“What was the monetization plan?”

From reading the article author’s failure was failing to ask that question of himself. With no clear objective or milestones, the project ate a huge amount of manpower for no material gain and left him thoroughly burnt out.

It doesn’t matter if your project is for-profit or Free. Identify your deliverables, identify your schedule, and never turn a blind-eye to your failures to meet both.

Oh, and never mistake makework for productivity either. If your product isn’t selling, what it doesn’t need is more features. What it does need is better marketing and sales skills. Quite frankly, building the technology part is the least important part of building a successful Product. Being geeks, it’s awfully easy to work on (i.e. fiddle with) the one bit that you’re naturally good at, when what you should be doing is working on all the parts that you’re not.

The thing is... the alluring thing about side projects _is_ not having that clear objective. Most of our jobs are directed by clear objectives, side projects are great for experimentation without clear potential for personal gain (fun, fame or fortune), often you will at least gain a unique experience and learn, which is a good trade for a little time.

Perhaps what happened here is a side project grew into something larger, it's now just a project, and he fell into putting more time and effort into it without making a conscious decision due to popularity - perhaps that's when it can bite you, when you realise you don't enjoy it anymore and it's become one sided.

I think side projects should stay as small as possible unless there looks to be a real potential for both yourself personally and the rest of the world - even then failing fast feels like the best idea.

For small personal projects, I think a fair rule of thumb is: is anyone else using it? Once that answer turns to yes, you need to get your exit plan in place.

And +1 for failing fast. It is failing slow that’s the disaster.

What's an "exit plan" in the context of small personal non-corporate projects?

It depends on what commitments you made to your users. It could be as simple as just abandoning the project or it could be something more elaborate like handing it over to someone else.

But why do you have to think about this "as soon as you have your first user"? Not every project is a business and not every project needs an "exit plan". Not everyone doing a project needs to think in entrepreneur terms.

The “exit plan” could be as simple as “do nothing and abandon it”. You don’t “have to” do anything and are under no obligation to do anything, however decency says that in some circumstances you probably should.

When you have people using your stuff, you have to decide whether you care about them or not. It’s ok not to care, you don’t owe anybody anything, but if you lead them on or give them the impression that you do, then they are invested in something because of it and it would be pretty shitty to just disappear. You still can, if you like, but you should at least do it consciously.

If you have people the impression that you would support something then you need to be clear with them that this isn’t actually the case, otherwise you’re a bit of a dick for leading them on. It’s perfectly ok to just throw something out to the world without supporting it in any way and it’s also ok to step back from something you did once support, but you should at least communicate this so people don’t get the wrong impression.

If people are interested in your project, it's courteous to let them know what's going on, even if just to tell them the project won't continue.

I fully agree. I'm just questioning the use of entrepreneurial terms such as "exit strategy", especially early in the life of your project.

    "What are you doing?"
    "I'm painting, some people bought my pictures"
    "So what's your exit strategy?"

The terminology doesn’t matter. It’s used here because this is a very entrepreneurial audience and most people understand what is meant by it. I don’t think anyone means to imply that you need to treat your hobby/side projects like a business.

Well, the terminology matters to me. The language we use tends to frame how we think about issues. I find the language of entrepreneurship distasteful when used outside a business context.

If you are expecting your side project to support you, it isn't a side project

Yes that's my point, but also that I can see how in the transition that distinction can be lost on the originator.

I mean, I'm also working on a pseudo-game engine, which isn't general purpose but specialized for the primary goal of being able to mod this already existing game, but monetization of it beyond the level of "donate if you want to" would be impractical, in my opinion. The original game is freeware so charging for usage to unlock features upfront leaves a bad taste for me. I primarily work on it because I enjoy putting things together and can see tangible progress towards my goal of being feature-compatible with the original. At the point that working on it starts feeling like a job, I'd quit immediately.

If I'm trying to make money off such a side project "quit whenever you want" isn't sustainable. But that isn't one of my goals. I just want to enjoy building things and give the project back to the community, and I'm lucky to have a separate source of income to accomplish that. If nobody cares, then that's fine. The time I spent puzzling over the problems I was facing was a more interesting use of my time for me than sitting around all day watching YouTube, anyway. Also, I at least believe I'm getting somewhere with my project still, so I still have motivation to keep working on it.

Maybe there's some confusion over the term "side project" which could mean "a thing someone developed in off hours that they're intending to bootstrap into a sustainable business," but it could also mean "some person's hobby."

But the fact that I currently have no way of monetizing this means I'll have to work on it in my spare time, meaning it will take that much longer to get to a point where I can declare it's shipped. Maybe I'll lose interest before that point. But to me that's perfectly fine and nothing to become gloomy over if it doesn't work out. Though, to be honest I might not be saying this if my project had users who would be frustrated with me for stepping away from working on it, but the reality is that it's so much work for one person to accomplish and at times it's draining to push forward on it every day, despite what I get out of working on it.

Saying the least important part of building a successful product is building the product is nonsensical. The response to the tendency on tech isn’t to generate anti-tech dogma, it’s to recognize its role as one of several key things to focus on.

It’s true though. I’d rather have so-so technology plus great market and marketing than the best technology in the world and sod all ability to sell it. You can always improve the technology later, once you’re generating the revenue to pay for that. But if you don’t have sales you don’t have squat.

Been there, done that, lost the shirt. Lessons learned.

You said technology is the least important part - not that it’s less important than sales or marketing.

Least important doesn’t mean unimportant, just that all the other things are more important, in relative terms.

Yes, and this doesn’t make any sense. There are a huge number of elements to product development, many of which are less important than tech.

Thanks for reading.

You pretty much nailed it. I went into the project without a clear monetization plan and when I got around to trying to figure it out I didn't know how.

Here he defines his own success as the ability of his patreon to support him financially. He says he couldn't make that work.

It doesn't really go into detail about whether he offered other direct contracts or work fire hire or other tried other licensing or any other strategy.

If it’s a side project, then work for hire would have been a side-side project, wouldn’t it? That’s quite a lot to juggle with a presumably full time job