[Insanity]

How do you find motivation to continue working on a bunch of things that don't pan out?

Most of a what I code in my free time is 'useless'. Project Euler and the like.

When I think of building something and actually releasing it, my immediate impulse is that no one would use it so it'd be a waste of time. It bothers me a bit.

[Ntrails]

> Most of a what I code in my free time is 'useless'. Project Euler and the like.

The key question is why are you writing code in your free time? Entertainment? Profit? Personal Development?

I'd rather write code to solve an interesting thing that is entertaining to me than to work on things that nobody (including me) will use. Because I'd only do it as entertainment.

[dvt]

This is my motivation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Drew Houston's Show HN post (Dropbox) that, you guessed it, got a ton of hate (on HN of all places). I don't believe for one second that money brings happiness, but a decade later, Drew's the one laughing all the way to the bank :)

[arandr0x]

Then don't code in your free time. My family likes eating my cookies and hearing me play piano.

[Insanity]

I wasn't saying I don't enjoy programming in my free time. I enjoy it, but I'm not building products.

[imtringued]

Those pesky users will come as soon as you release it.

[kennxfl]

I like the blind broad general statement that is devoid of all nuance & background work that has to be done for users to 'come'

Its the cornerstone ideology of most failed startups.

[konschubert]

It’s not that simple. You need to have a market and also advertise.

I released voiceaudiocheck.com a month ago and haven’t seen a single user.

[tedmcory77]

What have you done to market it? Who is your primary user? What pain does it solve? How do they solve this pain without your service?

[konschubert]

> What have you done to market it? Nothing, because... > Who is your primary user? What pain does it solve? I don't know :D

I guess it helps them with the pain of sounding shitty on video calls, by telling them how to improve. I don't see a market for it at the moment because the problem it solves is so incremental.

[tren]

I was actually looking for something similar to this recently. Very first thing you need to do is fix your title and description tags for SEO. Second, contact some sites where this product might be useful for their users.

[konschubert]

> Very first thing you need to do is fix your title and description tags for SEO.

Damn, I had totally forgotten that that's a thing!

> Second, contact some sites where this product might be useful for their users.

Yes, I had planned that but then got distracted with other projects... :)

[thorwasdfasdf]

maybe he's just being satirical.

But, i don't want anyone getting the wrong idea. The vast majority of stuff released on the web these days, never ever sees any users at all. You'll be lucky if your web server even gets hit by actual users a couple times a week. and the vast majority that do, will churn.