You're Not Bad At Side Projects. You're Just Building The Wrong Thing.

Posted on Dec 18

• Originally published at learnall.io

Let me guess: you've got at least three abandoned projects in your GitHub repos right now. You spent weeks building them, maybe even got them feature-complete, possibly even launched them. A few polite upvotes on Reddit, some "nice work" comments, then... nothing. No users, no revenue, no momentum. Just another project gathering dust while you scroll through indie hacker Twitter wondering what you're doing wrong.

The frustrating part? You know you can code. You ship features at work every day. You understand React, you can integrate APIs, you've deployed production systems. But somehow, when it comes to your own projects, you're stuck in this loop: build something cool, launch into the void, get discouraged, repeat.

Here's what nobody tells you: the problem isn't your technical skills. It's that you're starting at the wrong end of the process.

You know the pattern because you've lived it. You get inspired by a podcast episode or a tweet about someone hitting $10K MRR. You have an idea, maybe even a decent one. You spin up a new repo, configure your build tools, start implementing features. The first weekend feels productive. You're making progress, the dopamine is flowing.

Then reality hits. How should you price this? Should it even be paid? Maybe you should build more features first. Who's actually going to use this? How do you get users anyway? Is this idea even good, or are you just building something you think is cool?

Three weeks in, you're still building. The initial excitement is gone. You haven't talked to a single potential user. You have no idea if anyone will pay for this. You start another project, telling yourself this time will be different.

The worst part? You're spending 10-15 hours a week on side projects, which is more than enough time to build a real business. But those hours are scattered across false starts, tutorial hell, and building features that don't move the needle. You're working hard but going nowhere.

I've seen senior developers, people who make $120K at their day job, who can't figure out how to make their first $100 online. Not because they're not smart enough. Not because they can't code. But because nobody taught them the system for going from idea to paying customers.

Here's the fundamental shift that changes everything: stop starting with "what should I build?" and start with "what are people already trying to pay for?"

Source: Dev.to