Imagine you build a side project for people on the internet, but almost nobody uses it for a long time. What do you do next? Take a break, put it away, change its name, or try something else?
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Top comments (3)
That's a solid pivot. Challenges give you two things at once — a clear constraint (deadline, topic) and built-in distribution (the challenge page itself is its own audience). I've found that writing about the process of building, not just the finished product, connects better than I expected. The side project might not have users yet, but the story of building it already does.
Going through this exact situation right now. Building an open-source AI agent framework — it runs 24/7, I use it every day, but almost nobody else knows it exists yet.
What I have learned so far:
Keep using it yourself. If the project solves a real problem for you, that is already validation. Dog-fooding reveals what matters way more than hypothetical user research.
Document the journey publicly. I started writing build logs and technical deep-dives on Dev.to. Even with minimal readership, these become searchable artifacts. Someone will find them when they are searching for exactly this problem.
Resist the pivot reflex. The hardest part is sitting with "nobody cares yet" without abandoning the idea or constantly changing direction. If you believe in the core concept, make it undeniably good first.
My take: the answer is not "take a break" or "change its name." It is to make the project so solid that when someone finally discovers it, they cannot ignore it. Distribution is a separate problem from product quality — solve quality first, then distribution.
Technologies become history so fast. My new strategy is to focus on dev.to challenges for now -they feel active and give me clear goals.