Ask HN: After 8 Years of Failed Apps, Should I Give Up?

I gave up. Like you, I've built many projects in the hopes they'd generate enough income for me to never have to work a job again. I had blogs, e-commerce shopify dropshipping stores, multiple SaaS projects, e-books published, monetized social media accounts, etc.

I remember waking up every morning excited to check the balances for everything. At most, maybe $10.00. That slowly brought me to depression. I was working 12+ hours per day on every thing, but had nothing to show for it. I did this for ~3 years (although I've been building things for 10+ years). I worked as a freelancer to earn real money as well.

Eventually, I just had enough. Got a job. Started letting domains fade away (I owned perhaps 50+). What a tiring lifestyle!

Nowadays, I will not build in the hopes of becoming rich. I'll build things I want to exist - things that I will use personally. Sure, I'll slap a price on it (as you can see on leetchess), but by no means am I trying to retire from the income.

So, maybe don't give up in the sense that you no longer build. But perhaps it's worth evaluating why you build.

OMG, I can almost see the future of my life in your story LOL. It is honestly heartbreaking, but at least you now have a stable job. For me, I am a freelancer, which makes the situation even harder because my income is not always stable. I really like your point about building something you personally want to exist, because that is exactly what I did with this project as my last serious try. I am still going to give it one final real chance because I honestly feel this is the best idea I have ever had. After that, I may need to seriously get a job.

Going from 0 to 3000 weekly added users is an amazing accomplishment and you should always remember that you are capable of producing something people love using.

The problem is that the real world massively compounds on small advantages. Your competitor is 1% better per day at growth, that compounds to a 37x difference in a year. You could do everything perfect except one small issue, or operate in a space where your success is easily replaceable, and none of the effort will translate to real world results.

I would do the following

1. Seriously audit what you can do/insights you have that nobody else has

2. Translate that into a moat that cannot be replicated by anyone else

3. Translate that moat into growth/retention in a niche domain that you know is more important in a way others don't

Thank you, this is actually very helpful advice. What happened with my previous app showed me that getting users is not enough if the product can be copied easily. I had the audience, but I did not have anything strong enough to protect the app once bigger competitors entered with more money and better marketing. For this new project, the main difference is that users are not only using the platform. They can also earn from their creativity every time someone remixes their work. I believe this could create a strong community and give creators a reason to stay, but I still need to think seriously about how to turn that into something competitors cannot easily copy, and I need a big investment to start with almost no worries.

Count the number of apps you pay for. Now google how many programmers are out there. Divide. These are your chances for success.

For my alternative rock band and our groupies (there were only a few of them), I programmed an online community aimed at punks, just for fun. I was in my early 20s at the time. The platform later grew to 100,000 members and provided me with a good monthly income.

That was a coincidence. Or rather, I was naive and started the project without a business model. But what I realized later was that, without even knowing it, I had connected two things: a technological trend (social networks) and a target audience with a specific need.

When starting your own projects, it makes sense to focus heavily on your target audience.I often check out global trends or the opinions of futurists and try to develop ideas from them. But I always try to avoid creating a one-size-fits-all solution. I’d rather have a small but loyal target audience than a large but disloyal one.

Right now, I'm working on https://github.com/janrakete/healthcore-bulp.io. For now, it's aimed at a small target audience (tech enthusiasts who have to care for people, such as their parents). But I have no idea if it will be a success.

My advice: Keep at it, keep trying. Eventually, you’ll have enough code and experience under your belt that you’ll be able to whip up a solution in no time when the next trend comes along.

First of all, thank you for the positive advice and for sharing your story. Good luck with your project too. It looks really interesting, and I hope it succeeds.

Hi! I’m a PM, and I have one suggestion. If you haven’t yet, now is a great time to talk to a ton of ppl who you think might be interested in your app and learn everything you can about them. Do it until the answers you get sound the same. If your app is fun, you are working to capture attention in a crowded market. Your #1 job now should be to identify what’s different about your app that someone can’t get anywhere else & what about the differentiator makes ppl want to pay. Marketing (the result of discovering a repeatable sales model) is probably less important in the beginning than knowing who you are selling to, how and why they buy, what their options are, and what makes them choose you. Armed with this, you don’t need good ideas just dedication to your users. Good luck and hang in there! Your tenacity will pay off!

Thank you, this is really useful advice

To be honest, I'd be happy to get 3k users for anything I've created!

Marketing is always the hardest part. I came across this medium article https://zach-saw.medium.com/the-internet-is-dead-96a3f3ed866... while researching why it is so hard. It talks about the difficulty of getting some eyes on your app / project. In particular, it said Linus needed to be a content creator first before creating Linux in this day and age which hit me pretty hard.

If you are interested in creating a business out of it, you might want to look at ideas that will make money first and figure out the app around it.

