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5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

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Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#61

Post by mehphp »

I see this a lot: a clearly talented person who is unable to monetize their project.

At a glance, it looks like OP is just building stuff, throwing it at a wall and seeing what sticks. Of course, that is bound to fail. You are, essentially, playing the lottery.

Nowhere in that blog did I see any mention of figuring out what a customer is looking for in a game or a product.

What is the niche you are trying to fill or pain-point you are trying to solve? It would be much better to build something _after_ you know people want it, not before.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#62

Post by mehphp »

bpodgursky wrote: post #24
mfollert wrote: post #13

"Get a Product Job (May 2020 - May 2021) This time the main objective was to learn something new by doing. I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a great framework to build websites quickly." Choosing Roby on Rails in 2020 as a "new framework" for web development ... sheesh.

I don't like using RoR personally, but it's not a dying platform. There's still a large active community around it. It's fine.

I don't either but ruby isn't just active, it's larger than it's ever been.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#63

Post by soylentnewsorg »

herval wrote: post #15

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands…

I think the common thing here is not giving up w/o immediate success. That is a very good idea sometimes. Homer Simpson built a goofy car, people were exposed to it and he got negative feedback, and he rightly abandoned it. Some projects are a bad idea, you don't know they are, and once you find out they are, you absolutely should not keep wasting resources due to the sunk cost of wishful thinking.

His common issue is he expected to invest time to make money. You need to invest money to make money. This is why I sometimes laugh at a guy who can't get a good job, has no savings, is borrowing cash from friends to pay the rent and maxing out credit cards for food. Sometimes that guy's solution to being poor is "I'm going to start my own business." When you build on a foundation of nothing, your house collapses.

He ran an ad campaign - it clearly worked. He needed to run it more, and bigger, and yes, eat the cost of it from personal savings. In a business, you first spend money, then you make money. There are no freebies just because you have an idea. Stories of that happening are like self-learning guitar because you plan on being a rockstar.

The reason people don't want to pay for a new project from a new person? Because there's high risk of it being dead within a year - like all of this guy's projects. It's the same reason I don't start watching any new shows till they've had a few seasons out. Don't want to invest hours into the plot just to have it cancelled and left w/o closure in after two seasons.

It's also a reason no one joined things like google plus or used any of their other now dead projects. They proudly declare they try many things to see what sticks and kill the rest. Well, I'm not willing to give my time for free to their unpaid focus group.

So what he needed to do was save up, spend those savings on letting people know about his product, take the risk of loosing that cash, and give the product away at first. Then when the paid product comes, there is a huge user base he paid for, and people see the risk of it being killed as minimized.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#64

Post by rahimiali »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #37
herval wrote: post #15

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands…

So much this sentiment. I ask people I mentor "why do you measure yourself in dollars?" and they often respond with something like "all the successful people I admire are rich." or something along those lines. Money is a 'first derivative' of success and a lagging indicator. Measure yourself by what you learn not by what you earn and you will be sticking to projects longer because the payoff will be in what they are…

> Money is a 'first derivative' of success

Does that mean that even if my success stagnates at “quite successful”, I make no money at all? That doesn’t make sense to me. How would that work?

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#67

Post by jll29 »

There's something called _market analysis_: you either find a gap in the market for software tools, or you talk to people and ask what they would pay for _before_ starting to code.

Yes, you can jump straight into coding for your side projects, but not if your primary goal is to earn a steady side income (it may work but unlikely so).

But good to see negative outcome reports to counter-balance the extreme survivor bias on here.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#68

Post by StevePerkins »

Maybe I'm just old and cranky and this is a generational thing, but when did "side project" become mixed up with "side hustle"?

I think the dead horse has been beaten already in this thread, with what the author "should have done" in terms of market research, A/B testing, MVP, etc. No need for me to pile on further there.

But what strikes me is that the author really seems to draw no distinction between personal side projects, done for the purpose of developing new skills that you aren't learning at your day job (e.g. iOS development, Ruby on Rails, etc)... versus entrepreneurial side hustles that you pursue for the dream of financial independence.

I think the the lesson here is, "Pick one". If you're trying to get rich, then that's not the time dive into some completely unfamiliar tech whose learning curve will slow down your velocity. You should be leveraging whatever boring tech you already know and are already most productive in, so you can focus on the marketing research and business side of things. Conversely, if you're trying to dive into an educational side project to learn new skills, then it's rather naive to expect that to be a path to riches. It won't be, and that's okay!

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#69

Post by joshmanders »

namenotrequired wrote: post #23
mfollert wrote: post #13

"Get a Product Job (May 2020 - May 2021) This time the main objective was to learn something new by doing. I chose Ruby on Rails. It's a great framework to build websites quickly." Choosing Roby on Rails in 2020 as a "new framework" for web development ... sheesh.

It was clear to me the author meant “new to me”

Right, Ruby on Rails was out for a whole decade by the time I heard of it.

Re: 5 side projects in 6 years, earning $0

#70

Post by doctor_eval »

codegeek wrote: post #43
herval wrote: post #15

All these have a thing in common: he gave up because they weren’t immediate successes. Some even had traction: 5 users in 3 months isn’t the incredible outlier story you hear time and time again, but it’s 5 people you can talk to, listen to what they want (and why they signed up anyway), then you gear up from there. We’re too conditioned to believe in the stories of immediate success and MVPs making tens of thousands…

Yea if you read the article, it is actually more like 5 side projects in 4 years (took a 2 year break). That is way too many projects to try for real results. Nothing to take away from the effort and learnings though. I commend people who try to build anything. However, most people give up too quickly. It takes months or even a year or 2 to really get traction on any project if you want to be serious and I am not tal…

Also, only one of the side projects actually broke any ground at all. Mostly they were abandoned after less than a month.

A couple of weeks of part time desk research is not a side hustle. It’s simply due diligence.

Disappointed that the game didn’t go ahead as it’s something I’d definitely play. Reminds me of x-battle.

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