Introduction: The Twenty-Three Cent Victory

Last Friday, I finally experienced the exciting feeling of watching my Stripe balance go above $0. It went from $0.00 to $0.23, and it's hard to express how excited I was for this $0.23.

A year ago, I was sitting in my apartment, unemployed, applying to jobs that I knew I'd likely be rejected from. I knew there had to be another way, some crossover or opportunity I wasn't taking advantage of. This led me down the path to formulating the idea for teach-niche.com, an online marketplace for kendama players to buy and sell video tutorials. Having played kendama for nearly 8 years, I know the community deeply and realized this was something people might actually want.

"Easy enough," I thought. "Just make an online video marketplace? I could do that in two weeks if I really tried." Naive. Nearly a year later, I've finally launched the platform in a state where things actually work. This blog post chronicles why it took me a year to build something I thought I could build in two weeks, and how, eventually, all it actually took was two weeks (of focused, simplified effort). It's about the messy, non-linear reality of building and launching a side project, the importance of persistence, the power of the "fuck it, ship it" mindset, and what happens after you finally launch.

The Spark - Why Teach Niche?

I am deeply involved in the kendama community and absolutely love the international space created by this simple ball and stick toy. It's hard to describe the community if you're not a part of it, but just know that it's tight-knit and pretty accessible. You can go to any of the major events and talk to your favorite players right then and there. I remember doing this for the first time in 2019, when I went to my first true kendama event. Meeting the pros and players I'd been watching do mind-boggling tricks was a significant step in my journey as a kendama player, and I realized how much impact it has on your progress to simply watch very good players play in person.

While I could never replicate the feeling of being at an event in person, I wanted to get as close as I could. Hence the idea for Teach Niche. Kendama is highly specialized; there are tricks being invented basically weekly. Some of these catch traction and become "meta" tricks in the community. Yet, the creators of these tricks rarely have the opportunity to share their discovery process and methodology for gaining consistency. Unless you're DMing that person or talking to them at an event, you'll probably never learn that trick how they learned it. And learning from the creator is incredibly valuable.

This was the gap I sought to fill with Teach Niche: a place where you could go to support your favorite players for teaching their favorite tricks. Tutorials would only be a few bucks, helping pros fund their trips to events, and fostering a much more personal connection for the individual learning their trick.

The Labyrinth - A Year of Building (and Rebuilding)

Now that I knew what I wanted the site to be, I started building. This is where things went off the rails. I bought templates, watched course after course, dug into frontend development, and tried to truly understand what a production-quality codebase should look like. Again, I was doing all of this while searching endlessly for a full-time SWE job (something that never came).

I built and rebuilt the initial beta version several times last spring, and I kept finding myself getting stuck. Sometimes the frontend would look amazing, but the backend wouldn't connect. Or I'd build the entire database and be unable to translate the schema into an easy-to-use frontend. Or I'd get puzzled by authentication and payment processing. This was 100% uncharted territory for me.

And so I built and rebuilt until, last October, I was finally able to ship a "beta" version of the site. I made a big announcement, created an LLC, set up an Instagram account, and thought things were finally done. Until I had a single user try it. There were bugs in authentication, bugs in lesson creation and video uploading, bugs in payment processing. The beta version was a showcase for the idea but not much else.

And although the technical aspect of the site fell flat, the idea caught fire in the community. I had around 2,000 page visits in the first week of the beta being live, visitors from all over the world. If it weren't for the community surrounding the project, I probably would've just let the site die. However, now I had wind in the sails. I told the world that the beta version was just that – a beta – and that I was going back to the drawing board to rebuild the whole site properly.

The False Dawn and the Crash

From November to February, I got distracted from the project by another venture. However, I'd learned so much in the process of building the beta that I was confident I could just rip out the full production-quality codebase in a week or two (making the same mistake I made the first time). Once again, I had NEVER shipped production-quality code before this, and while I was more technically able, I was still not at a point of being able to build this project in two weeks.

So I set a launch date: March 1st. It felt like do or die at this point. I had made a promise to my community and was essentially staking my reputation on that promise.

In February, I built. I spent the entire month putting in 10-12 hour days, over-optimizing, convincing myself I was making progress. It seemed like every two weeks I was having to restart the entire project because I got carried away on some feature and ended up destroying the database, frontend, and everything else. As the days dwindled, it was so clear that I was not going to hit the March 1st deadline.

I still pretended I could. I made a post the day before, stating boldly that the site would be live in the morning. I stayed up until 3 am trying to cobble together some Frankenstein piece of software. And it didn't work. None of it worked. Videos weren't uploading, authentication was broken, and I hadn't even touched payment processing.

