The story of my first side project (and what I learned from it)
This is the story of my first side project and how it failed and what I learned from it.
In December 2020 I started to work on figmabox.com, a design resource website for Figma files. The business plan was to get sponsors and add affiliate links when the traffic increases.
I bought the domain name and started to develop the website. After a few days, I launched it.
3 years from the lunch day, here are the lessons I learned.
Things won't work out as you thought
Before I started to work on the project,
I did competitors and keyword research. And I estimate that My website will receive around 100,000 visitors each month within the first year.
I was a little over-optimistic!
After 3 years, my website receives 400 visitors per month. Many times lower than I estimated.
when you are working on your projects, you tend to be optimistic and overconfident. And you think everything will work according to the plan. But that's a big mistake!
Planning is different than reality.
Know when to quit
The goal of the website was to test if I could make money from it in 1 year. And if not, move to another project.
But I was attached and this is the biggest lesson.
Although, I saw the sign of failure from the first year when I saw the low traffic. I ignored it and I convinced myself that things might change over time.
It needs more time...
Another year and my website will become successful I said to myself.
So I kept working on it for another year.
But I was over-optimistic again!
In the second year, I started to get offers to include affiliate links. Yay, finally I will make some money!
Nope!
The affiliate provider uses PayPal and Paypal does not support my country. Even if the Paypal issue didn’t exist the traffic is low anyway. And I won't be able to make much.
Here...
You will think that I will stop working on this website after all these problems. And move to something else, right?
I kept working on it, I refused to let 2 and half years of my efforts wasted.
I kept things this way, until...
I saw my personal website get more traffic than my side project. And this was an awakening moment. Because it let me finally see that my side project has failed. Whatever I do things won’t change, I need to move on with my life.
Know when to quit and move on with your life when you see the signs.
What’s next?
After this experience, I started to work on a new side project called Reechly. It’s a Chrome extension that helps you generate a personalized LinkedIn message.
You can join the wailing list here https://reechly.com/
Thanks for reading!
Your story resonates with so many of us who've faced similar hurdles. It's a powerful lesson in balancing optimism with practicality. Your journey shows that while setbacks are part of the process, they're also stepping stones to greater things. Eager to see how Reechly develops!
Thank you for the kind words!
It's a good thing to be optimistic when working on your side project but don't let it blind you. Otherwise, you are just wasting your time on something dead already.
Great insights! Just to add a bit more nuance: quitting should not mean the end of your project!
I’ve been in stages on previous project where I didn’t have the skills or motivation to take the next steps. However, I’ve managed to sell them for a bit of cash that lets me kickstart my next projects and gives someone else the opportunity to make it a successful business.
I was thinking on how can I help you, so I made keywords analysis for your business.
I have a tool that can go tru thousands of keywords for your specific market and target customer and perform analysis on those keywords to come out with top 100 keywords to rank for your business.
I think this keyword analysis will help you in the future so have a look : REECHLY.COM KEYWORDS ANALYSIS
You can also perform the analysis your self using decentool.com
What were you doing for marketing with Figmabox? What i want to do is similar to yours in that im curating free B2B marketing content and resources at The Growth Archive and I'm also hoping to generate a full time income from sponsorships. However, i've added a 'marketing roast' section recently, as a revenue source early on while im still growing the project.
Getting significant traffic every month is definitely tough and it takes time. This month was the highest for me at 2k visits.
Some times i spend days researching and curating a piece of content and no one is interested and other times it blows up on Reddit.
What's helping me so far with traffic so far, is distrubuting content on Reddit and turning all my readers into newsletter subscribers with my popups so that i can notify them with my new content every week.
Sometimes we fall in love with our products and get blind! Great story, thank you for sharing it!
I appreciate the effort you put in and how you kept yourself motivated to persevere. It's unfortunate that earlier expectations weren't met, but undoubtedly, you've become much wiser now. The way you rose and relaunched, providing us with an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and become wiser, is incredibly commendable. Best wishes for this endeavor. May your learning make up for it all in the times ahead.
Thank you so so much for sharing this with us all.
'Know when to quit' I'll take it for me! Thanks for sharing
thanks for your share.What you have done will not waste,and it will help you even if you may not realize.
Thanks for sharing. Some ideas will not make you millions but could be helpful to others. One of the things I learned while building side projects was that having realistic expectations is necessary & not to stress myself when results do not come immediately, just keep working on it. That's the approach now I'm taking with http://withbilly.com/.