Whether you just want to write cool software for yourself or you are looking to kick off a side business, you can get started with little upfront investment. This week on Herding Code, the guys talk about the ease of becoming a one-man independent software vendor (ISV.)
- Scott K starts off the show with a list of free online invoicing and financial tools along with a number of services which provide free disk space.
- Jon notes that advertising and micropayments are cheap and easy to setup in minutes.
- Kevin talks about his recent endeavor, review2Q, an ASP.NET MVC application, hosted in the Azure cloud, which helps automate the management of his Netflix’s queue. It was an itch that he just needed to scratch and, with little overhead on his part, it’s now available for you, too.
- The guys discuss super cheap hosting and the numerous APIs and Services which provide tons of data available to re-mix. They also discuss using Azure or Google App Engine to scale up as one grows.
- Jon comments on how free site templates and store/blog theme systems can make design a snap.
- Jon also calls out the fact that for most web developers the barrier to entry is so low. Thus, one is somewhat susceptible to having their idea quickly copied. This raises the question; will your investment pay off long-term?
- Kevin jokes that there’s an alternative approach to implementing your own, self-serving solution – just wait long enough and someone else will implement your idea.
- Kevin and Jon discuss why the web is such an appealing platform to start a venture. It is all about the low barrier to entry, the instant gratification and immediacy of making your product available and easy accessibility. Not to mention many sites are self-sustaining.
- The guys brainstorm a few one-man startup website and mobile development ideas, wonder if they would ever again hear from Jon if he came upon 4 million dollars and question whether or not K Scott has fallen asleep.
Show Links:
Download / Listen:
Herding Code 44: Microbusiness
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!
Apr
23
This entry was posted
on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 at 9:54 pmand is filed under discussion, podcast.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
3 Comments Herding Code 44: Microbusiness
anon
April 24th, 2009 at 11:53 am
You guys mentioned OneNote and Google Docs. Take a look at Evernote. It can even find text within images you upload when doing a search.
Damian
April 26th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
I almost skipped this one, but I’m glad I didn’t – by talking about your own experiences, instead of talking in the abstract you made it real – thoroughly practical and enjoyable.
You podcast inspired me to write-up my own small piece of advice: Register the domain name after you’ve created something: http://damianblog.com/2009/04/26/first-create-then-register/ It’s too easy to live on the dream!
/Damian
devMomentum
April 28th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Excellent show again. Yes the entry barrier is low as software developers, but it’s not like in the movie: Build it and they will come…. Once the site is live, you must spread the word so people will effectively come to your site. Once they are on your site, what do you do so they stay, so they come back, so they bring other people? Do you update your site frequently? Do you send newsletters? If you make people pay for your site, do you use affiliates program so that other people work to bring loads of people to your site in exchange of some money? Internet marketing is a fascinating subject, I started looking into it and then I realized how much you can do to publicize your web app. You can even put your application on Facebook!
Building the web site is the easy part, and it is only the beginning. The hard part is what is coming after that, and this part will probably determine if your application is successfull.
RSS feed for comments on this post · TrackBack URI
Leave a Reply