I&#x27;ve tried and failed many times to come up with some kind of small SaaS app that I can just keep running in the background. All of my ideas seem to be just too niche, like solving some tiny problem that no-one would care to pay for. Mainly a lot of different integrations and synchronization between various services. And then I tried my hand at blogs with advertising, or Amazon affiliate sites that went nowhere. And monetized Youtube channels.<p>Do you have any advice about coming up with ideas for real products, that solve real problems for paying customers? I guess another issue is that the market is getting more and more saturated with mobile and web apps now. It seems like you have to be very lucky to stumble on the gold ideas: where it&#x27;s very easy to build, and people really want to pay for it.<p>Or maybe I&#x27;m aiming too low, trying to find some minimal weekend app or website. What would be an average amount of effort that you need to put into your projects before you start seeing a return? Or do you crank out a whole bunch of app ideas until you find one that sticks?<p>EDIT: Really big coincidence, I just read the &quot;How I Built a Side Project&quot; post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stayintech.com&#x2F;info&#x2F;sideproject" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;stayintech.com&#x2F;info&#x2F;sideproject</a><p>That&#x27;s almost exactly what&#x27;s happened to me, 3 or 4 times now. I come up with an interesting idea, build it, post it on Reddit and Hacker News. It gets maybe 20,000 views, then traffic slows down, then I just end up paying a lot of money to keep it running. And it&#x27;s usually something basic that&#x27;s very tough to monetize.