My first 5 years or so of solo bootstrapping were this. Then you learn that if you want to make money you have to prioritise the right things and not the fun things.
I'm at this stage. We have a good product with a solid architecture but only a few paying clients due to a complete lack of marketing. So I'm now doing the unfun things!
Because we have a few paying clients who seem pretty happy. We have upsold to some clients and have a couple more leads in the pipeline. We are good at stopping bots and we have managed to block most solvers, which puts us (temporarily) ahead of some very big players in the bot mitigation sector.
If we can do this with nearly zero marketing, it stands to reason that some well thought out marketing would probably work.
1. "It’s difficult to say these things without coming across as arrogant, but I’ve been managing servers since 2006."
You have experience manager servers, so for you it's not a big deal. But maybe software developers who aren't devops don't want to worry about it and just want to write code and ship a project?
2. If you're launching a new product as a solo developer, isn't it faster to just build an MVP on the cloud, validate the idea, get some traction, and eventually migrate to cheaper hosting if you do become the x% that gets product/market fit and do need to scale?
3. "Look, first of all, you’re as unique as the other 1000 peanut gallery enjoyers that have made the same astute observation before you. Congratulations. But you’re absolutely missing the point."
What's with the tone? Is it supposed to be funny? Does it help getting the point across?
Used to be like you, now I focus on creating high conversion landing pages if I'm trying to build a project for profit, and only build the full idea if I get enough sign ups.
Another thing I do more, which I find hard as a developer but somewhat more rewarding, is talking to potential users. Sometimes it makes you realise your ideas are crap haha.
But it's a different thing to build for fun, which I tend to do less these days and want to do more.
And agreed on the learning side. Building full-on projects is the best way to learn. I've picked up so many skills that have landed me new amazing jobs, i.e. that's basically how I transitioned from a native iOS developer to a full-stack React/React-Native developer.
Have you tried League of Legends or Valorant? I'm like you as I can't not have multiple side projects going on at any time, but at the same time there is so much room to improve in these kinds of game I find them hard to stop at times.
I'm somewhat the same way as parent, getting bored once I figured out the mechanics. While I haven't tried League of Legends, I have tried Valorant, and generally the type of games that is more about mastery of a skill rather than discovery, exploration, story or problem-solving, gets boring fast for me at least.
Thanks for the feedback! Yea it should definitely not feel like a time consuming chore and more like a tool that makes you more productive. I'll have a think about it.
Wouldn't the same apply to https://www.indiehackers.com? Can't see this as a huge problem. At that stage the idea hasn't been validated yet so all the work is still there to do
It does. I'm pretty sure that guy who was honest about the finances of his Ark server hosting business has since regretted it multiple times, because suddenly everyone was offering Ark servers.
I agree, but I would also say the difference is I can't see the traction on Indie Hackers (unless you tell me).
This is more similar to me saying, I am I going to create a TikTok video where I do this cool dance and me ACTUALLY creating the TikTok video where I do a cool dance and it gets a million views. The first doesn't invite copycats so much while the second one does because the idea has been eternally validated and, in both the TikTok and software case, it looks easy to replicate.
