Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs
September 22nd, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
I’ve heard for years about the importance of finding a market before building a software product.
“That’s ridiculous!” I would think, “How can you find a market for something before you build it?”
Years later I’ve realized that the single most important factor to a product’s success is not the founders, not the marketing effort, and certainly not the software itself.
Nope. It’s whether there’s a group of people willing to pay for it.
August 11th, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
At some point in the past year I watched a video of an Eric Sink presentation and he asked the following question (he said it was asked of him by a college student):
Why would someone buy your product when it has an open source competitor?
He didn’t answer it in his presentation, but if I remember correctly he said that to a college student, who tends to have a lot of time and little money, a product like Eric Sink’s Vault (which runs $299/license) is an enigma.
Why would someone pay $299 per user when there’s a perfectly suitable alternative available for free?!
July 24th, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
You’ve probably realized by now that software development and entrepreneurship are two very different things. Software development is a tiny subset of the skills an entrepreneur needs to launch and operate a successful software or web startup.
If you’ve been writing code for years you’ve likely formed opinions that don’t quite hold true in the world of entrepreneurship. This lesson covers a handful of realizations that you will come to at some point during your transition from developer to entrepreneur.
March 12th, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
We launched version 2.5 of DotNetInvoice (my asp.net billing product) about 2 weeks ago. This release is a milestone because for the first ever we have a C# version (in addition to our standard VB.NET version).
The programming language is important because we provide the source code with every purchase…which created one heck of a mess for us a few weeks back.
February 10th, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
Until a few weeks ago I owned one of the top ranking sites on Google for the search term “beach towels.” This meant I received around 2,000 visitors each month in the fall and winter, and up to 5,000 per month during spring and summer.
The problem was that when I’d purchased the site 18 months ago the conversion rate (the rate at which it converted visitors to buyers) was hovering right around 0%.
Correction…it was 0%.
January 7th, 2009 — Micropreneurship, Startups
I ruffled a few feathers with my recent post The Software Product Myth. The unrest surrounded my statement that making $2500/month from your software product wouldn’t allow you to quit your day job.
The comments here and on a few social bookmarking sites mentioned that you could quit your day job if you wanted to, and that you could live on $2500/month just fine in many cities in the world (although in my hypothetical situation I was speaking about a developer based in the hypothetical U.S.).
We could get into a discussion about how much developers make, and how many costs you will take on by quitting your day job, but it’s completely irrelevant.
December 23rd, 2008 — About this Blog, Micropreneurship, Software Development, Startups
Consider this the Year in Review for Software by Rob. Here are my seven most popular posts from 2008:
The Software Product Myth
“A certain percentage of developers become unhappy with salaried development over time (typically it’s shortly after they’re asked to manage people, or maintain legacy code), and they dream of breaking out of the cube walls and running their own show. Some choose consulting, but many more inevitably decide to build a software product.
‘After all,’ they think ‘you code it up and sell it a thousand times – it’s like printing your own money! I build apps all the time, how hard could it be to launch a product?’”
Should You Build or Buy Your Micro-ISV?
“None of the products I’ve built or bought required skills beyond that of a mid-level developer. Let’s be honest, building an invoicing system does not involve insanely complex algorithms and coding chops. Most successful Micro-ISV products (and a lot of not-so-Micro-ISV products) could have been built by a few solid mid-level developers.”
November 18th, 2008 — Micropreneurship, Startups
Most developers start as salaried employees, slogging through code and loving it because they never imagined a job could be challenging, educational, and downright fun. Where else can you learn new things every day, play around with computers, and get paid for it? Aside from working at Best Buy.
A certain percentage of developers become unhappy with salaried development over time (typically it’s shortly after they’re asked to manage people, or maintain legacy code), and they dream of breaking out of the cube walls and running their own show. Some choose consulting, but many more inevitably decide to build a software product.
“After all,” they think “you code it up and sell it a thousand times – it’s like printing your own money! I build apps all the time, how hard could it be to launch a product?”
October 3rd, 2008 — Micropreneurship, Software Development, Startups
Micro-ISVs. I’ve been contemplating the issue of building vs. buying for the past four years.
I’ve been on both sides of the coin: I’ve purchased 10 profit-oriented software products or websites, and built three.
Knowing what it takes to develop the initial version of a non-trivial software product (read: hundreds of hours), I’ve become a fan of buying. This is based on two factors:
As a software consultant I’m booked full-time and I bill a reasonable hourly rate. So to spend 348 hours (2 months) building a product means I’m approaching a mid-five figure investment into a software product. That’s not play money; those are real dollars that don’t wind up in my pocket.
June 26th, 2008 — Micropreneurship, Startups
I’m back from 10-days in L.A. where my wife received her PhD in Psychology after six years of grueling work. Yes, Dr. Walling is now in the house.
I’m launching a decent-sized project tomorrow (about 22 person-months of work), and moving to Boston on Monday – thus the dearth of posts lately. But tonight, instead of doing something important, I’m blogging. Since I don’t have a lot of time I’m going to rattle off a few things I’ve been thinking about:
What’s New
I’m on a kick to increase revenue from a few of my websites. Aside from my ASP.NET Invoicing Application, I run a blog directory submission tool and an e-commerce site.
My blog directory submission service receives 900 organic visitors per month without fail, and has for 3+ years, but only makes around $60 a month. The same goes for my e-com site, except that gets around 5,000 organic visitors (it’s on the first page of google for some generic keywords), and closes only 3-5 orders per month.
Those numbers are despicable, so I’m on a quest to improve the conversion rate of both sites, and will be sharing that process with you in the coming months.
Looking for Suggestions
I’m looking for a term to describe something I’ve been thinking about: a software/web developer who uses his (or her) talents to build, buy, and leverage websites and software applications to create multiple recurring income streams. Sort of a cross between a webmaster, a Micro-ISV and a website flipper.
It’s like a Micro-ISV in that it’s one person, but the “products” he makes money from are not limited to downloadable software. The “products” can be software as a service (SaaS) applications, e-commerce sites, interactive learning environments…anything you would need technical skills to implement that provides real value for a group of people (i.e., not these crappy Adsense sites that clutter search results with poorly-written ESL content). This developer would typically have a portfolio of sites/apps he’s working on to stave off boredom and ensure a stable, recurring income.
I’m trying to describe that in less than the two paragraphs used above, and here’s what I’ve come up:
Yes, this is a somewhat random question, but I think I’m going somewhere with it.
Any suggestions?