The other problem is that with only one person (you), there's only so many features you can add to an app, and a team (or AI) will now be able to duplicate those features. You need to come up with something fairly unique and hard to duplicate.

That makes sense. I probably did the opposite and built the app first

Tough to go through what you are describing. The only positive thing I can add is all this experience is making you better skilled / positioned for your next project. When the cycle repeats enough times, eventually you get success. Best wishes.

Thank you, I hope all these failed attempts are preparing me for something better, instead of just repeating the same cycle. Best wishes to you too.

I have a side project running since last 12+ years. It has about 3k users. The community built around the app makes me happy. I have probably made $120 from it in those years. Money was never how I measured its success.

I understand your point, and I can relate to that feeling. But in my case, I am building this project for two main reasons. First, I want it to help other people earn money instead of making them pay for something they may only use for a short time. Second, I also want it to change my life, so I see it as a real business. If it gets no attention and makes no money, then for me, it would be difficult not to see that as a failure.

I also have a few side apps that I built completely for free because I originally made them for myself and later decided to put them online. Around 100 people now use them with me, and that honestly feels good, so I completely understand what you mean. Thank you for sharing your perspective.

For an app to turn into a sustainable and real business many factors come into play. I'm still pondering upon them myself.

As a founder what did you do differently this time with your new app that increases your odds of making it a success? Did you validate your idea before building or it was just your assumption that people would buy it? How painful or valuable the problem is that you are solving with your app? Is there a demand for your app or are you trying to create a demand too? Are you solving around just a convinience or a painful problem for people to care enough?

About app distribution, are you just hoping and leaving it to luck or you have a plan (even on a budget) to get some eye balls on the app? Many questions to pause and reflect about.

Keep trying. You have limited downside and unlimited upside.

Take the outside capital and ride the dragon. Doesn’t always work but if it does you’ll be doing fine.

Took me 18 years to get to success. Sometimes these things take a while.

""limited downside and unlimited upside"" This is a great sentence, thank you for your support

So, kind of like buying a lotto ticket.

“limited downside” is not necessarily true. You could waste a lot of time, worsening relationships or just missing out on time you could have spent with loved ones, who will be gone someday. Spinning your wheels can have a real cost, don’t dismiss it.

What problems did your apps solve? in my experience, people need to get excited about an idea, but then the solution needs to keep solving a problem in order to be longterm viable.

My app is https://www.marcelix.com I built it after experiencing a problem from two sides that the app now solves. I was sharing prompts for free, like millions of other creators, hoping to get attention on social media and maybe earn something through referral links or traffic. At the same time, when I saw a good AI image or video, I sometimes could not find the exact prompt needed to get the same result.

So I built an app that solves both problems. When you create a good prompt, every time someone remixes your image or video, you earn money instantly. They do not need to search for the prompt, copy it, paste it, or figure out how to recreate the result.

I created a complete social network for AI content creators, but with instant earnings. I tested the app with a small group of creators, and they loved it. Some of them even added their Marcelix profile link to their social media bio so they could send users directly to their profile and let them remix any prompt with one click.

The main problem is that handling large traffic requires a huge API budget. My biggest issue now is finding an investor, and that makes me afraid of ending up in the same situation as with my previous projects over the past eight years.

If you have the tenacity to stick with it over a number of years, and have had an app with a few thousand users, you must be doing a few things right!

Thank you so much for your support. I really hope so.

"trying for eight years". "I tried to build tens of apps". "I started getting other ideas again"

I am running a bootstrapped SAAS for 11+ years. Since you asked for honest feedback, I will lay it on you straight. The fact is that most people who try what you have tried give up after few weeks or months on one project and then move on to another. That is not critical mass or time to build anything real. Most influencers/indie hackers peddling multiple products at same time or micro-saas or whatever are either inflating their numbers or outright lying.

Let me be very clear. It is very difficult to do multiple things at once. It is almost impossible to make money from multiple things at once especially if they are not already established and you are starting from scratch.

So the 1st question you have to ask yourself is: How bad do I want to do my own things and what is my goal exactly ? The only way possible to focus on 1 thing at least for 12-18 months minimum (ideally 2+ years) before you see anything real to even move the needle a little bit.

So again, ask tyourself: what can you work on for next 12-18 months without worrying about short term or overnight success ? If you cannot answer that, you don't have anything to try yet.

Thank you for your honest feedback. I almost never work on multiple things at once. Some of the apps were simple and did not take much time, which is why the total reached tens of projects. But I also had apps that took more than a year, and those are the heartbreaking ones. Most of the time, I failed because of financing issues. I started trying when I was a student, and now I am a graduate working as a freelancer. In every stage, my main goal has always been to build something of my own. But not every dream comes true, even when you work hard and give it time. Overall, I am trying again. Thank you.