Making money as a web developer (or, how the web killed the software entrepreneur)
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
The third approach is to find some service oriented model (i.e. something that doesn't require the capital of a physical product model) that you can monetize without depending on advertising. That would seem like a viable concept, but once again the barrier to entry is non existent. No matter what you develop for a fee, some Penguin who believes that people shouldn't have to pay for anything will come right up beside you and offer everything you're doing for free.
I am not sure I agree here. Are you aware of a free alternative to, say, SalesForce.com? IMHO, penguins are a threat to desktop application development more than to web services - even if you get development for free there are still costs of hosting, support, administration, etc...
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Are you aware of a free alternative to, say, SalesForce.com?
Kinda but not exactly. http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/community/sugarcrm-community.html[^]
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Well said. However, regarding your fourth option, it means that instead of the previous paradigm where thousands upon thousands of developers could carve out a good and independant living writing Windows apps, now it's either be a Google or be broke, nothing in between. Not my favorite kind of odds. By the way, what do you do on your own - freelance web dev?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
However, regarding your fourth option, it means that instead of the previous paradigm where thousands upon thousands of developers could carve out a good and independant living writing Windows apps, now it's either be a Google or be broke, nothing in between.
I don't like those either; I don't support the whole smoke stack concept, but they have to exist to a certain degree (if only because they can raise the capital to do the major systems that have become necessary tools of the trade) But, bear in mind, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and all of them, you just tell me how many people they employ? I worked for MS and with the exception of CG, I probably rant to myself the most about their shoddy work, but they are an essential cornerstone of the industry. I might not like working for a corporation anymore, but they are serious employer and not just for devs.
Christopher Duncan wrote:
By the way, what do you do on your own - freelance web dev?
A bit of everything really. Mostly win apps that are .Net based, Health Informatics. I've done some websites, some web apps, and now that I bought a bleeding edge, powerful computer, as soon as I'm done with my Master's thesis and current job (hopefully, I'll be done by June) then I'm going to North America / Australia to try my luck there and see if I can get back into telecom and possibly break into mobile apps. I'll most likely go back home to Edmonton. Recently, an alternative has been suggested to me and that is to seek work from abroad and I could do it from here (the internet is a boon in this case), but we'll see. I'm not leaving Jordan purely for work.
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We pay $$$ for multiple copies of ReSharper. We pay $$$$ for TestTrack (the free stuff doesn't do everything we need. FogBugz is another good example.) We pay $$$$ for Red Gate Tools We pay $$$$ for Install Shield Most of the free stuff we use we could actually do without if we had to such as CruiseControl.NET, Nant, etc. If the free tools break for whatever reason an IT guy can't make an easy call or email and get a quick answer. WinZip still sells lots and lots of copies yet there's free alternatives out there. Granted, you can't make money off dead simple applications like you used to but I don't see that as a big loss.
Todd Smith
Now why were you down voted? This makes no sense to me.
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Same way they always did. 1. Build a great product that fills a need. (or just 'a product that fills a need). 2. Market it effectively 3. Make it easy to buy Yes, you're competing with the 13 yr olds. But you're touching hundreds of millions of people in a cost effective manner that you would have had no chance in touching before.
cheers, Chris Maunder CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Chris Maunder wrote:
Same way they always did.
I don't think it's the same world it used to be, so I'm not sure this holds true. The ease with which someone of few skills can copy and paste their way to a web site that does the same thing that you just launched is unprecedented, as is the number of people who do it. And the web is far different today than it was in 1996, when it was just gaining notice. CodeProject is a case in point. You were an early adopter back in the days when CodeGuru was about the only other serious player in town, and the entire planet hadn't yet jumped onto the web. You have a dominant position today through years of growth, but also significantly boosted by the fact that you were in the game early. Had you started CP today, with a mature and flooded market, do you truly believe that you would have achieved the same level of success?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Same way they always did.
I don't think it's the same world it used to be, so I'm not sure this holds true. The ease with which someone of few skills can copy and paste their way to a web site that does the same thing that you just launched is unprecedented, as is the number of people who do it. And the web is far different today than it was in 1996, when it was just gaining notice. CodeProject is a case in point. You were an early adopter back in the days when CodeGuru was about the only other serious player in town, and the entire planet hadn't yet jumped onto the web. You have a dominant position today through years of growth, but also significantly boosted by the fact that you were in the game early. Had you started CP today, with a mature and flooded market, do you truly believe that you would have achieved the same level of success?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Had you started CP today, with a mature and flooded market, do you truly believe that you would have achieved the same level of success
Yes.
cheers, Chris Maunder CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Had you started CP today, with a mature and flooded market, do you truly believe that you would have achieved the same level of success
Yes.
