Opps Daily is a daily email newsletter listing software opportunities and small paid tasks, started by an HN user.
HN commenters recommend subscribing, describe it as a source of small tasks, and one shares how its launch drew early users.
Sounds like what most of us want. I would like to be at the point where if my job laid me off... I can still pay my mortgage and bills and not have to worry.
I would love to develop that saas web app that many people use and it is enough for me that I could even quit my day job. And sure enough, I'm working on it too.
The solution is this: Find a common problem people have. Solve it. Charge for it. Market it. Sell it. Prosper.
If the solution already exists and someone is charging for it, than find a way to make it better (and possibly cheaper though this is not always necessary).
How I usually do this is: I have a problem. I want to solve it. If I have a problem, it is more than likely that others have the same problem too. It is almost unlikely that NO ONE but me has that same problem.
For example, I wanted a place where I could easily create a web page on the Internet, set my own URL, change the way the page looks, and share it with others. The result was a free web app I developed called MyPost ( https://mypost.io ). I shared it on here and on Twitter a few times... and now the world is using it daily. I've seen it being used in places as far as Russia and the Philippines. I had gotten the idea from another web app that .. was basically lacking a lot of what I wanted to do. So I created my own.
As far as doing your own research... sign up for a website like: http://oppsdaily.com/
Don't tackle every problem, but seek to get in touch or turn it into your own. OR…
I did the following for http://www.oppsdaily.com, and am currently doing something similar for https://www.oppslist.com
1. Posted landing page in a slack chat (first ~10 users)
2. Posted on the indiehackers forum (+30 users)
3. Got mentioned in the indiehackers weekly newsletter (+150)
4. Posted to hacker news (+?)
5. Posted to product hunt (did not go so great)(+?)
6. Started posting weekly metrics to HN - made the frontpage (+1500-2000)
Thank you for Airtable, I'm a big fan, especially of the Zapier integration. Lately there has been a lot of discussion on Hacker News about projects like Opps Daily [1] and Nugget [2], where people write in about some pain point they have in their daily job that might be solved by custom-built software. I get the impression that Airtable + Zapier could solve a lot of those use cases.
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[1] http://oppsdaily.com/
[2] https://nugget.one/daily
There are some interesting ideas that sometimes come through on http://www.oppsdaily.com
I haven't started anything based on it yet because I already struggle starting focused on what I'm already doing. I'm intrigued by some if their opportunities though.
I also found the approach of buying thing.com domain names and building a obvious business around them very promising: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13366216
I can certainly understand your frustration from the under-utilization of your skills, but wow, what a great opportunity to start a project or learn something new while getting paid. Look around for someone who has an interesting problem that needs solving. You might start looking here: http://www.oppsdaily.com/
I like to read at least one post on https://www.indiehackers.com/ to keep me motivated to make my side project successful.
I also read the daily email from http://oppsdaily.com/ to see if there is a problem that I can solve that someone is willing to pay for.