Yeah, this resonates with me. My side project for 6 years was generating very, very little. Enough for a few pints a month.
Fun fact: The project survived a total destruction of the datacenter where it was hosted (remember the ovh incident?) which took it offline for maybe 4 months (no backups at the time). Luckily the server it was on didn't get melted.
Also at some point I started questioning why was I still working on it for so little. My wife convinced me to keep going and to be honest I still enjoyed working on it.
Then on year 7 things started to change, and on year 8 I was able to quit my daily job!
I'm on year 10 now. It's not a 7 figure business, but I enjoy every single day. Also the flexibility it gives me is excellent.
That's an impressive number of years to stick with a product you questioned. Probably 2x longer than Google would have maintained it lol
(who says products by indie devs always have higher long-term support risk?!)
I'm really happy to hear it turned around for you. The 4 months of down time sound terrifying. Can you share more about how you navigated that, how it impacted customers, and what you were able to restore vs what you couldn't, and what processes you changed in the aftermath?
My business is transactional where email is still king for all after sales support. I guess that makes it way easier to handle than a SaaS one.
The biggest impact for the business was not making any sale during this period and my SEO rankings going down. Actually the site disappeared from search.
I guess the biggest impact for me - personally - was psychological. All production data was gone and I was seeing it as a sign I should just let it go. I had all the source code, so in theory I could do it, but not sure I would have the motivation to.
Then in the end my thingy was hosted in a section that was salvaged from the fire. I saw it as a sign that actually I SHOULD keep going, lol. I don't remember exactly how long it was off but yeah, 4-6 months. Everything was restored though.
The only thing I did was to implement automatic backups and to a different datacenter. I remember from the incident, one issue for many was their servers were hosted in Strasbourg with backups also hosted there.
I've touched on this in my last comment, but my wife is by far my biggest motivator. It's tough life for us working solo, with our minds playing tricks on us all the time. It always sounds so much easier to go and work for someone else again or to just start a new side project from scratch. Not sure if there's any Alex Hormozi fan here, but one thing he's always repeating is to not give up, not start anything new over and over and just keep pushing that one project.
Ah so with this business model there was minimal impact to existing customers? That's fortunate.
Out of curiosity, what kind of transactional product has a substantial production database that would be daunting to re-build in a 4-6 mo window given you still had the source code during that time?
And I hope you've taken your wife out for some nice dinners (or whatever she likes). Totally agree that having a supportive and encouraging partner can make all the difference in challenging times.
At the time I was working with maybe 30 providers and it would be doable to rebuild the server and reconfigure all providers, cars, insurance, etc. Content would probably take longer, but also doable. But at the time I took it as a sign to shift to something else.
Glad I didn't and that the project came back from the ashes, literally.
It was a massive difference when I started in Cape Verde. Specially the way of working, level of service and insurance options available (mostly non-existent). It's very satisfying to look back and the progress made over the years where, in a way, I helped to improve the customer service provided by the small local companies, closer to what you would see in the western world.
What's also funny is that the "1st dollar" coming in in any business is such a rush, such an excitement. That still holds true in my case! Even though the business is the same across the 3 websites, it's such an excitement to see the Madeira one growing (where I started more recently), compared to the Azores where I've been at for some years now.
Fun fact: The project survived a total destruction of the datacenter where it was hosted (remember the ovh incident?) which took it offline for maybe 4 months (no backups at the time). Luckily the server it was on didn't get melted.
Also at some point I started questioning why was I still working on it for so little. My wife convinced me to keep going and to be honest I still enjoyed working on it.
Then on year 7 things started to change, and on year 8 I was able to quit my daily job! I'm on year 10 now. It's not a 7 figure business, but I enjoy every single day. Also the flexibility it gives me is excellent.