Persistence is fine, but don’t allow yourself to be dragged down the wrong path. In an attempt to prevent us from banging our head against a brick wall, an article on the addicted2success.com website describes four signs that indicate we should abandon a business idea.
The market seems to reject your idea, which cannot be validated
If you seem unable to validate your idea, people probably just aren’t interested in it. You can always try some other ways for testing and validating its potential or try to pre-sell it (in other words, ideally, obtain sales even before you have created a product).
If the lack of results persists, you should listen to what the market is telling you: your idea in its current state is not wanted. You can attempt to pivot or tweak it, but it may be high time to move on to something completely different.
You’ve lost your passion for the idea
Has what started out as a passion turned into something that feels more like an immense chore? Lost passion will only lead to exhaustion and dissatisfaction at work.
Poor profit margin
If your profit margin is too low and you are unable to increase it, the idea may just not be a very good one. If neither negotiations with potential vendors nor cutting some expenses increases the margin, perhaps you should cease to pursue your current idea.
You cannot explain it easily
Is the idea impossible to explain easily to potential customers? In that case, it is probably too confusing, which is not good since confusing ideas seldom achieve large customer bases. To initiate demand, you need to invoke desire in your customers. If people don’t understand which problem your product solves or what it does, they are not going to feel any desire to own or use it.
-jk-