So I have experience working with Udacity (MOOCs for various coding related fields)

I work as a mentor for a few of their courses. You're connected to X number of students (you set x yourself). Then as they progress through the course they have the option to send you a message to ask a question or whatever. You also do a weekly check-in with them to see where they're at, if they have any blockers, what their goals are for the next week.

You then get paid (via PayPal) based on how your student interactions went on a per week basis. 0$ for every student who didn't message you, 5$ for 1-9 messages, 15$ for 10+ messages. You get bonuses for them completing major sections as well.

You interact via a mentor dashboard on web or via a mobile app. If you use mobile, you're basically being paid to text some students a few times a week. Pay will obviously vary depending on how many students you have and how good you are at interacting with them. (The better your mentor rating the more students you're allowed to take on). I had 40 students and made 1.4K a month. The work didn't feel stressful or anything. It's pretty easy to land (no formal interviews or anything), you just have to get involved in their slack and PM one of the Udacity staffers. Was pretty easy, plus I enjoy teaching/mentoring.

You can also be a project reviewer rather than a mentor, but not sure how that works.

Not being skeptic but genuinely curious, does the per message pay model drive less succinct answers that require clarification? I imagine that there is little discussion or choice within the student body to select a mentor

> "drive less succinct answers"

Not really, mainly because there's very clearly two kinds of students. The ones who don't talk to their mentors at all outside of the weekly check-in (a single message) and the ones who utilize the mentor to the fullest. So if someone is asking you a question you generally don't have to worry about getting to 10 messages with them because it'll just happen.

Seems very attracting. I'll definitely give it a try.

Yup if you have any questions, just lemme know.

I don't find the "mentor door" on their website. Does it work thanks to word of mouth or should I buy some other glasses?

Yea the link the other guy provided works, I happened to go through their slack community though and asked them directly. (which I think would be a higher rate of success)

That route required paying for their course (Self Driving Car course) And completing some projects for it. Then PMed and became a mentor for SDC and AI courses.

We're working to solve this problem at http://MoonlightWork.com. At my last startup, I had a lot of friends who wanted to help us out - but they had day jobs that they couldn't leave. So, I started hiring them part-time as contractors. It was great - we had top talent, and they could focus on interesting problems while making extra money.

Moonlight is still in its early stages but we are doing thousands of dollars per week in business. Our average hourly rate based on paid contracts so far has been $146.79. We're focusing on more specialized work rather than generic web development from scratch. Early projects have ranged from a custom algorithm for a hedge fund to some infrastructure work to support Tensorflow. The benefit to companies is that they have access to specialized engineers for focused projects, and they can get a match within 48 hours.

If you're interested in short-term projects, you can join at https://MoonlightWork.com/apply - we're working on increasing the number of projects, so sorry if it takes a couple weeks to get a first project match.

We're going though YC's Startup School MOOC, and we did live office hours with Sam Altman a few weeks ago. You can see the video here: https://youtu.be/abtHadERzXU

Hey, Philip!

We're in a similar space and more companies like yours need to exist.

I'm one of the cofounders at https://turtle.ai/

Our average paid out hourly rates have been lower than yours, but we make it REALLY easy for both sides to work together. We've built our own task manager and chat app that makes customer and freelancer lives easier.

We have a lot of PhD students and full time developers doing 5-15 hours per week on Turtle.

Good luck and we'll be looking out for you! More "alternative work" options need to exist. The 40-hour, butt-in-seat life needs to go (or other options have to at least exist).

This space desperately needs to be disrupted. And don't sell when Upwork comes knocking! :)

Cool - we've been taking a very manual approach to optimize our process so far, and are finally just starting on a web app! We have a lot more work to do in automating the process and creating a great user experience. We're users of our own product too - I'm working 10 hours a week through Moonlight to afford rent.

Our mission is to help engineers earn what they want, and for some people - that means working more time for more money, but for others that means working just a few hours per week.

I see that Turtle focuses more on web development. I think this is a good way to go about it - but for Moonlight specifically, I knew there was a problem when a friend of mine making $400K/year as a security researcher couldn't find a way to apply his skills in contract work. He wanted to travel and contract for a bit, and was having to look at webdev contracts at $50/hour. So, instead of focusing on building products for non-technical clients, we're focusing on more specialized tasks like dev-ops and algorithms for technical clients.

ah very cool.