This was crushing. I felt like I had failed entirely. Like I'd wasted a year and thrown away my reputation in the kendama community for some half-baked idea that I couldn't even fully build. I took a few weeks off. I was inactive on all platforms. Although I knew better, it felt like the whole community was laughing at this failed attempt to bring an idea to life.

The Real Rebuild - Simplicity and Focus

It took me a few weeks to even warm back up to the idea of trying again, to build this thing that I had seemingly proven I couldn't build. This time, though, I went in fresh. I cut the platform down to the most basic features and didn't even consider adding anything that wasn't absolutely essential: Authentication, payment processing, and video upload/playback. That's all.

And this time, I actually did build it in two weeks. And it worked.

Somehow, after a year of building the same codebase at least a dozen times, this one stuck. I simplified, cut out all third-party providers, and just admitted to myself that this wasn't going to be perfectly optimized, and the UI wasn't going to be mind-blowing. That's not what people wanted. People wanted the original idea: buying and selling video tutorials. So that's what I built.

Launching into the Void (and Finding a Spark)

I launched it quietly at the beginning of April. I made a single Instagram post and nothing else. Just threw it out there. I was so sick of this codebase that I just said, "fuck it, it's out there. If people want to use it, go ahead."

After a few weeks of zero site visitors, I realized that I'd put in a year's worth of work just to let the finished product sit there unused. That felt more ridiculous than having to build the site a dozen times. So, last week I doubled down and started DMing pros that I knew were interested originally. There weren't many takers. People said they'd check it out, but I could sense that the original excitement had faded. So I made a post practically begging creators to post lessons, explaining how the platform can't function without community engagement.

Finally, a player bit. He was stoked to create a lesson and saw the potential in the platform. After some back-and-forth communication with him (and realizing there were a few remaining critical bug fixes needed), his lesson was eventually posted. He promoted the site and the lesson, and suddenly I was back to where I was in October, with hundreds of users checking out the site.

And after about two hours of the lesson being live, it happened. The first successful sale for $2.50. Someone had successfully used the platform to learn. The dream was alive again.

I set the platform up to be generous to creators by intention, so the creator took 85% of that $2.50, leaving me with around $0.23 after fees. I almost cried because of that twenty-three cents. Creating this site has been so hard, and although it'll probably take me years to earn back the money I spent on LLM API credits and unnecessary subscriptions during the development process, I couldn't be happier for that single sale.

Right now, the platform still only has one lesson and one sale. I've still only earned $0.23 in total. But again, this tiny amount means so much more to me than its face value. It's validation that I've built something that people want to use. That they are willing to pay to use. And now that I've tasted that, I'm hooked.

Lessons from the Trenches

Looking back on this year-long rollercoaster, a few key lessons stand out. Overcoming inertia and the trap of perfectionism is crucial; my biggest hurdle wasn't technical, but the fear of launching something imperfect – done is so much better than perfect. Simplifying ruthlessly was key; cutting features to the core value proposition allowed me to build the working version in two weeks, whereas the previous year was spent on complexity I didn't need. Launching provides the ultimate MVP reality check; it's the only way to truly find out what works and what breaks with real users, and your MVP might be simpler or less broken than you fear. Community is everything; the initial beta buzz kept the idea alive, and the first creator's enthusiasm reignited the project – nurture your early adopters. Persistence, even through a non-linear path with restarts and self-doubt, eventually pays off; sticking with it led to the $0.23 breakthrough, proving the time wasn't wasted but spent learning the hard way. Finally, validation is addictive; that first small sale provided more motivation than months of isolated building, highlighting the importance of getting real user feedback early and often.

Conclusion: The $0.23 Beginning

So, that's the story of how it took a year of struggle, multiple rebuilds, a public failure, and a final two-week sprint to earn twenty-three cents. It sounds absurd, but that small transaction represents the overcoming of a significant personal challenge – finally shipping something real.

The journey was messy, frustrating, and far longer than anticipated. But the feeling of seeing someone successfully use the platform, validating the core idea after all this time, makes it feel worth it.

Teach Niche is still just beginning. It has one lesson and $0.23 in revenue. The next steps involve getting more creators onboard (the $20 bonus for the first few lessons is still active!), continuing outreach, and refining the platform based on actual usage. But now, it feels real. The foundation is laid, the core loop works, and the potential is there.

Building something from scratch is hard. It rarely follows the plan. But if you believe in the core idea and can push through the inevitable setbacks, even the smallest victories can feel monumental.

What's Your Story?

• Kendama Players/Instructors: Check out the platform at TeachNiche.com – browse the first lesson or consider sharing your own skills!
• Fellow Builders: What's your launch story? What were the biggest hurdles you faced getting your project out the door? Share your experiences in the comments below!