What does being addicted to coding have to do with selling the product? Many times inferior product wins for meriad of reasons(some simply rediculous). Also, selling generic service (like web related dev) is not the same as specialized and highly subjective financial software. But if I had a product, I would probably try to see how far I could take it. Good luck.
Thank you!
For me selling my own products is freedom, I did it for the last 15 years. I worked in a corporate world for the first 2 years of my career, dreaming about quitting every day. Since then, I earned not even a single dollar outside of my business.
As for "highly subjective financial software", it all depends on the amount of time you are ready to invest into market research. 8-12 hours a day for 3-6 months will make you learn more about the market than your average customer, no matter how complex is the niche. It's how I came into the software business world as well. It was enough for me to read as much information as I was able to find on the topic for about 2 months to launch the very first profitable product. By doing it and taking short notes, then rereading them from time to time you can enter literally any niche.
Yes, you will always be an outsider for top guys, but they will not buy anything from you, anyway. They usually have their in-house solutions or teams that are able to develop anything they want. It's good to get their feedback but you should always remember that your real customers will be different. The right strategy is to target beginners, not hardcore users or corporate ones. You just need to become a little smarter than your least educated customer.
To tell you the truth, I was "an outsider" even in the previous niche after I decided not to do SEO in my business. I was a PPC guy but my customers were mostly from SEO/"black hat" world. But it wasn't an obstacle for becoming the leader in the niche for the long time.
While this post isn't directly related to trading, I hope that fan27 will learn something from me
As I didn't resist answering this time, I will add to his previous post that he is underestimating the amount of sales he can get in the very first year. Good launch usually takes 7-14 days, you just need to push the right buttons. In the past, I had launches from $20,000 to $100,000+ in a single day. I'm delaying it this time because I feel that there is something I need to do before the launch. It's not about the product, I will not even share it in public.
PS: My biggest disappointment about software business from the very beginning was that it's not about how good you are as a developer but about how much time do you actually invest into market research and building relationships with others. At the very beginning of any business it's about 70% research/marketing, 20% communication and just 10% of coding. Yes, this number will gradually come to normal but only if you find somebody to do the same amount of research and communications for you
It's really hard, by the way. Most people who call themselves "marketing experts" don't actually have a clue how to do it properly. They usually stick to a limited set of paid marketing channels, never investing their time into in-depth research. It's amazing how much you can learn about any company and the market in general if you just open and read every damn backlink to their website.
You are absolutely right that sometimes crappy products win, you just don't know the inside reason of it. The hard truth is that the better you are as a developer, the harder it is for you to promote your products. I tried numerous times to convert all my friends into my "religion" but failed. All of them gave up when they found how much time they actually need to invest into market research and boring everyday marketing activities. 2 hours of market research can easily eat the whole day because it's really hard to focus and start doing it.
When you see a mediocre product, it usually means that the author is either as bad in marketing as in product development, or the opposite. When somebody prefers to promote the product instead of adding new features and polishing, it's a good sign for the business.
That's why I try to work in batches, focusing on one task at a time. If you try to develop the product in the morning, then promote it in the evening, or even each other day, it will not work. You are either focused on one clear goal, or fail.
Software business isn't "fun" at the very beginning. It's fun only after you did a lot of really boring and hard work. Something like 2-3 months of prison, sometimes even 6-9 months if you are inexperienced and don't know where to start. This way you are replacing market research with trial and error.
But then you can relax and tell everybody that it's fun, why don't they try it?