Our customers are technical and non-technical. There is a lot of web and mobile app development work, but we've had some interesting projects on there already (ML, AI, even an app to stop your cat from locking up your keyboard when you watch movies.... haha).

I really like your focus. It's ridiculous that the infrastructure doesn't exist for a professional making 400K / year to make 100K / year for 25% the time (assuming skill is stagnant. if it improves, rates should adjust).

Drop me a line if you ever want to chat -- vlad (at) turtle.ai

Good luck!

Hi philip1209, I just applied to your Moonlight site as a software developer. With that said, my experience has all been in web development, and have some personal experience writing native desktop apps. Would I have a problem finding work in your platform as a web developer? I also like the idea of working for more technical clients. I believe that finding high-rated clients is one of the bigger problems that freelancers have in using most common freelancing websites.

No, it should be fine. But the projects will be more pointed and for a more technical client. So, rather than "build me a thing", the projects should be more specific - like "build me a thing in Redux with this low-fidelity mockup."

Just an fyi for my browser it looks kind of weird

http://imgur.com/a/XQ7TO

Weird - which browser? We're using Bulma/Flexbox, so I know that only the latest browsers will really support it.

Edit: I thought it was the double-scrollbar, but I now see that Log In is cut-off. We'll fix the responsiveness - thanks!

It also is the double scrollbar. Pm me and i'll send you more browser details

I notice your site says you have developers from Google, but Google claims to own all IP developed by their employees in their free time. There's an exemption process but it can take a while to get approval. Do you have any ideas or guidelines on how to navigate that?

We have contractors who formerly worked at Google.

I've just applied through your TypeForm. I'm a recently graduated Computer Engineer, with 2 years of experience working with web technologies.

Hope to hear back!

Awesome! When a project comes in that matches your skills, we'll send a match notification to you over email. More about the process here -> https://www.moonlightwork.com/about/how-it-works

I'm interested in applying but don't have a LinkedIn or traditional portfolio - is a stack careers Developer Story acceptable?

Figuring out the best way to present a portfolio is something we're working on figuring out right now. Eventually we will have ratings in an app. For now - please submit whatever you have. About half of our clients have requested a short phone screen before beginning a project.

Hi I just applied, but your typeform was very small, only 100px high. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

Whoops - I see that it's a problem and will fix it right away!

Do you guys turn away applicants? I applied a while ago and never heard back.

The truth is - the process is still very manual right now, and it took us about a month to realize that we needed to add a confirmation email after signup! (We've only been full-time on this for about 2 months, too.)

We don't do much screening on our end except for fraudulent applications - the clients choose from among several contractors and proposals.

We know that we need to engage our community more - so keep an eye out this week for an email update from our team and a Slack community channel (with a stream of incoming jobs).

Alright, thanks!

Isn't this just Gigster again?

One day, someone said "isn't this just Yahoo again?"

Rephrased:

Isn't Gigster a seemingly more efficient way to build software? Why aren't there more companies like Gigster? Competitors to Gigster?

There should be. It is a more efficient way to build software. The market will reward Gigster, MoonlightWork, and Turtle.

Gigster is building web-apps for non-technical clients. They have a ton of overhead, take a HUGE cut, and have to spend a lot of time and money on product management, project management, and design before it hits the engineer.

We're focusing more on microtasks for technical clients. Think - helping the CTO and in-house team gain momentum, rather than outsourcing.

   I tried to be a freelance, it is well paid but with my full-time job it's too time consuming and I'm not so ambitious.

That's your problem in a nutshell. If you don't have any time to spare, and you're not ambitious enough to find time, then there's not much you can do. However, unless you're putting in 60+ hours a week at your day job you most likely have a lot more time than you think. Even 1 hour a night can add up quick.

- I've build a number of websites businesses on the side. Most the jobs come through word of mouth and recommendations.

- A few of them have agreed to keep me on a retainer, they pay me $XXX a month and I'll host their sites and give them a couple hours of maintenance each month if needed.

- I started a little API about 5 years ago and dropped an advertisement on the homepage. 3 years went by with next to no revenue from it, as time went on though it started to pick up. It runs on a $10/m VPS and at it's peak it made $1600/m in ad revenue. These days it hovers around $600-700/m and runs on a $20/m VPS. This takes about 0.5 hours a month of my time to keep up.

