js7 11 years ago | |

There's not many bus services in my city and the taxi situation is:

- Flag the taxi down - all the same price

- Hailo which loads of people use all the time now

- 20% discount taxis

- 25% discount taxis

So I don't think we really have a taxi problem

jordanwallwork 11 years ago | | |

Lucky you. Our taxis prices are all over the place, some charge a callout fee and others don't, and some hide the meter and charge whatever the hell they want - I'd use a price comparison service for this for sure

nkg 11 years ago |

A database management system for any structure who stores a lot of data. What I did was basically transferring a lot of repetitive tasks they handle with Excel to a PHP/MySql application.

sdotsen 11 years ago | |

I concur, I created https://iKeepm.com and I get a lot of inquiries for a business version. I just dont have time to create one.

D3_4dl1N3 11 years ago | |

Inventory management softwares handle those kind of tasks. Is it your product/service ?

Falling3 11 years ago | | |

Most inventory management software is fairly generalized. If you're doing anything outside the box, it can be very difficult to rely on off the shelf solutions and, at best, companies may require additional software to interact with the inventory management programs.

_puk 11 years ago |

Bog standard printing at your local store.

Seems it is easier and cheaper nowadays to buy a printer than replace an ink cartridge. Looking at £50 a time. I just don't print enough to warrant it.

None of the supermarkets / high street stores do bog standard A4 printing for a few pence.

I've found a print shop that will do it, at a cost, but the quality is far too good for simple stuff, hence the price.

My 'right this moment' problem.

lucaspiller 11 years ago | |

There is a place that does this opposite where a friend lives in the UAE. They are focused on business printing, but you can just walk in and do this for about 10p / colour page. They are always busy and open 24 hours so it must be profitable :)

aszantu 11 years ago | |

I bought a second hand laser printer for about 30 euros. When the cartridge is empty, I'm cheaper off buying a new second hand laser printer than replacing the cartridge - at least was my last thought.

kvee 11 years ago |

Gossip forum in a hacker school that became so popular that the administration demanded it get taken down yesterday. Now comments have to be approved, and only the most recent 5 rather than 40 comments are displayed. Seems like making these changes has already killed everything that was great about this little online community, so if you do something like it, don't shut it down ;)

girvo 11 years ago | |

What was the rationale for neutering it?

thruflo 11 years ago |

Really really good coffee.

amit_m 11 years ago | |

With all the international travel and global trade of this day and age, it amazes me how difficult it is to get a decent espresso in the US, even in major cities.

Beer OTOH has been completely revolutionised in recent years.

alexhawdon 11 years ago |

https://medium.com/@nikkidurkin99/my-startup-failed-and-this...

From what I read, the idea was very sound and validated by some great initial success.

jitbit 11 years ago |

go through all the small local shops and offer them SEO services. most of them have terrible sites so "on-site" seo will work great. You'll make a couple thousand. Good way to make some money when you really need it after moving in

js7 11 years ago | |

What do you mean "after moving in"?

That's a good idea. I always wonder: what if the site is already set up correctly or what if you can't make any movement in search rankings (due to competition, industry, anything)

SNACKeR99 11 years ago | | |

You sleep in their shops of course! "Oh, don't mind that woman sleeping beside the cans of soup, she is our SEO expert!"

By rotating where you sleep among your clients, you build stronger relationships and have better insight into their business.

jitbit 11 years ago | | |

Sorry, I mean after relocating to a new area, that's a nice thing that helped make some small money FAST... I just moved, and was waiting for a payment from my biggest consulting client, but me & wife really needed some money. That's what I did.

facepalm 11 years ago | |

How to become good at SEO, though? Or is it really just adhering to HTML 5 best practices?

gadders 11 years ago |

I've not done it, but I always toyed with the idea of doing a tampon-equivalent of the Dollar Shave Club - i.e. get sanitary products emailed out every month automatically.

vishalzone2002 11 years ago | |

i had this idea and found that there are lot of these.. its a tough one to get successful in because amazon etc are already big time in it, unless you can reduce the product cost itself.

gadders 11 years ago | | |

Yeah. I had the idea of basing outside of the UK/EU to make use of the Vat exemption for small packages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT-free_imports_from_the_Chann...

draugadrotten 11 years ago |

Print kiosks where customers can print out a customized "newspaper" with a customized subset of news articles scraped from the web

abcd_f 11 years ago | |

So how many customers do you have?

vijayr 11 years ago | |

I can't tell if you are serious or joking. How can you simply scrape someone's content and sell it? It would be copyright violation.

maaaats 11 years ago | | |

Why are you assuming there is no deal in place here?

kachnuv_ocasek 11 years ago | | |

Who's talking about selling it?

xur17 11 years ago | |

This could be kind of neat, especially for older people that are less familiar with computers, but still want to stay informed. Let them select their interests, and deliver a customized newspaper.

tpinto 11 years ago | |

Like this? https://www.paperlater.com/

Falling3 11 years ago | |

That's actually an incredibly cool idea... I would definitely read that newspaper.

lun4r 11 years ago |

A lemonade stand!

js7 11 years ago | |

Some university students did this in my city recently. I was disappointed that they overpriced it (1 euro for a cup of lemonade)

jtheory 11 years ago | | |

Charging 1 euro is practical (so they don't have to be giving out a ton of change during the day...), but it sounds like they should have made sure they were offering something that didn't look too cheap -- e.g., get decent quality plastic cups that aren't tiny, do some actual work for each customer (instead of just pouring from a massive pre-filled jug), include a lemon wedge in each cup, etc..

