OP here. First off, I see a lot of the comments have a very similar theme. 5 months is too soon to give up. Well, I haven't given up, I've only decided there is no business model without overhauling the concept (which I am not prepared to do for the moment).
I have watched traffic, and the habits of the users. The bounce rate could be lowered by tweaking some things, but there is not enough to bring users back on a weekly, or even monthly basis. I am open to suggestions, and will continue to watch my traffic. I have too many other decent ideas to sink more time into a fun site that has no business model (and don't tell me ad-supported is a valid option).
Instead of shutting it down, you should leverage on your existing user-base for your next project. I actually had a similar experience, I created a hobby project as I learn RoR, and the project did take off with substantial traffic generated. However, the idea itself is not monetizable, other than pathetic AdSense. With this huge user base, I have created a second project, but this time with a solid business model before I started a single line of code. I'm channeling lots of traffic from the non-profitable project to the profitable one.
Comments
OP here. First off, I see a lot of the comments have a very similar theme. 5 months is too soon to give up. Well, I haven't given up, I've only decided there is no business model without overhauling the concept (which I am not prepared to do for the moment).
I have watched traffic, and the habits of the users. The bounce rate could be lowered by tweaking some things, but there is not enough to bring users back on a weekly, or even monthly basis. I am open to suggestions, and will continue to watch my traffic. I have too many other decent ideas to sink more time into a fun site that has no business model (and don't tell me ad-supported is a valid option).
Instead of shutting it down, you should leverage on your existing user-base for your next project. I actually had a similar experience, I created a hobby project as I learn RoR, and the project did take off with substantial traffic generated. However, the idea itself is not monetizable, other than pathetic AdSense. With this huge user base, I have created a second project, but this time with a solid business model before I started a single line of code. I'm channeling lots of traffic from the non-profitable project to the profitable one.
fwiw, I think you're doing absolutely the right thing. The opportunity cost of sticking with it is too high when you have better ideas to work on.