- Another company wanted a web application but didn't have the budget to pay for it up front. Built out a proof of concept on my own time and presented it. They liked it, so instead of selling it outright I host/maintain it and sell them seats. They pay $X/m per employee. They're trailing it right now in a few stores but they're in talks to launch it nationally.

- About to launch a small SaaS; one of those 'scratch your own itch' things. Whether there's a market for it or not remains to be seen.

All of those things have been accomplished over the last 5 years. I have a wife, 10 year old daughter, a full time job, and coach a soccer team. I know there are many people much busier than I am out there, but if I can find time to work on side projects, so can most people. You have to want it though, and your lack of ambition is most likely the prime culprit.

How do you find side gigs developing web applications for companies? I read about it a lot on HN, but never understood how these opportunities just fall into people's laps.

You would be surprised how many companies are severely lacking tools that could greatly increase worker efficiency. The first webdev gig that I ever got came while visiting a friend who worked in a pharmaceutical research lab. Upon finishing her report, she proceeded to print it out and append it to these massive binders. I asked her why not digitize it all and make it available on all the lab computers via an intranet to which her response was "I didn't know that was possible".

After seeing that, I created a quick demo in about 3 weeks as a proof of concept and asked my friend to bring it to her boss. She gladly accepted because it made her look good by going beyond her duties to help the company be more efficient. The boss loved it and set up a meeting with me where we ironed out their ideal use cases as well as settled on a price and release date. After drafting a contract, viola, I had my first side gig.

I guess the main takeaway is to keep an eye out for professional friends and acquaintances outside of the tech world who could benefit from automation or digitization in their daily jobs but are simply unaware it's possible.

Yep it all comes down to knowing people and beyond that getting to know their day to day responsibilities and problems. It doesnt fall into people's laps at all.

Reach your friends with startups. They're probably fully loaded and need more hands, even if it is just a few hours/week. Just tell them you're thinking about side jobs.

How do you leverage word of mouth when the people you know don't even know the right people for your kind of work? I have plenty of time- I don't have a job but my network is disappointing for the time I've spent in the field (web developer, 7 years).

So how do you get word of mouth going when nobody I know, not even 2nd degree connections, know anyone that is hiring? It really sucks to be in this position.

Thanks for providing this insight. Seems like you're wearing too many hats at a time. More power to you :)

How so? I make sure to spend plenty of time with my family. My day job (developer) takes up 40 hours a week. I probably spend another 5-10 hours per week on my side/personal projects. It's all about drive and being focused. I'm far from an outlier.

What do you mean by API in this context?

I built a free API that translates MAC address into a vendor. The API handles a ton of traffic (pushing 300 million requests a month) but actually generates no revenue as I don't charge for it. On the homepage of the site I added a search box that lets users search for the vendor manually instead of using the API. The homepage gets enough traffic to generate some ad revenue.

I'm curious--that's a ton of requests. Any idea what your users are using the data for, and in what context?

As an example of a possible use: I know that my Asus router shows vendor info on its page that displays DHCP leases. It seems like it's mostly based on the MAC vendor ID. I haven't ever examined where it gets that information from.

From real world experience, "I see this device getting an address from DHCP but I have no idea what our where it is and there aren't any useful ports or it's off right now. Is the MAC from a manufacturer I recognize?"

~5k requests per minute doesn't seem that much if it's just light processing and a map lookup. You can do a lot with a $10/m VPS.

I'd use it to trace computers on my network.

Do you have a link to your webiste? Would be nice to see.

Side note: If you are using an ad-network then which to generate such revenue, if not how are you selling your ads?

which vps are you using?

I'm in a similar position, a web developer with a reasonable salary interested in side income, but not interested in onerous responsibilities of running a business. I've been had two projects I'm sort of happy with

1. A shopify app that makes about 150/mo. I answer about 2 emails about it per month and otherwise don't work on it. It took about 150 hours to build so I haven't been paid well for it, but I enjoyed building it.

2. A WordPress plugin I acquired for about 10k that makes 800/mo. I get a lot more emails about this but I think if I get it into a less buggy state then I can get that down to something more reasonable.

