Countdown to hibernation
I started https://tesolhub.co a few years ago as a side project.
It allowed me to express my creativity that was sometimes lacking in my day to day job.
I have during the last 12 months updated the site regularly and learned a ton. I can also use it for future employment opportunities as a demonstration of my skills.
I have been reading for the last few days https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-was-a-lawyer-taught-myself-to-code-bootstrapped-wavve-to-150-000-mrr-and-we-just-sold-it-ama-521e323b0f .
I read this post a few times as well as all the posts about startup life by the founders.
What struck me most was that the founders found themselves in the same predicament that many of us find ourselves in. They built a massive application first, spent a lot of time on it and never made a dollar.
Then out of nowhere, they released a simple tool and found product-market fit almost overnight.(that is a simplified version of the story and I encourage you to read all their posts for the full story)
Today, I have made the decision that TesolHub will go in hibernation if I can't attract more users to the platform within the next 60 days.
Why 60 days? I have revamped the site and updated all the SEO. SEO takes time to actually show a return on investment so I want to give it a few months to see it if that helps.
I am also in the process of adding a new functionality that I believe could be beneficial to my users. Again, I want to see if this new functionality leads to more users. I am planning to launch an ad campaign and start manually messaging people on Reddit and other social media to see if it leads an increase in user growth.
Current stats:
- around 10 unique users daily
- visit duration is around 3 minutes
- 50 registered users
Goal stats:
- 50 users daily
- visit duration stays the same
- 500 registered users
It is said that success is sometimes being at the right time in the right place. TesolHub is place for TESOL teachers to find jobs and leave/read schools reviews.
TESOL schools are mostly located overseas in non-English speaking countries.
Covid has been a disaster for the industry as travel restrictions have been put in place in many countries, it is currently extremely hard to travel to the other side of the world to start a new job.
The result is that many teachers have simply switched to online teaching or left the industry completely. That in turns means that less people are looking for jobs and therefore another job website(albeit with extra functionality) is probably the last thing that people need in this field currently.
In any case, I thought about it for a while and I don't think that I found product market fit yet with TesolHub.
If things don't change within the next 60 days, I will stop actively developing the site but will still monitor it and make small bug fixes and will plan a shut down towards the end of the year.
By writing this post, I am not looking for pity, I think it is a way to simply hold myself accountable to this deadline.
If you find yourself in my situation, take some time to think about your current situation and see if its worth continuing.
Learning when to quit is a skill. We all want to succeed and coming to terms with such a thing can be disheartening.
All the best,
