edit: Editing as we speak, hit submit too soon.

I know this sounds silly, but once people are on my site, how can I modify it without disrupting the service? (it's all php/js/html)

Mixpanel should handle that. I would also look into using Optimizely if you plan on testing a lot.

I meant, the actual code. Right now, I'm modifying the source directly because nobody is on the site. And I just refresh the page to see the changes.

I'm guessing I should put a copy of my code somewhere else , test there, and then upload the changes when I'm donE?

I see now. Yeah I am not sure about that one myself.

Looks cool. Can't figure out how to use it though...

It's a super niche market, nobody I've met is into it. The people that _were_ into it told me to make sales and contact them again.

I'll give it a shot.

The really painful part comes from wanting to do so much while being paralyzed. People have told me to get myself checked out, but I was in therapy for a while and it turns out I'm perfectly healthy - just anxious, and mildly neurotic.

Having had those periods, thankfully brief, it's all too easy to fall into the spiral of "Another hour/day/week wasted, why a sorry sack I am", while not yet feeling, "I need an intervention". Maybe you (or I, or anyone in a down mood) really do need outside help. But while you debate that, exercise is, for the most part, something you can control. And if you haven't exercised in awhile (which is for me, basically any given day)...you can also benefit from the phenomenon of "well, something is being done, so things must be changing for the better"* (even though you're the initiator of the change). Really, the most important thing is that it's something within your control.

* there's a name for this...it's related to some study where researchers kept repainting the walls of a factory and observed workers becoming happier, regardless of what the color was...

The name is "Hawthorne effect".

Yes I do. I've tried sitting down to work but never get past formatting my code.

My main worry is that nobody else will want my software, and even if they did I wouldn't know how to price it, market it, and sell it. All I really know is to code, even if it just barely passes programming convention and security checks.

I envision so much for what I'm doing, but I have no idea how to get there.

This isn't exactly something you are facing in isolation.

I think a majority of people who write code and want to be tech entrepreneurs face this.

I myself call it: "Build it and they will not come".

I think I will dedicate a blog post to this issue and I will try to use some methods to resolve this issue.

Mainly though, from a philosophy I learnt from a career coder: I'm building it for myself to use or just for the sake of it

The above is a great way to churn out 'dumb' projects purely for the sake of building them out. Carry that momentum to the startup, if it fails, it fails.

This also makes me wonder about the mantra of some people in tech circles urging founders to "fall in love" with their startup.

This is actually a very interesting discussion. Kudos to you for being brave enough to admit that: I like to code but I just don't know what the fuck I am doing anymore.

You could try spending some time filling in your knowledge gaps. If you're not sure how to price, market it and sell it then try stepping away from the code and start watching presentations or reading posts on those topics.

This way you can take a break from your usual routine, learn something new that will probably help you in the long run and then when you have other app ideas you'll have the knowledge to program and market it.

I'd suggest shipping something soon. Give yourself a deadline of a week or so to get something, anything out the door and in someone's hand. Any little feedback you get early on will be invaluable and validate/ realign your mission.

It doesn't even have to be all fancy and coded up. Any little thing would do once it demonstrates your idea.

I phrased everything wrong. I don't want to "hack" anything important in life. On the contrary, I want to set things properly in my life. I want sustainable growth. So pardon me for using the term. It wasn't fitting.

I've met people who've backwards rationalized not having success with women, and the way you can tell that I'm low on self-confidence, I can tell they're full of shit. But I don't think you are, I think you have a point, as do most people posting comments here.Also, because I have seen this "figure" of what a life without this burning desire for sexual validation is like, and it seems legitimately healthy. I've heard of the "cherry on top" expression, and it seems so ideal for love and sex to be the extra bonus that we all welcome and cherish. Unfortunately, I see myself going full-circle with this philosophy and winding up anxious and unhappy. How do I NOT place importance on sex and love? It's essentially what I think of when I wake up, everytime I see a beautiful woman, and at night as I fall asleep. I'm not a romantic, but the idea of it all is just so awesome.

edit: i think i'm getting it.

> How do I NOT place importance on sex and love?

Yep, I see where you're coming from. And if it weren't for that outlook, chances are the entire human race would die out in a matter of centuries, because people would say, "Jesus, what's the point of this? Who actually enjoys all this forehead-beating?" But hardly anyone does that. They get bred out of the population. By natural selection.

I'm not sure what this all boils down to. What does this mean for how I interact in public?

If I still decide to talk to the beautiful women I encounter, that means I'm placing importance on sex, right? Because otherwise, I'd be staring at my work and not really giving a hoot. Or are we saying there's a fine line between pursuing women and obsessing over the idea of love and sex as a determinant factor of one's self-esteem?

How can you tell I lack confidence? Everytime I think I'm being stoic in my writing, my lack of self esteem somehow shines through.

The fact that you're asking the question in the first place, and saying things like 'am I boring' and so on.

lol, dead giveaway.

lol indeed my friend.

> How can you tell I lack confidence?

A self-confident person would never have asked that question.

> Everytime I think I'm being stoic in my writing...

But a true stoic would say, "Women don't see my value. That's their loss, not mine."

Are you saying I let them use it for free, iron stuff out, and then ask them to pay to continue using the service?

I expect issues. The service has a pretty long, horizontal and vertical series of steps to complete. I don't know if I can make them pay what I expect and have them experience something awful.

Nope, actually do everything to get the first few to pay. Once you do that, you can at least be certain that there are people willing to pay for your service/product. You can focus on growing your customer base after your paying customers give you great feedback.

Seems like a bold move. I feel like if I tried doing that, I'd get requests for refunds and a lot of bad press. But I guess your point is that at least I'd have to learn why, and then fix that for my next trial.

Why do you think it is a bold move? Since you have a handful of customers in the beginning, things can never get out of control. Even if your customers don't like the service/product, you can still do something about it - you cannot do it if there are hundreds.

1) Selling to freelancers and small to mid companies. Buying process? I'm trying to break into a really traditional marketplace. They haven't used new "stuff" in years. They also won't be seeking solutions to the problem I solve. Every last person I interviewed reacted in a "shit, I do waste time doing this. But what option do I have?"

2) I'm selling to designers. They're looking to spend less time on a boring but needed task in their workflow. How can I be seen by them? You mean to say, in an online sense?

3) I grew my mailing list with paid questionnaires (real life- put an ad in an online magazine) , cold calls, referalls, friends.

' They also won't be seeking solutions to the problem I solve. Every last person I interviewed reacted in a "shit, I do waste time doing this. But what option do I have?"'

To me, that implies SEO is less likely to be a big payoff compared to paid advertising on subject-matter-relevant sites or publications. You need to work out where these designers "hang out", and how to get ads in front of them proposing your solution to them in an eye and mind-catching enough way. Maybe try advertising somewhere like SmashingMagazine – but carefully measure your costs and conversions, it's _very_ easy to spend way more pre conversion than your customer LTV if you aren't measuring things.

Another thing to consider, can you think of a bunch of keywords you could pay for (for example in Adwords/Adsense) or perhaps Facebook demographics you could target - which might let you get ads in front of designers while they're searching for information related to the existing solutions? I suspect finding keywords/demographics that convert at profitable rates is likely to be hard...