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- Tough to go through what you are describing. The only positive thing I can add is all this experience is making you better skilled / positioned for your next project. When the cycle repeats enough times, eventually you get success. Best wishes.by sagunbuilds
- If you are interested in creating a business out of it, you might want to look at ideas that will make money first and figure out the app around it.
The other problem is that with only one person (you), there's only so many features you can add to an app, and a team (or AI) will now be able to duplicate those features. You need to come up with something fairly unique and hard to duplicate.
by elmer2 - To be honest, I'd be happy to get 3k users for anything I've created!
Marketing is always the hardest part. I came across this medium article https://zach-saw.medium.com/the-internet-is-dead-96a3f3ed866... while researching why it is so hard. It talks about the difficulty of getting some eyes on your app / project. In particular, it said Linus needed to be a content creator first before creating Linux in this day and age which hit me pretty hard.
by zionsati - Hi! I’m a PM, and I have one suggestion. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to talk to a ton of ppl who you think might be interested in your app and learn everything you can about them. Do it until the answers you get sound the same. If your app is fun, you are working to capture attention in a crowded market. Your #1 job now should be to identify what’s different about your app that someone can’t get anywhere else & what about the differentiator makes ppl want to pay. Marketing (the result of discovering a repeatable sales model) is probably less important in the beginning than knowing who you are selling to, how and why they buy, what their options are, and what makes them choose you. Armed with this, you don’t need good ideas just dedication to your users. Good luck and hang in there! Your tenacity will pay off!by pmpmpmpm
- For my alternative rock band and our groupies (there were only a few of them), I programmed an online community aimed at punks, just for fun. I was in my early 20s at the time. The platform later grew to 100,000 members and provided me with a good monthly income.
That was a coincidence. Or rather, I was naive and started the project without a business model. But what I realized later was that, without even knowing it, I had connected two things: a technological trend (social networks) and a target audience with a specific need.
When starting your own projects, it makes sense to focus heavily on your target audience.I often check out global trends or the opinions of futurists and try to develop ideas from them. But I always try to avoid creating a one-size-fits-all solution. I’d rather have a small but loyal target audience than a large but disloyal one.
Right now, I'm working on https://github.com/janrakete/healthcore-bulp.io. For now, it's aimed at a small target audience (tech enthusiasts who have to care for people, such as their parents). But I have no idea if it will be a success.
My advice: Keep at it, keep trying. Eventually, you’ll have enough code and experience under your belt that you’ll be able to whip up a solution in no time when the next trend comes along.
by janrakete - Count the number of apps you pay for. Now google how many programmers are out there. Divide. These are your chances for success.
- Going from 0 to 3000 weekly added users is an amazing accomplishment and you should always remember that you are capable of producing something people love using.
The problem is that the real world massively compounds on small advantages. Your competitor is 1% better per day at growth, that compounds to a 37x difference in a year. You could do everything perfect except one small issue, or operate in a space where your success is easily replaceable, and none of the effort will translate to real world results.
I would do the following
1. Seriously audit what you can do/insights you have that nobody else has
2. Translate that into a moat that cannot be replicated by anyone else
3. Translate that moat into growth/retention in a niche domain that you know is more important in a way others don't
- I gave up. Like you, I've built many projects in the hopes they'd generate enough income for me to never have to work a job again. I had blogs, e-commerce shopify dropshipping stores, multiple SaaS projects, e-books published, monetized social media accounts, etc.
I remember waking up every morning excited to check the balances for everything. At most, maybe $10.00. That slowly brought me to depression. I was working 12+ hours per day on every thing, but had nothing to show for it. I did this for ~3 years (although I've been building things for 10+ years). I worked as a freelancer to earn real money as well.
Eventually, I just had enough. Got a job. Started letting domains fade away (I owned perhaps 50+). What a tiring lifestyle!
Nowadays, I will not build in the hopes of becoming rich. I'll build things I want to exist - things that I will use personally. Sure, I'll slap a price on it (as you can see on leetchess), but by no means am I trying to retire from the income.
So, maybe don't give up in the sense that you no longer build. But perhaps it's worth evaluating why you build.
by 0xmattf