What is your time worth to you?

Would you rather work your ass off and make 5k, or have a sane workload, make 2k for a while, which then rises as you have adequate internal infrastructure to support growing sales and users?

It sounds like you have a good thing going, and I'd strongly recommend at looking to get another pair of hands involved - or close it down.

The OP could clarify this but has chosen not to.

What do you want? A pound of flesh?

My sincere apologies for wasting your time.

1) Put the project on hold until you're done with school

2) Put school on hold until you're done with the project or can afford to hire people to deal with it while you're in school.

Unfortunately, there's only so much time in a day and you need to sleep some. Priorities suck.

I can't tell you much about managing the coding part, but I've got experience getting solid support systems up and running for developer-type products. Feel free to drop me an email if you'd like to bounce ideas back and forth on what you're doing and what might help make the load more manageable. I may be able to help with some of it too for cheap/free time permitting. Good luck either way!

Also count your blessings, there are a lot of people your age who would love to have your problem.

best wish and good luck

If 4-5k per month is in dollars I would look in to hiring a part time person to help out with bug reports/support tickets to free up some of your time. Finding someone good might be tough, but look first in your circle of friends. I expect a fellow student would be looking for some extra spending money. Test out a few of your friends for the position.

Other than that it sounds like you've built a great tool that's making good revenue.

http://startupsfortherestofus.com has some great information that can help you I would start listening to those especially the ones relating to the problems you're going through right now.

Last thought is maybe relaxing some, setup an autoresponder to bug reports and tickets that you have received their bug/request and allow yourself some time on the non-critical ones.

Good luck, sounds like you're on the right track.

The value of a diploma is that it shows potential employers that that you can put your mind to something and see it through to completion.

Also, think about switching to ramen for a few months. Thats the part of startup life that you tend to not see in the movies and magazines. Pre-seed tends to involve ramen. Lots and lots of ramen.

Though it's temporary, and somewhat romanticized (I still eat ramen), that's a terrible suggestion health-wise :-) I think dry beans + crock pot + rice is a better, low cost diet.

Do you need to "manage sales", if your current userbase is already overhwelming? Or can you find someone to to that work for you, and be paid on commission only?

Can you outsource at least the intial response to support tickets, so you only need to worry about 2nd tier responses?

Are you prioritizing new coding toward reducing support tickets?

Is there any automation that can be done to streamline your daily tasks, either for school or for this work?

Frankly, can you slack off on your schoolwork a bit? Unless you plan on grad school, your final GPA at college is not really all that important. (Within reason -- drop from a 3.5 to a 3.0 is OK, but from a 3.5 to a 2.0 might be a mistake.)

Can you reduce your monthly personal expenses, to help afford to hire someone? Are these other ways to simplify your personal life?

In general, you need to performance tune your life. Fix all the small stuff before worrying about major changes.

Have that person also build a very comprehensive FAQ, if one does not exist. They can also process any time consuming sales routines for you (refunds, billing questions, whatever). If they're any good at basic sales, you can give them a commission for selling which might get their income up to near full-time after a while.

Begin slightly restricting what kind of support tickets you'll handle (specifically begin to make it abundantly clear to users that if their question is in the FAQ, all you're going to get is pointed to the FAQ; ratchet that up to whatever degree is necessary).

Keep in mind that if this is your first time managing others, it will require some up-front investment of time. Managing people is difficult, but not impossible to become very good at. My advice for you at the outset is to be really clear and consistent about your goals, and to be open and honest with your community about the experiment you're undergoing. They'll give you a lot of credit for doing this as a student, and I think you'll find they have more patience than you think.

If stress becomes a problem, consider speaking with a professional about that (e.g., through your University), or practicing meditation and mindfulness. Good luck!

Good luck.

Ask yourself, why are you studying? what's it for? A good job?. Why do you want a good job/career? for money? Well here you have an opportunity to skip the qualification step and get straight to the end goal.