I can easily imagine a lemonade-stand lemonade that would seem underpriced at 1 euro; but obviously they didn't take that approach!

jonasvp 11 years ago | |

Also, there's always money in a banana stand!

js7 11 years ago |

I'm thinking things like pizza price comparison apps etc

BorisMelnik 11 years ago | |

I almost thought you said Pizza compression, but I think that was actually done in back to the future part II.

taway98765 11 years ago |

well, none of these are really implemented (yet) but here you go

SW Only

1) An all-in-one transport app. You'd have a single credit wallet you could re-charge on a monthly/weekly/as-needed basis. You set in your profile for how long you are willing to wait for a ride(lets say +/- 15min), and how far are you willing to walk from your current location(lets say r500m) + other criteria if you please(like ferraries-only:). Rates could be something like few cents/km for "civilian" drivers(standard car-sharing - could be problematic depending on the legislature/generated profit for the driver), few bucks/km for cabs, pub transport based on routes/times and - dynamic pub transport routes per km as well. Lets say there is a after-work beer with colleagues planned so you can't drive to work by your self. During breakfast you just choose a destination(predefined for freq. places), desired time and a "hitchhiker sign". All drivers doing the same/similar route(with criteria compatible with yours) would be notified .. a few "accept" clicks away/maybe a quick look at the drivers profile(badges/km driven/reviews etc) and your off to work. No drivers available? Your app would show you all public transport possibilities(color coded based on compatibility with your criteria) + cabs in your area - few clicks away and you're set(either buying a ticket or ordering a cab). Double-validation for payments based on transport type - no more waiting on a bus stop for 2 hours watching 100's of driver-only empty cars going your direction + a public API would mean that bus companies could also use small 6-8 passenger buses and dynamically create new/amend existing routes based on the demand(200 people heading to a business park across town(C) from destination A, 100 from B to D(which is near C) between 0800 - 0900 > change route via B .. if time intervals are met(like 1h from A - C) ) ++ all the data flowing your direction could also be used as a waze alternative for even better routing +++ you could profit by selling api data/on % from commercial transport partners) + have awards for car-share folks like free oil/filter changes after 10k km/free coffee after 20km between 2200 - 0600 etc..). If you are in EU, these projects are highly welcomed..

2) We need a distributed decentralized(p2p), no-authority write once read many storage solution for "our civilizations data" like news/general knowledge. It has to support versioning, encryption, deduplication, store synapses between relevant data, be self-healing, layered, nodes monitoring/promoting(demoting)/caranteening each other if needed, role-based - build on premise that all* of the nodes are/can become malicious actors(..). Everyone should be able to run a node on his nas @home/mobile device, assign roles to his devices etc .. general storage for all things public.. + it should support anonymous document uploads(lets say an indenpended journalist from syria wants to get his/her story published / someone working in a big-co comes across some very interesting public-interest documents he;d like to publish and doesn't trust honey-pot assange/media) - all big problems on their own .. regardless of the client app using the data(if you are running a auto-moto/pro-(enter political party) website, you may apply as much filtering as you wish), the user should still be able to get/contribute to the "publicly-generated" synaptic nw of a news story as stored on the backend + this is the bare minimum for other systems we desperately need to reform(the "no-trust" premise of it) so a good way to dive into this problematic

3) services on top of 2) .. and there are many ..

4) DNS, routing, ssl/alternative, smtp replacement! .. + ton of things you could do to make this world a better place.. please just don;t waste it on another twitter app

5) Clouds are here to stay, what has to change is the way we look at and work with data + connected with 2) + a few old concepts ms thought about pioneering a few years back, maybe its time for - yet another - linux distribution, combining best of today's storage array internals, embedded systems, containers/vm technology and security(..). In combination with some dedicated (hopefully usb-sized) hw .. could be a interesting time-waster

SW + HW

1) Easy-to-use/build RF-net kits for low-bandwidth applications(irc/messaging fe) - pick a protocol/design your own, design a hierarchical topology of clients, ap's, retransmitters, keep an eye on per-country rf encryption restrictions and hope you'll never have to use it as your primary means of communication(eg no "accidents" on our main optic backbone)

2) HW keys to your cloud data/apps - turning your PC into an accessory/treating it the same like a cloud service provider with computing/storage services available based on the pc-os setup .. maybe the x-server architecture could finally become applauded ..

"HW" Only

1) The idea of public work-places is great! soldering sets, measuring gear, 3d printers, tools for lease, benches for alu/wood work etc - would probably be a hit anywhere(+ that equipment costs too much/takes years to gather at home.. ) - there is a hobbyist in most of us + in combination with a caffee/"fun" area/library and city funding, you may even get into some green numbers

2) In combination with 1) - electronics tuning shop - if you like to get your hands dirty(building hw slider switches into phones/nbs, custom cases/hw customization - router fw's etc) - you could get some traction if you;d presented your self as something underground/anti-establishment .. these days..

3) bio and localized farming - huge opportunities, really bad business models(we;re talking about real bio producers struggling with the rising regulatory pressure lobbied by the big guys, not the so-called bio farmers selling out to those big-co's) - monthly payments with 2x/4x a month "basket" deliveries of seasonal food to your doorstep with some it tech in the mixture + insurance coverage for the farmer +++ .. ok I'm hungry - sry for this half-baked not thought through / naive / unfeasible list and good luck ..

wwwhatcrack 11 years ago |

Jacking off

randomvc 11 years ago |

Da Pimp business