Have you made anything you weren't able to monetize?
A lot of interesting projects don't have clear monetization strategies. Other than a lack of traffic/interest, have you made anything that wasn't sustainable because it couldn't make money?
Conversely, have any favorite products you've used gone under because they couldn't monetize?
Yes. Too many to count. Granted, for most of them I knew it wasn't going to make money and money wasn't the objective.
For those where money was the goal and I made some money, I discarded the projects pretty quickly -- sometimes you learn that you CAN make money, but the industry or the demand for the product isn't something you want. Donuts sell really well, but it doesn't stuffing people with sugar is a worthy pursuit.
Why do you ask?
I made an archive of inspirational interview/lecture videos, but it was more-so a personal archive of material to re-watch rather than something I created with the intention of monetizing. I could incorporate ads, but I didn't want to ruin the design 🤷🏽♂️
It's called Interlect, a portmanteau of interview and lecture. Here's the link: http://interlect.cameronarrington.com/
The only product I can think of that went under was an accounting application called Koku.
This is a cool concept. There's certainly a lot of inspirational material out there so creating a personally-curated archive makes a lot of sense.
These days, curation seems like it's tough to monetize, even with ads, unless you've got a ton of traffic. However, Jason Calacanis seems to have a good strategy for this with https://inside.com/
Yup - https://catsondemand.com
Curated cat videos sent straight to your inbox daily:)
We got a bunch of users and ran beta tests, but then decided the work wasn’t worth it for the $1/mo we were planning to eventually charge:)
Took a break from my main project and did https://www.hdrainbow.com from an opensource project. Added some additional features and hosted over a weekend on https://www.netlify.com
It was #4 product of the day on producthunt.com. I got 6000+ visitors in the last two months. I thought it will die after first week of peak, but I still get like ~400 visits per week. I have no idea how to monetize it or time to improve it.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago