I do programming for fun, after my $dayjob. I've had this great idea for a website that shows you which book form a logical series (for example the seven "Harry Potter"), so that you can look up the sequels to a book.<p>A while back a found a site which has been doing that for a while [1], but that was OK - I didn't like that site's layout and search function, and their license allowed it for me to just import their data.<p>But this week I found another site which does the same thing [2], and they do
it really well. Moreover they have been doing that since 2006, have 8
employees and 1 mio signed-up users. But most importantly they already have a
huge data set. Quite a head start. They have also implemented some ideas I've had for getting some revenue (organizing your own library online, freemium model).<p>Compare that with what I currently have [3], I've worked on that for about
half a year now in my not-so-copious free time.<p>So I'm pretty demotivated right now. I wouldn't mind competing with another
site if I thought I did it better than they do, but currently I don't think
so. The only thing I do better is presenting translations (though I don't have
too much data for that yet), but I don't think that'll be a major selling
point.<p>So, what should I do? Should I just chuck out what I have now and turn to a
differnt project? Or compete nonetheless? Or maybe focus on the German market
(I live in Germany)?<p>I want to build something that people are happy to use and find useful, if it
turns out profitable in the end that would be nice, but that's not my main
priority.<p>[1] http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?7167
[2] http://www.librarything.com/series/Harry+Potter
[3] http://quelology.org/t/9684<p>P.S. yes, I know, I should have searched for other sites more carefully when I
started. Classical market research fail.