I say go for it. You'll learn more about yourself and your worth in one year of business then you ever will studying.

Prioritize until things calm down. Are you accepting feature requests? Stop doing that until you nail down a stable release.

Don't have a heart attack. Stress can seriously kill you. If it becomes too much start considering exit strategies (yes, that means selling it). 4-5K a month isn't much, but it's impressive as I'm guessing you aren't even marketing it - you could make a nice bit of cash by making it someone else's problem.

Your happiness and health comes first.

If it were Rupees or Yen then I'd get your point and suggest you sell the revenue source. But do it in a way that works as a double win. Find a development shop that will take you on part time and buy the tool. You'll get a lump sum and a steady job, they'll get a proven money maker and motivated employee.

This is one of those nice problems to have.

In the mean time, get community member(s) to be a bug triager and forum voice. Communicate through them.

By the way: What tool are you working on?

Episode 196- how to use a va in your startup http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-196

2. Try to get a developer who can support you, should not be to hard

3. Try to scale your business

Where are you based?

And your English is fine!

If you are 19 then you are probably worried about disappointing users, parents, and other people. You need to understand something important, which I will give to you in a story. Think like you're a professional chef, and your kitchen gets overwhelmed: I will tell you, your customers will wait an hour for their food to come out, if that food is good. Obviously you don't want to make them wait an hour, obviously they will be impatiently staring at their watches, but all of that will be forgiven if what they're waiting for is good. Similarly, a good product will be much easier to sell, when you have time for it. So: if you start thinking of yourself as an adult and a professional, do not be afraid of making your clients wait. You have professional courtesy: they want your product, and they will wait, within reason.

If you want, universities make it very easy to take a year away from your studies: it's called a "leave of absence" in English. You can thus spend a year focusing on your tool without abandoning your studies, if you want.

If you really want to hire another developer, you may be able to borrow money, especially since you've proven that you're making money. Check out what banks will offer you in terms of loans.

You can do both at once, but you must be single-minded. If you want some inspiration, read the Water Book of the Book of Five Rings by Musashi -- it's freely available as public domain online. Pay attention to what he says about striking (cutting, in many translations): "When you wield your sword, your intent must be to strike the enemy. As you strike him your grip must remain, your hands must not flinch. Even if you parry the enemy's sword, only change your thumb and forefinger a little. Most importantly, you must hold the sword intent on striking the enemy. Your grip is the same in theory and practice: grip the sword as if you want to kill a man... Striking and slashing are two different things. However you strike, the act is decisive and resolute in your heart. Slashing is just touching the enemy. Even when slashing with vigor, even when the enemy dies, it is merely slashing. When you strike, your heart is resolved: you must learn to appreciate the difference. If you do slash the enemy's hands or legs, follow it up with a powerful strike. Slashing at heart is no different from touching with a sword. One who understands cannot tell the difference."

Similarly, if you want to make a dent in your work, you have to put your whole heart into the strike. You have to have the intent to destroy some bug, to get rid of some task, to finish some homework. It is very different from just investigative coding and meandering: it is singleminded and heartfelt. It comes with a certain joy/euphoria when it is over and you have made the change -- and this is addictive.

If you approach both your studies and your tool with singleminded intensity, you can do both at once. If you do not approach them this way, then work will pile up on one of them until you are overwhelmed by numbers.

If you already are overwhelmed by the amount of work, do not fear. Most people, especially teenagers, underestimate how much power patience and persistence have. A tiny river over time erodes a canyon; a sink will still drain, no matter the water flowing into it, if you can free up whatever is clogging it. Actually, this is the deep truth about how magic works: You say "how could that magician have known I would randomly draw the four of clubs," not letting yourself think that he or she might have simply taken 50 decks of cards, pulled out the four of clubs from all of them, and put them together into one deck, so that you had no choice. If someone can't see your patient actions, the results will be indistinguishable from magic.