What I Learned After Shutting Down a 3-Month Side Project (0 Won in Revenue)
To cut to the chase, I didn't earn a single won. Still, I learned a lot, so I'm writing it up.
At first, I started with an unfounded conviction: "If I build this, a lot of people will use it." I spent 2 weeks on planning, 8 weeks on development, and 2 weeks on marketing. The problem was marketing. Building is fun, but promoting it really wasn't for me.
So next time, I plan to think from the planning stage about who will find out about it and how. I painfully realized that the acquisition channel comes before the features.
6 answers
Well, that’s a bit... Three months feels too early to conclude that “acquisition comes first.” It just feels like they mixed their own dislike of marketing with a lack of market response and packaged it together. The only evidence is their own single experience, so generalizing seems like a stretch.
I agree—marketing is seriously more than half the battle. I also just built three things and then gave up lol.
I really resonate with this. I actually went the opposite route: I switched to running marketing for three weeks first, and if there's no response, I just don't build it at all. Since then, I've cut way down on wasted effort. Before doing eight weeks of development, I'd recommend putting up a landing page and at least collecting emails. Even just looking at the button click rate gives you a rough sense of whether it's worth building.
I'm making zero revenue—why would I even write a review...? I'd rather use that time to build one more.
Eight weeks of development does feel a bit long, but it was a valuable experience nonetheless. I also learned a lot only after stepping away from something similar.
'If I build this, a lot of people will use it' — I feel like that's the most dangerous thought, lol. I've also crashed and burned twice with that same conviction.