Do you mind if I ask how you found out about this plugin? Did you get lucky and buy from someone you knew or did you seek it out? Was it doing well before or did you grow it to this point.

Edit: spelling

Sure. I spent a ton of time finding something. Happy to answer any questions about the process.

I found the plugin on flippa.com. Flippa has a lot of crap. Maybe almost all crap. But there are some good things there if you just watch for it. There was a really high quality magento plugin and there I wanted to buy and I chatted with the dev a bunch but it didn't work out.

I was looking for something that was programming centric rather than sales/marketing centric, which is fairly limiting. And something that was <10k which means you have to filter through a lot of cruft. If I had more to spend then I would look on FEI which seems to have things that would be more interesting to programmers, but is a higher price point. Empire Flippers is another place I'd look. https://www.sideprojectors.com/ didn't seem to have anything interesting to me, but I checked there a bunch too.

> Was it doing well before or did you grow it to this point.

It's been a bit volatile so it's hard to say how it's trending, but I don't think I've helped or hurt it much. If anything it's making a bit less. Haven't prioritized working on it so I can't expect much.

Is it possible to message you?

What's your plugin?

Answering this would kill his revenue by clones. :/

I've recently been playing around with HackerOne. It's a great way to both benefit society (by finding, reporting, and eliminating security flaws in software that people rely on) and yourself (most companies on HackerOne give Bug Bounties out, anywhere from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars, depending on the bug). Specifically, I looked at shopify's mruby bug bounty (https://hackerone.com/shopify-scripts) and used a fuzzer (AFL/honggfuzz) to find bugs in mruby, which I could then investigate and report. That specific bug bounty is a lot of C/low level security, but there are many bug bounties which are geared towards websites/web development (XSS/SQLi/etc).

It's a good idea, on top of that I want train myself about security. Thanks!

Web dev? Affiliate links.

Consider a consumer item you are passionate about. Walk through the typical shopping process, either as a newb or as an enthusiast. Identify all the pain points, every bit of friction. Consider everything you've listed as an embarrassment that you will personally make right. Build the smoothest, fastest, most respectful experience possible. Compile lots of information too - your goal is to become the best resource on the internet. Put the user first at all times. And when appropriate add affiliate links. (In my case only 27% of URLs are affiliated.)

Why is respecting the user the #1 priority? Because you do not want to look like an affiliate content mill! Go read the blogs that teach you how to affiliate^W build dark patterns and do the opposite of what they suggest.

Of course even if you are unquestionably the best resource on the internet, some communities will still tar and feather you for having affiliate links. I was very lucky to find a great and supportive community.

I'm a moderator of one of the communities in which your site is relevant, http://reddit.com/r/flashlight

We do see some bad affiliate behavior there, though most of it gets automatically filtered. When it doesn't, the community usually ruthlessly mocks people who post low-quality content that's obviously just intended to make money.

Almost every time somebody shows up asking for purchase advice, somebody links parametrek.com because it's so useful. You want a flashlight under 120mm long with integrated charging that has a removable, non-proprietary battery? Here are 34 of them.

Make something people want.

that site is neat. Would've never guessed there are so many options for a flashlight, of all things. I'm curious how these sites manage to keep the pricing up-to-date.

Those are just the major brands. There's a lot more only available from mildly sketchy Chinese sites, most of it bad but some of it excellent. There are exotic customs that cost hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars. There's a significant hobbyist/DIY community as well, even open-source driver designs and firmwares.

I guess this is a model that can be applied to a lot of products/services - even for things like Job Search, apartment search etc, as long as the data is reliable and is in machine readable format. I forget the name of the site - few years ago, Google bought a site that helped people look for laptops, but instead of saying 8GB RAM, it said "run photoshop fast" or something like that.

Thanks.

The pricing is the easiest part. As an affiliate you get access to an API that lets you query it. Of course it is heavily rate limited and sometimes fails outright. Accessing certain parts of the API comes with strings attached too. All of the non-amazon prices I refresh by hand every few months.

We're working to solve this exact problem.

Check out http://turtle.ai/

We've focused on building software that makes it really easy for "plug and play" software development work. We think 40 hours isn't perfect for every kind of engineering job. We even have some software developers delivering customers value in just a few hours per month.

