Hang in there. It does take longer than you think and it's a marathon with a lot of peaks and valleys.

You do need a market, not just a product. You also need to network to get input, partners, and build a BD pipeline. You don't necessarily need revenue at first, you need to prove external interest, whether that's a beta, pilot, or collaboration/partnership. All these things will add to your momentum.

I too am in a similar situation, where I am building a niche product - partly for my own benefit, partly for learning, but mostly with the idea of selling it as a commercial product.

I have plenty of worries about it - will the product sell at all, is the product too niche so I'll have sales but not enough to make it full time, am I barking up the wrong tree and there is already an open source free alternative that I've somehow missed, what if nobody likes it? All sorts of stuff, some warranted, and some just the usual fear of making something and putting it out there.

With that being said I do consider a big portion of success being luck, as any one lucky event could catapult you to riches, and any unlucky event could ruin any chance of that happening, but in the end you have to take a risk and put yourself out there for the lucky events to happen.

But as with all risky things you have to be prepared for it all to go to shit, and then have enough of a support network which will help you get back onto your feet.

I genuinely hope that other people have some more concrete advice here or even war stories to tell.

People were sold on the lie that solo was the way to go.

Solo, not one time in all of human history, has ever been the way to go.

Of all the lies you could chose to believe in life, this one is the worst.

7 years, or rather, more time than you expected is correct. Generally, success happens slowly. To succeed, just don't fail. If you keep your job, muddle along with your side business, avoiding debt, keeping your fixed costs low, and most importantly, survive, your customer base will grow and your competitors will melt away. If you are not luckier or earlier than others, you will still succeed by being more patient than others.

If you’re an expert in a particular niche and people just bring you work, then being a solo operator works fine.

You choose which engagements to take on based on your own capacity, and you’re not burning cycles on business development etc.

I know one guy who actually succeeded. He ran a hard-mode outsourcing shop for like, 15 years, for many years making 100-150K/month net in his pocket, but with AI, it went to zero by about end of 2024, so he was left with no income and lost all his (rather large) team. He started experimenting with products and after about 3-4 failed tries, landed a successful one which nearly replicates his old income, it is a mixed (live women and AI) porn webcam app. Took more than $2M sunk into dev and marketing costs before he hit PMF. He still spends almost everything he makes on research into new niches - fintech, trading, various scam niches, and more porn, but so far nothing else sticks.

Yet, he is delighted to not have to run outsourcing shop anymore, and make same income with much smaller team and much more ethical line of business than outsourcing.

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