How many side projects are you working on at once?
I have a bad habit of starting one side project, letting it consume my life for a few weeks, and then losing interest as soon as I come across another idea that I think is genius or that I want to work on. I still finish my previous projects, but I rush myself to finish them so that I can start on the next thing without giving enough time and effort to my previous projects in order for them to really take off. Does anyone else have this experience? How do you stay focused on just one or two projects?
As for myself, I'm currently working on 3:
A blogging/social media platform. Started in February. Launched MVP last Friday.
A marketplace for video game developers. Started in January. Launching MVP by the end of this month.
A bubble sheet grader for schools. Started in 2015, launched in 2016 but relaunching as a new brand sometime next month.
The thing you should ask yourself: do you want to "just" build side projects or do you want to build a business?
Building a side project is easy, it just needs your time to build. Building a business is hard and involves not so much building.
As for practical advice (if you want to build a business): start to think how you can make a profit. Also limit your building to 20% and spend the other 80% on your (new) customers.
I run multiple ~projects~ businesses, doing most things myself, but outsourcing some of the building/backend code.
I'm with @eelco; 0 side projects, 1 side business.
What's your goal here? Are you building for the fun of it, or are you trying to achieve some measure of financial success, passive income, etc.? If it's the latter, I recommend doing the following:
That last part is crucial. That way, if you get bored and want to switch to a new project, at least your list of projects are all sub-components of the same business. For example, with Indie Hackers, at any point in time I can iterate on the community forum, the podcast, the newsletter, our social media output, SEO-related projects, putting out new content/interviews, the product directory, etc.
Not that it's good to spread yourself thin. But it's better to spread yourself thin within one single business than across numerous different businesses.
I faced the same issue as O.P. I was working on 2 - 3 projects at any given time (apart from my full time job). And losing interest midway. One way I think this situation can be tackled is also by pairing up with co-founder (or co-hacker) so you don't lose motivation and focus.
In my opinion you have to focus on just one idea at a time if you want it to go anywhere. Extreme 80/20 is what they called it in the book One True Thing.
Get a bound book or journal that you can write ideas down in. When a new thing pops in you head, write it down and get it off your mind.
I have am working on
A Crowdfunding/Writing platform
A Graphical Surveying Tool
A Animated Data Plotting Package
A Reddit like frontend displaying open data from the Mastodon Community
And 3 small content websites also for user funnels
I can work on many things in parallel because I delegate most work through upwork. I just keep the product design and code review for myself (oh and i spend shit load of time interviewing people). I thought it was too much at one point but now I also got an administrative assistant and all the projects are moving along nicely in parallel.
Ugg. I have too many going. The struggle is real.
I used to be super disciplined and refused to work on anything but my bubble sheet grader (and my full time job) for a solid two years. But when sales were much slower than expected I started dabbling in other stuff, which I'm glad I did. It's just so tempting to go full throttle on a new idea that seems so fresh and promising in the moment.
Similar. Launched a product with a friend. We had done tens of interviews. It's a huge problem market with 9 figs in annual spend devoted towards fixing it. But at the end of the day we couldn't grow our idea fast enough. We did land a few teams at F500 companies so that was cool.
Everyone says 'it'll go viral' isn't a strategy. I feel like the counter point is that there must be a minimum baseline virality that can be improved upon by growth hacking, increased marketing spend etc. The base virality is a function of how well the solution is meeting the need.
I have a full-time job and a few side projects.
But I also manage to have side-projects at a my full-time job. I guess I'm lost.
I try to rotate tasks across projects. I'm a programmer by trade and habit and inclination, so I always need something on tap when I feel like hacking. Having successful side-projects means having a customer support burden -- if one of my apps has a particularly high support load one month I probably won't do any hacking or marketing for it. If the support burden is low and I don't have any new features to build or tech debt to pay down, I'll spend my marketing time on it instead.
At the moment I'm figuring out a growth plan for Offramp (automated customer exit surveys), doing customer support for Quail (point-of-sale software for antique stores), and hacking on Saascast.io (SaaS revenue forecasting).
I only work on one project at a time and use the other project ideas as motivation to finish the current one. Something like "you don't get to work on this until you finish this" kind of thing.
But it seems that working on multiple projects at once works for you so I'd stick with the way you are doing things now.
I am working on just one side business, or side project. I find that focus and concentrated effort makes difficult things a little bit easier.
3 Projects:
I've gotten to the point where I try really hard to limit my side projects. The problem is I get too many going and then none of them ever get finished.
It's ok to have a number of side projects, as long as the help further the advance of your main "business". For example, a lot of people use side projects as ways to market the main business they are working on.
For me a lot of my early side projects weren't about starting a new business but a way to network and market myself. For that kind of project I try and focus on ideas that don't really require any time to keep running, so it's easy to keep them around AND move on to other things.