Is over eagerness killing my projects?
Over the years, I have built several failed products.
Each one has been a bit better than the last, but nothing great. After admitting my failures, most people ask, “How do you keep motivated?” How do you stay determined?
A couple of years ago, I was in a not-so-great financial state. My first entrepreneurial instinct was to create something. So I launched an affiliate blog.
Inspired by sites like 9to5toys and Apartment Therapy, I launched the site after only a single evening of work. I thought I could do what these other sites were doing with ease.
30 days later, I had earned about $4. Not even enough to cover the hosting, so I shut it down.
Another day, another project. This time I built an information referral management tool for non-profits. I named it IR Hub.
I spoke to people in the industry, validated the idea, and lined up potential customers. This took up about 3 to 4 hours a night after my full-time job. And, as one would expect, after only a few weeks, I burnt out. Thus, I trashed the project.
Looking back, the pattern is obvious.
My overexcited nature would kick in after stumbling onto a new problem to solve. That high would push me through the initial steps of building a product. After pushing for so long, however, my motivation would taper, and I would simply “give up.”
My latest burnout was different, though. After realizing my weakness, I pushed myself to go slow. I came across the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric and wrote the idea for a product down in my notebook.
After a few weeks of not pursuing the idea, it kept gnawing at my mind. So I started building a product. I purposely went slow. I only worked an hour or two a day, and NEVER back to back days. Every other day at the most.
This method kept me engaged for almost two years. That is 4x the amount of time I had ever spent on a side project. The project still ended up failing due to a missing target audience, but that is further than I have ever gone.
You quit a revenue-generating project after only one month? I don't think eagerness is killing your projects: You're getting discouraged too quickly.
Case in point: Apartment Therapy was founded in 2001. They've been cranking out content for 2 decades.
My thoughts exactly. If the $1 difference or whatever it was between your income MONTH ONE is enough to make you kill a project, you’re doomed. Just stick to completely free content hosting on a subdomain or use something like Render that’s free for static sites.
I'm the new kid on the block here, so take this with a grain of salt, but I too am convinced that an important component to the success of a project is time.
Clearly it's also important to make sure that a project with no/little revenue in the first 6 months (or more) doesn't create financial problems to keep it going, otherwise clearly there is a valid reason to abandon it.
I believe, however, that this happens in the minority of cases.
Good point @maxk42. The affiliate blog was a learning experience at a vulnerable time in my life. I certainly ended up in a discouraged state. Maybe one day I'll go back and redo it
Things I would do different:
Things you should do different: Just don't quit. These things have network effects. If you can add $4 month one then with added word-of-mouth by month 36 you'll probably be making $4k per month.
Thanks for the motivation @maxk42 @SquishyCoder & @marcomezzavilla ! I decided to try again.
You can check out the "project" here
https://www.indiehackers.com/product/remote-stuff
I think taking it slow is a good approach. Building a startup is a marathon. You need to pace yourself.
But reading your story, I believe you may want to spend more time on the idea validation phase. It looks like you can definitely build products. The trick is building products that people will pay for. So instead of solely focusing on your over eagerness, may there something to learn on how you identify problems to solve and validate that there's a target market for it.
Keep it up!
Good point @micheljgagnon.
I am quite introverted, so spending time on idea validation always seems nerve racking. Any suggestions on how I should go about it?
Hi @mrbrazel,
Start with using validation methods that don't involve a direct contact. So instead of doing a cold call or user interview, you can think of doing surveys, smoke tests, etc.
Some people will tell you that these methods are not perfect, statistically significant, etc., but most people spent zero time on idea validation. If you start somewhere and get some initial insights that you can bake into your next product iteration, you'll be ahead of most people.
Good luck!
Use a pseudonym.
O killed three in a month.
Every project builds your skills, so even if they don't work out, you may just be setting yourself up to succeed once an idea comes along you feel passionate about and it gains traction in the marketplace.
@braddominy agreed. I hope that I am getting good foundational experience so when a truly passionate idea comes down the pipeline, I will be able to breeze through the monotonous parts.
I love it that you're taking care of yourself while maintaining the moment! I can certainly relate. One thing I'm trying with my current project is getting at least a few interested customers before building anything. And I'm making something that I can build pretty quick, within a week perhaps, without quitting my daytime job and burning out. It's an analytics tool, so I can start with something really simple and (hopefully) have a few people using it soon.
Having the first earned dollars just 30 days after the launch is a huge success. If it's a blog, I think it's just unbelievable. Content marketing is always a slow game with great long-term results, but you start getting real traction in a year or two in most cases.
Speed is the rate at which you move. Velocity is speed in one direction.
I don't think overeagerness is the issue, I think it's that you're too focused on speed vs direction.
@giniray I do tend to jump around a lot. Staying focus tends to be a sore point for me.
I shall try to grab a project and stay focused on it!
Burnout is common for people like us. The excitement comes from creating, not managing. It's especially hard when the creative high levels off, you have a working product, and no income or even engagement to show for it.
I'll pour myself into something, create something really good, and then try to get the internet's attention to no avail. It literally feels like you've been shadow banned from society when you first try to market a product. People aggressively do not care.
What helps me though is making incremental improvements and refining my products / designs. The internet will never appreciate the work and effort you do, but you were never really doing it for them anyways. You were doing it for yourself.
I have a few personal projects that I could walk away from immediately, but they have meaning to me, and I want to see them through. Ultimately I've accepted its ok to do things just for myself, and hopefully those things will resonate with someone else.
You hit me right in the "feels" with your comment about feeling like one is shadow-banned from society. I feel like I'm riding on a sine wave, going up and down between being apart from society and being completely separated. Never truly knowing where I stand.
That's quite a journey :)
But as do others, I too feel that you could have a given enough time for your affiliate blog project which started generating revenue. It's quite hard to build something people pay for.
Thank you, @goutham8
I think I was bias on wanting a SaaS product that I let the affiliate blog die. Looking back now, it seems so obvious.
if you have earned even $1 from your project you should be proud of that as before that revenue you were having $0 revenue, you should be happy that you made some progress. You have to enjoy the process learn from it instead of thinking about the end goal all the time maybe that's something discouraging you so fast.
Websites are a little tough to get traffic to your site. People are pretty married to the standards because there is a lot of overload of information.
Channel your ideas into something where you can test it and distribute it to the community. What I do is I create a python package and throw it into the open source world. Tweet about it and see how it gets as an initial response. I also then write about it. It doesn't cost me any money other than a piece of my sanity. I also switched into writing it in the morning rather than coding at evening. Better with cup of coffee.
I am happy that my blog after 3 years of writing has 438 views per month.
A python package of mine I put a lot of costly weekends into has 33 stars so far.
This is awesome! None of my projects have reached that far and I'm pretty happy. There's at least like 90 other failed ones.
I like the idea of building a python package and seeing if it gains traction. I'm always trying to figure out better approaches to idea validation/testing.
Good job with the 400+ views per month on your blog. Keep up the amazing work. I myself would love to read it. Mind linking to it?
https://medium.com/@sharifsuliman1 yeah here I am, sometimes I do go a little crazy. My last boss recommended me I channel my thoughts into writing as a way to convey whatever I am trying to say.