I have some sort of a website that's been in "beta" for over a year and I'm really struggling to draw the line somewhere.
There's about 20 features I want it to have, at least half of which serve some sort of a very specific niche that I could easily see attracting some returning visitors (might be dozens, might be thousands). I've almost finished about 5 of them, but instead of finishing them properly, I'm really struggling to limit the scope, release what I already have, and then build additional features on top of a somewhat solid foundation.
At this point I'm kinda second-guessing will I ever even release it, which I think is a shame. I feel very confident in saying that what I have now already stands out in comparison to my competition. I'm also confident that I could easily attract some sort of an initial audience, very cheaply in comparison to most other fields.
Any words of advice? Recommended readings?
I should point out: I'm not in it to make money, I don't want to turn it into a startup (at least not now, without some already-established audience), and while I like to dream about quitting my (unrelated) job, I'm completely fine with it operating under perpetual loss. At the same time, I'm scared I'm gonna throw more money into post-release marketing than I realistically should, which is definitely a whole another reason why I keep justifying perpetually being 95% ready to release... some version of it. Any version of it, even if it's less than what I already have.
IMHO, you just need to launch and get that feedback, and be very shameless about it, ask for it everywhere you can, inside the product, in communities, in DMs, and the user who sees the potential or likes your core-offerings will be more than happy to tell what's missing and what can be improved.
It's every easy to build things, it gives you the constant dopamine that you need at the end of the day, distributing things and facing the world wether the market really needs it is a tough job. YOU NEED TO DO THAT TOUGH JOB. That's what's the most beautiful thing about building, people using it. Rest is noise. Money is noise.