[scoofy]

I've been working on my site: https://golfcourse.wiki for some time, and this is exactly how I feel all the time. Thank you for the encouragement.

I know this is a good idea. I know it will help people. I know I can either monetize it long term or even have it function as a non-profit. I also know it will take many years to slowly build to the functionality and content quality that I'm aiming for. Holding onto that long term view is extremely challenging.

Most days are just watching nothing happen, or slowly, slowly adding a single course (aggregated sites litter the golf internet, I want the opposite). One day I'll post on the golf subreddit and have 1000 users, get positive feedback, and the next two weeks just 5 users per day from google. And the kicker is, I'm genuinely embarrassed by some of the sub-optimal code and real lack of functionality I haven't addressed, even though I'm honestly very regularly working on it.

The best advice i got from a friend: only look at one-month or two-month increments as far as users. Day-to-day can get depressing, but on a bi-monthly basis, I've had slow-and-steady growth. At the same time, while I'm only up to 700 commits so far (vs 2000 in the article), I do have serious anxiety that I'm wasting years of my free time building something that won't amount to anything but a couple hundred upvotes on reddit, so I look at it as my unique hobby. I like mapping courses and making course books. It's my site and my hobby, and I'm fine if it's just me doing the work alone for the rest of my life. I believe that much in the project.

[bruce511]

As a hobby I dabble in ceramics. I've recently been working on a large animal sculpture which has taken a few months of (weekly class) work.

It has probably a 50% chance of surviving a firing. Naturally the class instructor is concerned that "all this work will be for nothing".

But unlike him, I'm at peace. Creating the sculpture was its own reward. After the firing it maybe a big bag of bits, but that won't remove the pleasure of creating it.

In the same way I applaud your enjoyment of your hobby. Whether it is financially successful or not, your pleasure needs to be in the journey, not just the destination. If you keep it that way you'll have more fun than if you're only working for a future payday. And if you do monetize it, you may find it robs you of your joy.

If someone was going to pay me for my sculpture, I'd be a lot more worried around about now :)

[jtokoph]

Just wanted to say that I have only ever played golf once and have no real interest in it, but I still clicked on your site and went down a rabbit hole. This was fascinating: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jun-11-me-peren...

Thanks :)

[scoofy]

This is very relevant!

[darepublic]

Personally the map with little icons always turns me off of sites. Maybe just a random course with quality photos where the map is, and some way to navigate to the next one? Maybe you don't fully aggregate the courses but you can scrape behind the scenes, automatically compile a bunch of content, and then edit it down. So you've proofread vetted all the content but doesn't have to be done manually.

[scoofy]

>Personally the map with little icons always turns me off of sites.

I actually agree with you, but I really don’t know how else to get people to physically see courses they’ve never noticed before. Also I suck at Leaflet so it’s ugly.

>Maybe you don't fully aggregate the courses but you can scrape behind the scenes, automatically compile a bunch of content, and then edit it down.

I thought long and hard about this, but when I realized that the USGA, itself, has incorrect data more often than not, I realized that letting the people who love the course add the data is going to be better in the long run.

[neolithicum]

I'm surprised you think it's ugly, my immediate impression was the opposite.

I personally don't mind the icons on the map, they give a good overview and, above all, immediately explained to me what the website is about.