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Is success down to the quality of your work?
- CM30 9y agoAmong other things yes. The big mistake people make is assuming it's the only factor (or perhaps the most important one). However, I'd say another important factor here is simple timing. Does the world want what you're offering at that point in time? Cause if your chosen programming language went out of fashion a decade ago or your idea simply doesn't make sense any more, it's probably not going to make you successful. So many successful people, services and websites only caught on because they offered something that the world was looking for at just the right time. For example, Google was revolutionary, with its search engine making the company/its founders billions of dollars. But to much of an extent, it also only did as well as it did because other search engines were so terrible at the time. If someone else had gotten in first (like say, if modern DuckDuckGo or Bing had been around in the 90s), then it's possible the site would have faded into obscurity. Same goes with a lot of things. If the telegraph or fax machine had been invented after email, they'd be obsolete before they even launched and be massive commercial failures for their creators. True of many YouTube creators too. How many became popular because they rode trends? I'd say thousands of them. Success is certainly partly down to the quality of your work and how you promote it, but it's also down to whether you happen to offer something that society wants at the time you offer it. Both luck and skill play into it there.