You do need to be able to clearly say "here's what I'm doing, and here's when to expect results", but we also recruit customers that buy into our vision. Also, our software makes it really easy for both sides to keep smiling :)

I made a macOS app [1]. It was a lot of work and the outcome is always unknown beforehand, but I could do it at completely my own pace (which could be an answer to the "little time" problem).

[1] https://easygit.me

I think there should be a service for that.

For example, if I say that in the following two weeks, I want to do X hours of programming work, and they know my skill level, they should be able to match me up. Like a job agency, but for short-term freelance work.

https://www.moonlightwork.com/ ?

In my experience these services becomes races to the bottom where you get companies in high cost of living areas paying developers very little in low cost of living areas.

Wasn't this called elance? Until they renamed it and it got weird.

UpWork now I think. I was working there a lot but it in total was not income to live on. It helps to have near 100% rating. My rating dropped, I had some contracts that were open for a while (didn't bother to close them) that murdered my rating... I also wonder how easy it is to game that system ie. hire a friend to hire you, and offset your score.

Still... the overall experience of bidding on jobs and possibly getting 1/20 tries not a very pleasant experience. Also I'm not an expert so... sore loser I guess.

Freelancing takes some degree of ambition and if you're just starting it can be time consuming.

What I'm hearing though is you want the benefits of freelancing without having to do the work of a freelancer? That's a huge fallacy. Freelancing requires some degrees of ambition and most importantly work.

Unless you've built a reputation for providing these services its going to be difficult obtaining customers.

What should you do? At the very least

  - build your profile and build your brand
  - "become" an "expert" in your field by blogging, tweeting, etc to drive engagement
  - get connected to other "experts" and start conversations
  - build a simple landing page (site) for each area you want to provide services for. A/B test the landing page using Google Ad Words, etc
  - sign up as an organization on freelancing sites and start doing jobs which can be done asynchronously
  - become a maintainer or contributor to security auditing software

Alternatively you could buy an existing business and improve it.

Again, all this requires ambition and work.

If you don't have time or interest in finding the time it's probably not for you.

I think you offer solid advice but I don't think the original author was saying "I want to be lazy". They were saying "I don't have that much time", which is totally different.

There are solutions popping up that make freelancing much easier. UpWork is hit or miss, but an option. I co-founded https://turtle.ai/ -- we have a bunch of PhD students, developers with full time jobs. There are even a few people doing just a few hours per month.

We need to unlock ourselves from the mentality that "40 hours per week, butt in seat" is the only way to do work. The future of work is remote, flexible, results-driven.

You're probably right. I think I conflated "it's too time consuming and I'm not so ambitious" with laziness but the ops statement is hard to unpack in its current form.

I'd agree that Upwork is hit or miss and as a freelancer and a business owner would prefer something like turtle.ai. Will look into it :)

Aren't these a bit of the cliches? Build your brand? Become a blogger?

Seems like quite putting yourself out there for getting some pocketmoney, or extra as the OP requests.

> Aren't these a bit of the cliches?

To an extent. The op doesn't have to do one or any of these. They are suggestions which can be leveraged.

As I mentioned in a previous comment I probably didn't quite understand quite what the op was asking.

"A turn-key solution"

Hey, here is my idea for you to consider: stock trading, for me it is the ultimate lifestyle business with no customers, no employees and no investors...

You only need some python (and pandas) knowledge, a Linux server and some historical stock market data - please check my older posts for a source (I would love to post the source here, but there is a forum bully stalking all my posts – a failed day trader who will crap all over your post).

The barrier for entry is very low, you can program your trading strategies in your spare time and run the tests while sleeping without loosing a single cent and once you find what works for you can automate it and it’ll run on autopilot...

Just my 2 cents, hope whatever you do works for you in the end, I was in a situation like yours and this is what is working for me...

Hey, just created an account and can't figure out how to PM. Can you give me bit more details about this please? a starting point / reference material / resource / blog.. anything helps. Thanks!

My best source of good income was doing code reviews for an agency, but after while they realised how lucrative it is and started to do them inhouse.

I also did some presales engineering work for another agency. Agencies are great for this kind of biz/senior dev roles: they dont always have enough skilled personel that could do this kind of work and might be open hiring somebody to do it. If this is something you might want to do, then try to look around for it.

Apologies. A bit late to the party here but can you point out where you found the agencies that hired for pre-sales work? I would like to do this but have not found any sites.

