The Pattern I Didn’t See Until Now
I was reflecting in the shower this morning and realised something uncomfortable: every successful project I’ve built no longer exists. And the cause has always been the same. Me giving up and not thinking into the future. I let the current reality inform decisions rather than reflecting on past success and future potential.
I’ve had relative success as a maker over the years. My focus has never been 100% on making as I’ve had to juggle jobs and life on the side, but I did have successful projects and now none of them exist.
Why I’m Writing This
I’m sharing this because building in public means being honest about failures, not just wins. And I’m in a funk right now. My latest project (StillMind AI Meditation Journal) — which I wrote about in how we built it between diaper changes — has been live for a couple of months. It’s getting a few signups each day and momentum is building, but it’s slower than I anticipated and I’m determined not to repeat past mistakes.
Mistake #1: SimplePay Plugin
My first success, and first mistake, at making money online was building a payment gateway plugin for OTP SimplePay. OTP is one of the biggest banks in Hungary and SimplePay was the leading payment gateway back in 2018, but they didn’t provide a WordPress plugin. I needed to connect it to my wife’s WordPress site so she could collect payment upfront for hiking events she organised, so I built one. To my surprise, it started to sell.
I invested time into the product and SEO and quickly ranked #1 on Google for all relevant search terms. It wasn’t crazy money but it was making consistent profit each month. It stayed there for years until Stripe launched in Hungary and a couple of competitors started eating into my rankings. And my revenue.
After a few months of decline and not having the motivation to fix it, I decided it was too much effort for the money it made. The revenue and effort were both low. I just had to do a little customer support, update the plugin for new releases and keep things ticking. But I was focusing on other projects and work at the time and it felt like a distraction.
Years later, SimplePay is still a huge payment provider in Hungary, more so than Stripe, and I see more money being made online than ever. I regret my decision to remove the site. It wasn’t made with future thinking in mind. I also realise now that it’s not always so easy to make money consistently online and just how lucky I was to have a low-effort revenue stream.
The killswitch was myself.
Mistake #2: Polkadot Tiger
My second mistake is a stretch to call a success. I spent 2 years building and launching the first SEO A/B Testing tool called Polkadot Tiger. It automated metadata A/B tests on WordPress, Magento and Shopify websites. At the time the SEO industry wasn’t focusing on this and a huge challenge was educating the market with no funding or backing to do so.
I converted some agencies, had decent retention, worked with charities like Greenpeace. But ultimately the revenue never took off in a meaningful way. When my wife got pregnant and I was seriously out of cash, I refocused and got a job to provide stability.
Again, I completely switched focus. I kept Polkadot Tiger alive for a while but didn’t put effort into it. Fast forward a few years and SEO A/B Testing tools are everywhere. If I had just kept it around, I might have been able to ride the wave of VC-backed products educating the market, iterated, and had revenue coming in.
But I didn’t. I made the decision to sunset the product, emailed the few active clients we had and told them we’d be turning off the service soon. I lost faith. I lost confidence.
The killswitch, again, was myself.
The Lesson: Momentum Isn’t Always Loud
A few signups a day doesn’t sound like much. But neither did SimplePay’s consistent monthly profit. Until I killed it.
StillMind is much slower and harder than I imagined. The challenge I’m facing once again is marketing. The wins are days, weeks, months apart. But I don’t want to give up.
This doesn’t mean I won’t pivot if I learn that’s what’s needed. It doesn’t mean I won’t stop working on it and prioritise something else if that’s what the data shows. I will not waste my time flogging a dead horse if that’s what it turns out to be.
This Time, I Won’t Be the Killswitch
But what it does mean is that I won’t kill it when there are still signs of momentum. I will not turn off a product that makes revenue just because it’s hard and I don’t know what to do next. I will not consider it a failure to have a product that exists and provides value just because the revenue and independence I imagined did not come as I expected.
This time, I won’t be the killswitch.
If you’ve killed a project you now wish you hadn’t, I’d genuinely like to hear about it. What was it? What would you tell yourself now?