What are the difficulties after the launch and how not to give up

From the launch of the first version to any significant achievements, a lot of time has passed. This period lasted about two years and was the most difficult. Most of the projects that have somehow started are bent on it. Launch rush already passed, stable work has not yet begun.
What difficulties we faced and how we struggled with them, I will tell in this article.

How much can you pay

With the development of service costs do not decrease, but continue to grow. Total sums are already getting big enough, and you cannot stop, otherwise all past investments will be lost.

How much can you work

For several years, all my free time was devoted to working on the project. All evenings, all weekends are devoted only to this. Plus, nobody canceled his own work either, because there are no other sources of income and the project must also be financed.
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No normal programmers

The search for programmers was an additional reason for frustration. I described our evolution of working with remote employees in a separate article . It took months to look for intelligent employees, at some point it seemed that they were not there at all and we would be left with nothing.
But once one normal programmer collaborated with us and we continued to search, believing that they still exist.

Competitors continue to appear

Specifically, we never followed the competitors, but constantly somehow learned about various projects in our area. It didn’t add any pleasant emotions, because they themselves were still very far from the concept of a “large project”.

When she finally earns

From early 2010 to spring 2012, the daily number of orders grew very weakly. On average, from 2-3 tasks per day to 20. That is, we can say that the light was warming, but we have not seen a real flame for two years.
You work, you work, but it does not grow at all. You add new features, you improve the quality, but there are still no results. Customers put a positive assessment, satisfied with the service, but the number of orders almost does not grow.

It is not clear where to take customers

We understood that orders could not appear without customers. But we did not have an effective plan for attracting customers. Even when we spent significant by our standards funds for marketing, we did not get results.

There are very few positive reviews.

From the very beginning we had a separate section “user reviews” on the site, where everyone could write what he thinks. In this way we wanted to show that we have a “live” service and we do not hide anything. But it didn't turn out good. Despite customer satisfaction and positive ratings, there were about 95% negative reviews on this page. For more "liveliness" of the service, we did not have any moderation reviews.
As a result, negative comments did not add confidence to us and hardly convinced new users of its usefulness.

You will not succeed

Periodically, we heard negative forecasts from “experts” and from our friends: “Nobody needs WORKZILLA, it’s impossible to do this”. Such people will always be much more than those who will believe in you. Creating something new is always an extension of past boundaries.


I think you understood that there were no problems with reasons for doubts and experiences. They were enough to drop everything and do something “truly worthwhile”.
But we had several lifebuoys that made us stay:

There are two of us

The most important lifeline is mutual support. If one of us had been involved in the project, I’m sure he would definitely be bent. When one man's hands fell, the second one became more active. Even if the mood of both was not up to par, someone first found the arguments to continue and infect the other.
I repeat that mutual support was the strongest stimulant. Consider this when looking for partners for your project. Although, perhaps, such a role can be played by a person from the side, who will periodically instill in you self-confidence and kick to work.

There are competitors - it means there is a market

Emerging projects, of course, frighten at first, but then we realized that the market practically does not exist. And new projects will form and develop this market, from which we will also benefit.

Still, there are results

Despite the very slow growth, he still was. And in the sea of ​​negative reviews were positive, when users thanked us. This confirmed that we were on the right track and simply did not reach the desired stage.
A large number of negative reviews - this is also normal. It is known that bad talk is much louder than good talk.

A good project will unleash itself.

In the days of soc. networking works very well like marketing. If you have a useful project, users themselves will tell about it and bring friends. You may not be satisfied with the speed of development, but you definitely will have clients. Until now, user recommendations remain the main source of users for WORKZILLA.RU

Believe in yourself

No matter how trite it sounds, you need to believe that everything will work out and work without giving up. If there is positive feedback from the market, keep going in this direction. It will be hard, sometimes very hard, but no one except you will not pass this way.
Of course, you should not blindly beat against the wall - you need to move, taking into account the actual use of your system.