Well, all of those gigs were for agencies I used to work as a developer. I was not interested in taking another fulltime project anymore (I was migrating into farming) and those code reviews, pre-sales (and I also did tons of interviews) was offered as a compromise.

I don't know how you can get those kind of jobs, but I don't think they will outsource it to some person over internet without history of working together. Those gigs really affects the income of those agencies so they are probably very careful to hire for those roles.

I think you should ask around the people you are working with, companies you worked with and so on. I think most rapidly growing agency is in desperate need of people like this, especially if you work for them just for hours per week so you are not destroying their cash flow.

Normally if your social circle knows you're a webdeveloper, you'll automatically get offers, or let's say: requests for sites. Most of them you want to skip (like your friend who want to start a bar and has no money but will pay you in beers), or anything that is not for an established and succesful business. But still there should be a few freelancer opportunities without really trying, just around you.

So perhaps that could be a first step, getting word out more in your closer circle.

I personally have too much work with this ever expanding social circle freelancing stuff, as sidebusiness, that I think of outsourcing it or am wondering when the point is of quitting my day job (which is well paid). That said, I'm using "social circles" for lack of better wording.

What I really would like to do is creating my own sideprojects like goldenbeet here addresses, that seem like fun or just interesting myself. I have a bunch of good project ideas, but the sideproject freelance work keeps on flowing steadily and I never get to it. If this sounds like a brag: it's not. I actually consider anything of (semi-)passive income much of a success then regular freelancer gigs.

If said bar friend were to offer me free drinks forever, I would make the shit out of that website

Ditto, or even a Massage Therapist... I'm okay w/ bartering things I need/want for coding... I can then host the site for them -- to ensure continued 'benefits' and the 'value' of hosting / upkeep keeps them happy.

Hi Kmaschta,

I saw some folks mentioning Gigster so thought I'd add some notes. For reference I'm Christian Thurston and I've been working at Gigster from early on.

The benefits of our model is that we do fixed price, not hourly, so if you're able to work better and faster then your effective hourly goes up. Also, with us you don't have to interface with the client - you work with a PM who speaks tech and write code - that's it.

Our clients are both technical and non-technical but it's a lot less relevant because you'll always be working with that PM layer as a dev, not directly with the client.

Here's what the higher end of pay looks like as well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2016/10/24/the-skill...

Good luck on your search and hope you find a good situation that fits your needs :).

I've gone the side-gig-for-extra-cash route before. It was easy to make the money, but hard to sustain with a full-time job. It's a recipe for burnout.

If you're a skilled developer, you're much better of demanding a raise, switching jobs, or switching up your skillset to a higher paying job if your motivations are strictly cash.

I don't know if it still works today, but Forbes says there are some people who make very serious money on fiverr, but they are mostly creative work though (voice over, writing etc). Not sure if it will work for software dev. Also the site is quite established now, so there is some stiff competition for low price.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how-these-...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to-mak...

I signed up for voice over work. I felt kind of silly putting myself out there like that. There's a sea of voice actors on fiverr so I figured I would never get a gig. But after about a week someone bought $25 worth! (I charge $5 for 300 words)

It's funny, that little amount felt more like "real money" than my steady paycheck does.

Have you done voice over before? Also, is it okay to ask if you are a guy or a gal?

I find fiverr super interesting for coming up with creative ideas. Stumbled on this one randomly, which made me smile (even though I have no use for it) - https://www.fiverr.com/irishguy1/create-a-silent-movie-of-yo...

Never have. I'm a guy. Midwestern American accent. But if you look at the buy requests, people are looking for anything but that! Big demand for British female and different languages and bilingual.

Yeah, that is why I asked. I am surprised you are able to sell male voice over, without experience. Kudos!

Have you considered asking for a raise? How about switching your full-time job elsewhere that pays you more?

The easiest way to make more money, without devoting more time into working, is to ask for a raise. If that doesn't work, find a job that pays more.

All of these other ideas are good, but are not easy and require time commitments.

check out some of the posts on indiehackers.com it lists side projects that are all cash flow positive to some degree. I use it to gain insight into how they got started. The IH community is also very cool.

oppsdaily.com is another great resource, it sends out a daily email with problems people are willing to pay to be solved.

iPhone and Android apps, freemium or ad-supported