That said - I haven't had a day without working on it (for at least 30minutes to handle support email) in more than 15 years. Also - I plan all vacations around it (well, those are really vacations for my wife, I try and keep working as much as I can on them) by making sure we always have good internet connection and we're never somewhere where we won't have internet for more than a day. Thankfully, that's fairly easy to accomplish nowdays, but I can't, for example, do a multi day camping or hiking trips.
What I'm trying to say it it comes at a price and it's not all great even when it's successful.
And yes, of course I feel I'm competing with the other options - some with huge teams and VC money, but at the same time I regularly check them out and I'm confident my product brings enough value to stand its ground - it doesn't have tens of millions of active users monthly - and it doesn't have to. I'll be happy if I can keep the current scale and the level of satisfaction of my users forever.
Now, I wish I had some advice for someone with a new product in this space. The truth is I have no idea how viable or hard for someone to start something new may be.
If you want - let me know specifically what you're working on and I'll give you some feedback (either in here or through the contact form on Next Episode). (it's fine if you prefer to keep it under wraps too)