Problem is, no money. I don’t mind, really.

But I treat every one of my free, open-source (or proprietary) projects as if I am delivering for a Fortune 50 corporation.

Lots of boring bits, but the results speak for themselves.

There was a Show HN, some time ago, where someone made a Web site that cataloged existing markets, with insufficient software.

It was a good idea, but not for me. I like to be heavily invested in the use cases for my work.

It looked for products with a lot of ratings and mediocre levels, which indicated a market that wasn't being satisfied.

The middle of the bell curve would be an app that had 10,000 3-star ratings.

This excluded products being "hate-bombed," and ones being "gamed."

It suggested using the list as a starting point for finding poorly-served markets.

It was fairly clever.

You probably actually enjoyed it too, just not the whole time. That's fine, that's the treadmill.

It's a "simple" GUI wrapper around a fractal planet generator (that I did not create).

I'm not very good at GUIs. I don't have the visual eye, I'm lousy at detail. 99% of the time I'm happy with something that spits out the answer I want awash in a sea of debug logs and printlns. I have a great tolerance to ignoring all of that.

I bogged down on the installers because I loathe configuring build tools, hunting down plugins, tweaking configurations.

It ended up as 4000 lines of code just for the GUI part, which seemed surprising. But that's the nature of it. GUIs are just heaps and gobs of detail, and events, and wiring it all up.

But I did it, it's "done", even if imperfect, even if the box has rounded corners as I shoved it into the outbox. And its got all sorts of things I wouldn't do again, which is useful.

Getting it out was like an interview with Columbo, always "one more thing". One of my "last minute" changes took me a month.

I was considering doing a YT video (or series) just going through this thing. Seems small enough, but addresses "real problems", rather than just examples, maybe there's value seeing it all together. Some examples of, perhaps, what "not to do".

Share and enjoy!

Similar for me. I'm generating and validating ideas at the moment, but it takes almost no time for me to convince myself an idea is rubbish, not worth exploring, or already done.

It just as well may indicate there’s room in the market for yet another twist on a similar thing.

The difference between a successful business and a failed startup is how much effort you put into it, considering that a solo or a startup is exponentially more nimble than an established player at identifying and focusing on a novel approach to an old problem.

The classic Silicon Valley/Paul Graham advice of "validate an idea and don't write a line of code until you have signed 10 clients" is a good approach only iff your job is creating ideas and putting the least possible effort in each one. This is the Twitter indiehacker approach. But if you only have one good idea that you believe in, that scratches your own itch, just build it. Don't spend ages to build it, try to market it ASAP, but how much effort you put into it is more important than how game changing your idea is.

This is my plan at least, and no successful business just yet to say if this approach is valid, but it agrees with my reading of the business, indie hacker and startup world.

Just don't create another productivity app. That's the most saturated field in the entire space, and for some reason 90% of indie hackers have built yet another calendar/todo hybrid, wondering why no one cares.

Just sharing your knowledge can be a hand up to someone in a bind, even a complete stranger on the internet who doesn't even give out an upvote.

Everyone's gifts are different, and none of them are universal.

What drives people?

I personally lean on people to help stay motivated. For your example, I would find a game dev meet up or some discord community, talk shop & share what I'm working on on a regular basis. Validate or give feedback on the work of others, and get some of my own.

It's a process of constantly pushing back the thoughts and community makes it easier

Then slowly, nearly all of them stopped. Some got jobs at big companies. Others quietly stopped posting after numbers flatlined or declined. This includes a lot of people whose projects were “Ramen profitable” and then showing huge month over month growth, which was supposed to be the start of something bigger.

A disappointing number of them have pivoted into personal brand building and selling courses. It’s a lot of “follow me/subscribe to my newsletter for more advice” which turns into “sign up now for an exclusive spot in my new course” after a half a year. It’s like a switch flips after a certain number of followers where they realize it’s going to be easier to sell courses/content than to build their project into a successful company.

Spammed my email with subpar / spam writing

What’s the next stage for these content creators?

So, feedback from others motivates me.

Seeing people visit my website, even if only a few dozen or hundred, is motivating.

Of course it's possible to learn techniques and behavior patterns which can help you be a successful pure-solo creator, but it takes time and persistence (and motivation :) ) to learn and stick with those behaviors.

So my conclusion, as someone with a few dozen parked ideas (some of which got 80% near to MVP complete), is to find a partner or at least goal-buddy to help you stay motivated... and occasionally to help you remember why you're doing the thing.

I've worked on [side/pet/hobby] projects consistently for the last 6 years. What drives me is my friends. One of the latest projects I've started to work on is a free alternative to a mobile app called UDisc. They hit us with the ol' switcheroo by offering the service for free for several years and now force you to pay if you want to maintain your previous disc golf rounds (beyond 10 rounds).

I've tried to build things only I want and I usually lose steam or interest. For me, building things for, and with, other people keeps me motivated.

Loss of structure can be devastating to productive habits.

I've been building a business solo over the past year, reached 80% in late spring, ready to a closed invite launch and... lost all motivation. Between the fear of seeing savings go down without anything to show for it, the utterly demoralising job market during which it took 6+ months to get one solid freelance opportunity, and the constant nag that I am wasting my time and should just find a job like a normal person... meant that I completely lost steam, just staying afloat with a good freelance client, shelving the business idea for months.

Only a couple weeks ago, after seeing that my financial situation isn't getting better, and I still am allergic to a regular job, I managed to overcome the massive inertia and got back riding the wave of launching a business. I adore the freedom of working for myself, the challenge, but until I start seeing good money coming in, I'll always believe I am wasting my time and following fanciful ideas instead of just going back to trying to win the interview lottery and working for someone else on something I don't care about. It's hard.

On a motivated day I can work as much a full day of work (7h), most of the time I'm spending a couple of hours on it. Everyday (mostly). I find it easier to be consistent by having a day job that firces me to wake up in the morning than when I have a full empty schedule.

Free afternoons feel like every day is a holiday that can be filled with whatever I fancy, though sometimes morning work motivates me so much I might do more work in the afternoon. I might need to pace myself, like that Hemingway quote in TFA.

It is incredible how productive one can be with just 20h of consistent work a week, with no bosses or bullshit meetings. I'm still working on the consistency part :)

I suppose I should do a Show HN at some point and find out.