My product isn't making any money, and I have rent and food to pay for

Question

For the past 3-4 years, I have developed one product.It's called Note Garden(https://notegarden.io), in which users can take notes and keep them in memory by using algorithms. (Remnot has a similar concept.)There is a very bad situation with this product right now. There have been many things I've tried, but there are very few users, and I can't figure out how to get them.It is more serious when it comes to the team. I am near my limit of living expenses (rent and food). Both of the other members of the team have fallen into a state of indefinite dormancy, completely demoralized.In this situation, how should I proceed?

WheelsAtLarge · Accepted Answer

Time to get a paying job and work on your project part time.
1) As soon as possible, get 10 users to use your product. Get feedback and work on pain points and then get ten more and work on the pain points again. Don't add new features unless you really need to add them. And welcome and thank your users for their criticism.
2)freeze your software updates and work on marketing 90%+ of your time available, so you get more users.

madmax108 · Answer

I would also suggest the same as others in this group and say get a job. That'll hopefully help clear up some mental space away from having basic needs satisfied and let you streamline your product without having to worry about immediate results (and trust me when I say, at "most" companies, having a stable job and holding onto a side hustle is not impossible)
Only thing I'd say is avoid falling into sunk-cost fallacy, and remember that it's not always the best "technical" product that wins but also a lot of stuff outside of your control (timing the market eg. Google Wave, tech simply not growing fast enough eg. MagicLeap, the worse product having better VC/marketing etc.) so love your products, but unless you have a guarenteed soft-landing, don't bet your life on them.
Perhaps relevant: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817
Also website/product feedback:
- Hire a copywriter to fix language on your website. "Edit free by drag & drop", "the effective-proven study methods", "Organie Knowledge" etc. makes it look quite amateur. You may also want to work on SEO a bit more to get more organic traffic and maybe add some content around the techniques the app uses for memorization.
- Add a future pricing page. Everything free "for now" makes me think that if I get this and start using, one fine day you'll charge an amount that's too high for me and I'll lose my notes because I don't want to pay in the future ($1per month vs $20 a month is all possible). Let people know how much you expect this to cost them. Not written in stone of course, but it helps a lot.

RandomSort · Answer

I have been diving reasonably deep into the Tool For Thought category over the last two years, but have yet to see notegarden in this space. I concur with the spend your effort on marketing not development. Look into tools that both do the same and more: - Obsidian.md - RoamResearch.com - Notion.so - Remnote - Readwise.io - Anki
I am sure there are others. You mention remnote specifically, how do your tool compare, when is it the best, when should I go with some other tool? See for instance https://medium.com/geekculture/roam-research-vs-notion-3064a...
Also the copy overall could take some overhauling, there are some errors and stuff that takes you a bit out - perhaps hire someone on upwork to check that up.
With regards to team, maybe figure out what your cutoff point is for calling it quits. If you have been working on this for 3-4 years, without many users, three persons, what are the signals that you are working in the right direction? Figure that out, commit to some numbers and dates, and strategize based on those numbers.
Good luck.

paulpauper · Answer

"how can I make a living doing what I love"for many people, they cannot

hunglee2 · Answer

How are you distributing your product?It could be that you (and your now demoralised team) have spent too much time building, not enough time selling. This is normal if the core team are engineers, we all default to what we are good at and enjoy doing. The sad part is though, distribution is far more important than production. In my experience, it is close to impossible to recover a team that has mentally 'checked out'. If they are critical to project, it could be the journey for this product is over.

imron · Answer

> In this situation, how should I proceed?
Put your product in maintenance mode and pick up a day job or contract role to pay the rent and bills.
Work on Note Garden as side project as time and money permits.

phendrenad2 · Answer

I noticed that the page isn't responsive. On a 1180px wide viewport, I'm seeing a horizontal scrollbar (the page width seems to be locked to 1565px). The page also loads slowly from USA (is your CDN set up properly? Or maybe you can move hosting to AWS us-west). Many people won't trust a dmg installer, and would prefer to install from the Mac app store (or windows store).

spants · Answer

1) Do this on the side (get a job) 2) Get the name out there (marketing) 3) Don't add new features yet. You need users first. 4) Don't use a GMAIL address for contact - it looks like a side project (Marketing)Other than that, is does look nice.

conductr · Answer

Admit defeat & get a job. Make this a side hustle if you don't want to completely throw in the towel.

mirntyfirty · Answer

What are your skills? I can check if my employer has a relevant opening.

cultofmetatron · Answer

how much effort have you put into marketing? this is the first I'm seeing of it. Right now I use fsnotes to keep track of things myself

My product isn't making any money, and I have rent and food to pay for

"how can I make a living doing what I love"
for many people, they cannot

> In this situation, how should I proceed?
Put your product in maintenance mode and pick up a day job or contract role to pay the rent and bills.
Work on Note Garden as side project as time and money permits.

1) Do this on the side (get a job) 2) Get the name out there (marketing) 3) Don't add new features yet. You need users first. 4) Don't use a GMAIL address for contact - it looks like a side project (Marketing)
Other than that, is does look nice.

Admit defeat & get a job. Make this a side hustle if you don't want to completely throw in the towel.

What are your skills? I can check if my employer has a relevant opening.

how much effort have you put into marketing? this is the first I'm seeing of it. Right now I use fsnotes to keep track of things myself

My product isn't making any money, and I have rent and food to pay for

"how can I make a living doing what I love"for many people, they cannot

> In this situation, how should I proceed?Put your product in maintenance mode and pick up a day job or contract role to pay the rent and bills.Work on Note Garden as side project as time and money permits.

1) Do this on the side (get a job) 2) Get the name out there (marketing) 3) Don't add new features yet. You need users first. 4) Don't use a GMAIL address for contact - it looks like a side project (Marketing)Other than that, is does look nice.

Admit defeat & get a job. Make this a side hustle if you don't want to completely throw in the towel.

What are your skills? I can check if my employer has a relevant opening.

how much effort have you put into marketing? this is the first I'm seeing of it. Right now I use fsnotes to keep track of things myself

"how can I make a living doing what I love"
for many people, they cannot

> In this situation, how should I proceed?
Put your product in maintenance mode and pick up a day job or contract role to pay the rent and bills.
Work on Note Garden as side project as time and money permits.

1) Do this on the side (get a job) 2) Get the name out there (marketing) 3) Don't add new features yet. You need users first. 4) Don't use a GMAIL address for contact - it looks like a side project (Marketing)
Other than that, is does look nice.