I really don't think that you have a failure on your hands.<p>You should stop to think that way and start to think about how you are going to monetize your users, one way would be to literally ask the community: "Hey guys & girls, this is going great but I need a living, what should I do for you to throw some money my way" might be a good start.<p>Most small scale bootstrapped start-ups would be trumpeting their success from the rooftops if they got a dedicated userbase like that.
So... did you ever <i>try</i> a revenue model? Make some sort of premium account? I'm not speaking from any amount of experience, but you have 7000 users, you're about to throw in the towel on the business end of things anyway, I would think it's worth trying to come up with something.
1. Your domain is, in my opinion, terrible. We spent three minutes trying to pronounce it.<p>2. "We have >7,000 users, and lots of them are still super active in the community." That's actually great start! Why aren't you trying to expand?
This is not what it feels like to fail. You've got an active, committed community of 7000 users - that is not even close to failure.<p>When I built Despammed.com in 1999, I peaked at around that. Donations were plenty to keep the site running and even paid for the mortgage once or twice when things were tight. You've got a much more committed community there, and while you're not going to be the next YouTube (because learning a language is <i>hard</i>, while watching TV is <i>not</i>), you've built a useful service that can run in perpetuity and that, my friend, is what <i>success</i> feels like.<p>I think you need to move on to your next idea; let Lenguajero run for a few years, try to think of a premium version of the service in some way, but mostly just let it ferment and grow organically, and get yourself engaged in something you'll find fun. Keep yourself moving.
Just for the fun of it does anyone want to throw out some new names for the site? Lenguajero is pretty bad in English. I think we fell into the trap of speaking Spanish everyday and thinking that it just sounded cool (and a bit witty). Ideas???
Just to clarify. I'm not shutting down Lenguajero. It will keep on running (at least I'll still use it to practice my Spanish :)), and maybe we'll come up with an idea on how to monetize.<p>One of the challenges we faced in monetizing the site was monetizing our international members. A really big chunk of our users are from Central and South America. When it comes to advertising we don't make any money off these users (say $0.05 per click versus ~$1.00 for someone in America). The majority of these users also don't have credit cards or paypal so getting them to pay for a premium version of the site would be difficult.
Startup failure != you as a failure.<p>It's 2 separate events. Associating startup failure as you as a failure is a very slippery slope; because eventually you won't get out of bed because everything you can possibly do when you get out of bed is going to result in failure anyway, so why get out of bed. Remember - 2 separate things :)<p>And as others have mentioned, many other startups <i>wished</i> they had 7K of passionate users.<p>Keep tryin! :)
I think it's a great idea. Are you sure you want to give up on it ? Why do you call it a failure ? I wouldn't call having 7000 users a failure. You have plenty of room to grow.<p>Let me know if you want feedback. One reason a lot of people trying to learn a new language give up is because of lack of motivation after a while / not finding people to converse/practice/learn with (and I talk from first-hand experience)
I've been feeling the same way about my startup, which has almost 17,000 users but only a small amount of them are paying customers (launched a paid plan a few months ago). I keep wanting to ask myself how much longer I should give it to see if it reaches profitability, or should I just shut it down? Anyway, right now I'm creating a survey for the paying users to be able to tell what they like/don't like about the paid plan. I also plan on doing a referral program that benefits both parties (I did get both of those ideas from a slideshow about a startup and their freemium model, forgot which). Keep those ideas in mind if you ever plan on introducing any paid plans and good luck.
As a member of a small group of friends, venturing into the possibility of our first start-up, seeing the failures of others can be really eye opening.<p>I suppose I haven't thought too much about a revenue source, however the first major thing we're going to do is an Android app... If you can call that major.
I'm coming off a very painful startup failure myself, but I am honestly very thankful for the experience. There is an old cliche that says you learn more from your failures than your successes. It's become a cliche for a reason, it's usually true.<p>I reflect often on the entire experience and constantly go over all the mistakes we made in hindsight. It's painful, really painful, but you learn from the pain. The pain makes it real so you won't ever make the same mistakes again.<p>I'm onto my next startup now and all that hard learning is paying off. I'm working even hard but with much less stress since I know I'm doing the right things this time around.
I'm really surprised at all the negative comments on the domain name. I thought it was great!<p>I've picked a poor domain myself, due to the influence of another language (Mandarin), but this is Spanish! Not only is it the #2 language on the planet, it's a language that I thought would instantly recognizable to both Europeans and Americans.<p>Moral of the story: Make domain names out of English words and never ever assume your users have exposure to other languages.
Keep going, even if this isn't the site. Like you said, you've come miles in just one year, and you've achieved more than you're giving yourselves credit for.<p>Turn off Mixergy and get to work. :)
Stop-loss on your time and effort is at times a smart business decision. There is no point in sugar coating it. That being said, a failed business does not make you a failure. Not at all.