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There's so much messaging around "if you build it, they will come" and "my work should speak for itself" that it's easy to feel defeated when someone does the same thing - often, a variation you'll even find to be inferior - but gets more recognition for it because that person was better at promoting. Speaking for myself, I'm not great at self-promotion. It feels gross. Marketing feels gross - and, if I'm being real, it often is gross. But that's how you get recognition. Spending time to talk about yourself and your work helps to position you for that time that luck just seemed to fall in your lap. As I was building out that JS Boss DR-110, I rounded a corner where I felt like if I really dedicated myself to putting the polish on - finishing up song mode, scrapping and rewriting the frontend styling, a live demo page with a listing of actual DR-110s for sale driven by the eBay API - I could have made a sizeable splash in whatever that niche world was. Of course, in early 2011 getting consistent timing out of Javascript doing audio playback wasn't possible - that was a considerable hindrance. But it would still be a solid groundwork for someone else's future project. I could have done a few low-key unpaid speaking engagements about it, for sure. Then what? Every now and then, I think about going back and rewriting the sequencer, or building an import/export routine, or implementing MIDI I/O, but I have no real desire to get into the world of creating softsynth drum machines & sequencers. It's a fun footnote, it was a good way to kick off some rust - I hadn't been doing front end code for several years by that point. Nice job on Musictoy, and that's great that you've got a persistent userbase, no matter what the size is! |
It's also OK to build projects that don't necessarily go anywhere. I recently had a music app I was developing and I had hopes for turning that into a business, but I quickly realized that in order to make the app really competitive, to have enough value that people would pay for it, it would become a job on top of my job, and that would really kill the fun. At the end of the day, side-projects like this are mostly about having fun and learning a few things.
I am happy with my small userbase. The fact that a few people keep coming back, and the app lives on its own, without me promoting it, means that some people find genuine value/enjoyment out of it. I intend to keep the app running and free for as long as it doesn't become a maintenance burden.