brokenbeatnik's comments

How many hours a month would it take to run if you weren't focused on improving the product, just keeping the site running?

If the answer to that is a decent hourly rate, do that and then just start doing something else.

If it's not, and you aren't able to figure out growth, you may want to shut the doors, as I think it's not likely that you'll see a lot of buyers looking for $6K annual revenue, even at high margins.

I'm not that good at marketing either, but I'm having to figure it out. We programmer types think that "if you build it, they will come", and that a better mousetrap will trump any need for a sales and marketing strategy beyond a good checkout page. The truth is, if you don't figure out some of the marketing basics for yourself, at least enough to know what type of marketing experts to use, you'll be likely to have the same problems with your next venture. You might get lucky and stumble into a hot market, but if you don't, marketing will be the difference between being in the top tier making a double digit percentage of the available revenue in the market and being an also-ran making a pittance.

Neat analysis. Do keyless entry cars not have some kind of "too many presses" sensor that would slow this process down or render it impossible by making you start over? I don't know, I'm just asking.

I'm sorry to hear.

First thing: if money isn't a problem, that's really awesome. Put work in a box for a bit. Quit trying to make the business a rousing success for a month or two, and just work 8-2 or 9-3 or whatever schedule works for you and keep the lights on. From 3 on, do the stuff you like to do. Seriously, hold yourself to it. Put it in a box and punch out at 2 or 3 pm or whenever. You have to contain it before you can unpack it and figure out its proper place in your life.

Second: Forgive yourself for not being a wild public success. This startup thing is hard (I know, I've been doing it for 10 years), and it's even harder alone. If you made enough to eat and keep a roof over your head without being an employee, you have something to show for it.

Third thing: Read The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and the 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. I know the second book gets love and hate from people, but I think he locked on to a key piece of wisdom early. It's not about not working or not doing stuff. It's about getting money out of the way so that you can spend your time on things you're passionate about. Those things aren't necessarily fun or easy, but they make you feel alive and purposeful.

If you're a person of faith, talk to your religious leader. If not, maybe sign up for something like meditation, Happify.com or something to reconnect you with things that make you happy or at least get you centered and get your anger, sadness, and guilt processed.

Last but not least, talk to your fiancee. Admit everything you're feeling. Cry it out if you have to. If you can't talk to the person you're going to marry about what's down inside you, it will be a problem later on. I don't know your situation, but assuming it's otherwise good with her and she loves you, she will appreciate your vulnerability and support you where you need it.

You've done good work to get this far; a lot of people don't have the ability, and fewer still have the courage. You don't have to give it up. You just need some real rest.

Geocoda (http://geocoda.com) launched last year, does point storage as well as geocoding, and should be comparable for low amounts of geocoding, and cheaper for large amounts per month (> 250K).

At ProjectLocker (http://www.projectlocker.com) we use Trac for issue tracking for ourselves and as a hosted service. By extension, so do our customers :).