My end goal is just to make my work useful to someone else.
I do these projects because I want to. I'm going to keep building stuff, because that's what I enjoy. I just feel useless when I think how much time I spend on it, and then nobody cares.
Existing Chinese textbooks don't have colours for tones, pinyin, and literal translations. So I decided to make my own software to do that. I can sit back and judge the textbook authors (saying their stuff sucks), but that doesn't help anyone. So I made my own better one! But the only person who is helped by my work is me. It's not going to change the world if I'm the only person who uses it. Do I have to be a business in order to give stuff away for free?
That helps me understand a bit better. I'm not clear on the legalities of your situation, but it seems like you might benefit from looking into educational institutions and other community resources to see if they could make use of your work.
If you are giving stuff away for free you don't need to be a business, but if what you are giving away has costs associated with that, you need some way of covering those. If not by yourself, then with the help and sponsorship of another org.
I do these projects because I want to. I'm going to keep building stuff, because that's what I enjoy. I just feel useless when I think how much time I spend on it, and then nobody cares.
Existing Chinese textbooks don't have colours for tones, pinyin, and literal translations. So I decided to make my own software to do that. I can sit back and judge the textbook authors (saying their stuff sucks), but that doesn't help anyone. So I made my own better one! But the only person who is helped by my work is me. It's not going to change the world if I'm the only person who uses it. Do I have to be a business in order to give stuff away for free?