I mean it in a couple of ways. Personally, it was too expensive to build because I simply couldn't see spending the time to do it. Part of that (for me) was that it was 2006 and I just didn't know what technology I'd need to invent or find that would do it. There was mod_pubsub and BOSH, and both were kind of a pain, and that's obviously not what they're planning on using.

The second way is just the perennial question of how is it going to pay the bills. Amateur writers… does that sound like a demographic where everybody has an extra $5/month for your service? Could be, but I'm not quite naive enough to try it and find out. I'm not really a "startup guy" though (I'm here for the articles and the conversation), some people who are less risk-averse seem tempted to try; maybe they'll get rich, it's impossible to predict.

Actually your experience illustrates perfectly what I might mean by too expensive to build, don't you think? You and one guy on the side and you couldn't keep up—you may be tempted to find a scapegoat in yourself, your team or your code but frankly nearly every project needs more developers and more time. This is your hobby now, so you know that you can lavish a couple hours a week on something indefinitely, but you've probably also noticed that boring bug fixes are hard to get motivated to do when you only have an hour left in the day and want to do something fun.

Anyway, kudos to you for learning to code, and I'm sorry to hear your project withered. Sounds to me like you did the right thing here.