I came across a post today that really stuck with me.
Its gist: if you don’t have enough financial cushion, keep your day job, and use your spare time to build products, make content and study SEO. Neither Gefei nor Shengcai is the cure.
SEO takes the right direction, long-term accumulation and slow, careful work. It can bring traffic, but whether that turns into income, and how long it takes to become profitable, is very uncertain. Shengcai is a mixed bag. It’s mostly resource matching, information exchange and project collaboration, so don’t expect too much from it.
That resonated with me.
I Once Saw Them as the Cure
I joined both the Shengcai Youshu and Gefei communities.
For a while I treated them as the answer, and even recommended them to friends.
Over time I realized it’s unrealistic to expect a community to change your situation. What changes it is always what you actually build with your own hands.
Shengcai Does Only Two Things for Me
The sprint. It pushes me to take a project from 0 to 1 within a fixed window of 21 days. A deadline and peers doing the same is far more effective than dragging it out alone.
Offline meetups. These are worth more to me. I make friends there, see what everyone is working on, and come away more motivated to keep going.
Gefei Feels Closer to Home
The Gefei community feels more familiar. More of its members work in tech, including plenty of developers, so conversations flow easily.
Last year I went to the in-person conferences in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen, and since the start of this year I’ve been steadily practicing SEO.
What’s Next
I won’t treat any community as a lifeline. They’re tools: Shengcai to force me to ship and meet people, Gefei to learn SEO and talk with peers.
I’ll put more time into SEO from here. I’m keeping my day job and building the side project at my own pace.
