When you have no clients (and you’ve been pushing the product long enough) is easy to realize that you better drop the product and go back to the drawing board.
When you have many many clients, it’s a no brainer to go on (and become filthy rich 🙂 )
The problem is when you have some clients (e.g. imagine that you make, let’s say, 1500 USD per month with your product). Not enough to make a living (at least in many countries/cities, specially if you have to support your family) with the product but enough to be willing to stick to it.
Sure, you could try to take yourself out of the equation and automate as much as possible the product and all the tasks surrounding it (support, publicity,…) but still it will still occupy some of your time (or it will slowly die so you’ll lose the 1500 anyway).
You could also stick for a while and see if you can bring up considerably the revenue but how long should you try? When it’s better to just stop and try a different idea that could work better (or not, and then you’d lose the 1500 again!).
An alternative option would be to try to sell the product before moving on the next idea (not sure how much you can get for a product that makes 1500 USD per month, probably no more than 20-30.000 USD)
Tough decisions…
My idea: Diversify.
You have both answers already:
– “…automate as much as possible the product and all the tasks surrounding it…”
– “…try a different idea that could work better…”
You can try a new product without stopping the one that brings food to the table. Could be harder, but it’s not harder than having a day job + side project…
If the new project gets better revenue and needs more work, *only then* you can drop the old project.
Well, in my specific case, I already have the day job so things are more complex. But I do agree that for a while you may be able to balance both
I think you look at it with from the wrong perspective.
Calculate the $/hour that this project pays you. Decide on that.
A project that pays you 1500$/hour (one hour per mounth investment for the 1500$ revenue) is a strong keeper.
A project that pays you 1.5$/hour (1000 hours per mounth) is something that nobody needs.
From this perspective you don’t have the view of should I really cancel this 1500$ thing, but can calmly decide on the rate.
Sure. If the effort you need to put into it is really small then the problem does not exist but I’m afraid this is not the most common scenario 🙂
Normally you have a very good feeling of what you want to earn per hour. If you have a job then you can calculate you hour rate, if you do consulting you have to put your hour rate into the offer. So whenyou calculte the hour rate of this party successfull project you gat a value. If this value is above your normal hourly rate then keep it. If the value is below your hourly rate thenbetter invest the hours in other projects or you regular work.
You are right that my examples are not the mormal cases. They are the corner cases. The normal case lies in beetweeen and there you should put it into relation to the hourly rate of other projhects. So the hourly rate can give you a clear line that a successfull project has to be above.
Caution: This does not apply to projects that you want to build a bussiness around !