Hey all,
My name is Joe and I am a full-time software engineer.
I got into the whole “Online Business” sphere a few years ago, following people like Patt Flynn and other “niche site” folks. I did lots of keyword research and even found a few possible niches to fill but they never panned out because I had no interest in the areas or ability to relate with the audience.
Also during that time I learned Android development on the side and have since released two apps to the Google Play Store. Only one of them made money (with ads, less than $100 dollars a year). This was a client app for a kanban app called LeanKit (which I recommend as an alternative to Trello). LeanKit had created an app for iPhone at the time but had no plans to make one for Android so I filled the gap (they have since released an app that pretty much makes mine obsolete).
For the longest time now I’ve been in a sort of “idea-hell” hoping for some magic idea for software that I could build, whilst reading things like lean startup, etc. Eventually I stumbled upon the term MicroISV and quickly found Amy Hoy’s UnicornFree blog which was a real breath of fresh air. Finally some concrete steps to bootstrap as a solo person.
So that’s where I am at. I have started to “Sales Safari” (researching pains) heavily in my audiences (.NET and Android developers for now) after work for a few hours each day.
Anyway, great to find an active community. Is this the only good one for bootstrappers that is free? The responses I’ve gotten here so far have been great by the way!
Have you identified any pains of your audience already? I heard that developers are a difficult audience to sell to (but I have no idea whether this is true).
