I found this comment interesting. I haven’t had any success, not for lack of trying, but it seems like most advice I’ve heard is that technical users are hard to sell to.
a) They think they could do it themself in a weekend. Even though it took you 5 person years of work.
b) They are used to using lot of free and opensource software and don't expect to pay for software.
Other technical users (chemical engineers, civil engineers etc) are probably easier to sell to. But I don't have any data to back that up.
I think it is often true that 1) a talented programmer 2) can solve their own specific use case 3) in a janky way that is only usable to them, in a weekend.
That’s very far off from a product, but is enough for the programmer to not become a customer.
When they need software for something, they would google it and use the top results. Those folks are very very difficult to reach as an indie developer.
In my case, if someone google's "how to create a blog", there's literally no chance anything I do as an indie will put me in the top 5 results. Just one example of course, usual caveats and exceptions etc etc ...
This is important. All businesses should understand what their goals are, and should make decisions that serve their goals.
And it's very important to understand that there are different goals, and hence that there are different companies doing things in different ways.
One person's experience in one kind of company can lead to the conclusion that all companies behave like that. Which is untrue.
If the goal is to have fun, then make decisions that lead to fun.
However if the goal is to make a living, then make decisions that lead to income. Unfortunately most of those decisions will lead to not-fun.
Developing a software business, with paying customers, able to pay salaries, becoming sustainable, means mostly doing business things not software things. And in most cases building software does not lead to success. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
Most business (financial) success comes through the other bits. Marketing. Sales. Support. Documentation. Invoicing. Accounting. Etc.
Having fun is good. But it's ideal if that's not your day job and you can afford not to rely on it for income.
“Primus sucks!”
