Back in 2008, my wife and I had an idea to create an online business directory that would be different to anything else on the market at the time.
Where other services include an address, phone number, map and possibly a few customer reviews, ours would function as a mini-website that could be tailored to any business type.
I spent a couple of weeks looking at existing business directories and websites business owners had set up for themselves to figure out how I would combine the functionality of both into one package.
We spoke to a few business owners as well as some ordinary people who were just frustrated with existing big-name business directories. We received mostly positive responses and that was enough for us to push forward with the project.
After a few weeks of coding, I had a system that functioned like a regular business directory, but with a unique feature. Industry specific components, which I called "modules," could be installed into a business listing to display information specific to that particular industry.
If you owned a car dealership, you could install the car dealer module and be displaying your vehicle listings on your listing in minutes. If you had a hotel, there was a module to display available hotel rooms. I also built modules for general retail merchandise, restaurant menus, events, coupons and more. Anything that I had seen business websites displaying online had the potential to become a module in our business directory.
Each module would ask the user to fill in some predetermined fields and that data would be formatted and displayed to anyone visiting their listing in the directory.
While the directory was really cool from a programming perspective, it was, unfortunately, a commercial failure.
After pitching to local businesses, it become obvious that the features I had thought were useful were either too complicated for our target audience or offered more functionality than they needed. Despite the original idea receiving positive feedback, it just didn't work in practice.
Lessons Learned
Don't over-complicate
I got caught up in creating cool features that were a little too complicated for our target audience. Even people I'm related to still don't really know what the business did.
Launch early
I didn't launch the website until it was almost entirely complete. If I had launched earlier with a cut down version, I could have better judged the response and either moved on to another project or taken a different direction. I'm almost certain that launching much earlier would have enabled me to predict the failure of the project.
Do create something just because you think it's cool, but don't try to make a living off it
You definitely shouldn't avoid a programming project simply because you're the only person interested in it. Even if it doesn't become a sustainable business, it'll still be fun and you'll learn something from it.