cheers, Chris Maunder CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
Cheeky. But then, I admire that kind of thing. :-D
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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Cheeky. But then, I admire that kind of thing. :-D
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
You know me. What possible other answer were you expecting? :-D
cheers, Chris Maunder CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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You know me. What possible other answer were you expecting? :-D
cheers, Chris Maunder CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
:laugh:
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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The question below about Craigslist got me thinking about the problem of making money with service oriented web sites in general, and wondering if others see a solution that escapes me. There seems to be only a few successful models for making money on the web. One is to sell a physical product, ala Amazon. A benefit to this model is that it raises the bar to entry so that only those who can financially and physically manage such an endeavor are able to compete with you, effectively ruling out the 13 year old kid in the back bedroom. Most non product oriented endeavors end up relying in one way or another on advertising for revenue, with a model of building the numbers to the point where ad revenue is meaningful. This is no small feat on either side of the equation in and of itself, and it's not helped by the fact that you're now competing with the entire planet, including the kid in the back bedroom. The market gets flooded, thus making it hard to generate revenue. The third approach is to find some service oriented model (i.e. something that doesn't require the capital of a physical product model) that you can monetize without depending on advertising. That would seem like a viable concept, but once again the barrier to entry is non existent. No matter what you develop for a fee, some Penguin who believes that people shouldn't have to pay for anything will come right up beside you and offer everything you're doing for free. To me, this appears to kill the web for any serious business venture if you're not an Amazon type operation. And in fact, part of the Great Dot Com Crash was that everyone was focusing on getting venture capital but no one had a viable, profitible business model. Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business. Shareware / freeware did exist, but not in the overwhelming numbers now represented by free apps on the web. So, to elaborate on the Craigslist question below, how does an honest, hard working software developer strike out on his own and launch an application he can live on when he's competing on a web flooded with sites who give away everything for free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Simple, name recognition. Those people that give it away for free usually f* it up. There are countless companies on Craig's List that have done the low-cost developer game thinking they are getting a deal only to wind up tied up in an investment in an open source product that no one wants to modify, the original developers quit. If you want to make it, be professional and offer a great product. It won't come quick but your excellent product raises the bar for entry with every bug fix and improvement you make. I hate to reference Joel Splosky but his company sells Bug Tracking software! Talk about the impossible. The other solution is to write application software and sell it traditionally. A computer application is brick and mortar and it get be sold as such. Imagine if your product was boxed and in Staples, Office Depot, Amazon, Etc. with them doing the sales and your sales staff focusing on bigger fish. It can an does happen. Again look at Austin Meyer, a single engineer who has the number two flight sim on the market, and thanks to Microsoft's recent layoff this guy might actually become the king, by himself. It can happen but I have run out of public optimism I have to save some for my self :p
Need custom software developed? I do C# development and consulting all over the United States. A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane
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The question below about Craigslist got me thinking about the problem of making money with service oriented web sites in general, and wondering if others see a solution that escapes me. There seems to be only a few successful models for making money on the web. One is to sell a physical product, ala Amazon. A benefit to this model is that it raises the bar to entry so that only those who can financially and physically manage such an endeavor are able to compete with you, effectively ruling out the 13 year old kid in the back bedroom. Most non product oriented endeavors end up relying in one way or another on advertising for revenue, with a model of building the numbers to the point where ad revenue is meaningful. This is no small feat on either side of the equation in and of itself, and it's not helped by the fact that you're now competing with the entire planet, including the kid in the back bedroom. The market gets flooded, thus making it hard to generate revenue. The third approach is to find some service oriented model (i.e. something that doesn't require the capital of a physical product model) that you can monetize without depending on advertising. That would seem like a viable concept, but once again the barrier to entry is non existent. No matter what you develop for a fee, some Penguin who believes that people shouldn't have to pay for anything will come right up beside you and offer everything you're doing for free. To me, this appears to kill the web for any serious business venture if you're not an Amazon type operation. And in fact, part of the Great Dot Com Crash was that everyone was focusing on getting venture capital but no one had a viable, profitible business model. Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business. Shareware / freeware did exist, but not in the overwhelming numbers now represented by free apps on the web. So, to elaborate on the Craigslist question below, how does an honest, hard working software developer strike out on his own and launch an application he can live on when he's competing on a web flooded with sites who give away everything for free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business.
Surely it was also possible to write an app in your spare time, try to sell it, fail to find enough paying customers, and end up selling vacuum cleaners to pay rent? Wasn't the whole point of shareware getting other people to distribute your software for you in the hope that a few of them would like it enough to pay for it? When was having a product people wanted not a requirement of success...?
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business.
Surely it was also possible to write an app in your spare time, try to sell it, fail to find enough paying customers, and end up selling vacuum cleaners to pay rent? Wasn't the whole point of shareware getting other people to distribute your software for you in the hope that a few of them would like it enough to pay for it? When was having a product people wanted not a requirement of success...?
Shog9 wrote:
When was having a product people wanted not a requirement of success...?
That's always been a requirement, of course. However, in the web world, the moment you launch your service oriented web site that charges X dollars, it's very likely that you'll awake a few weeks later to find several other sites who do the same thing for free. The sheer volume of this free Internet competition dwarfs the competitors we had with client aps, and sites like CP, open source projects, etc. allow people with far less skill than you to copy and paste their way to a clone in a relatively short amount of time. None of this is diminished by the fact that you have a web site offering something that people want. In fact, quite the contrary. The more this is true, the more likely the amateurs and the Penguins will jump on it for free.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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It sounds like what you've listed are developer tools, not web sites. Perhaps that's where the money is, not in web site development of any kind. After all, the best way to make money in the music biz is not by playing music, but rather by selling instruments to those who do.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
It sounds like what you've listed are developer tools, not web sites.
We've been interviewing candidates for an internship. Monday, it was a gal from the old tech school i graduated from. Apparently, they don't teach C++ anymore; there's a VB.NET class for "hard core" programmers, and everything else is web dev. And not "pretty front-ends for huge, C++ and C# back-end calculation engines"; simple web pages. Of course, ten years ago the local startups were cold-calling local businesses trying to sell them vanity pages. Once sold, a student working for <= $10/hr could do the actual work in FrontPage. You don't need decades of experience and deep technical skill for that sort of work. It looked like a rip-off to me then, and it still does. Yeah, any kid with a text editor and a free hosting account can set up a web site. That's why there are so many web sites. It's the stuff behind the scenes that makes one succeed where another one fails.
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Shog9 wrote:
When was having a product people wanted not a requirement of success...?
That's always been a requirement, of course. However, in the web world, the moment you launch your service oriented web site that charges X dollars, it's very likely that you'll awake a few weeks later to find several other sites who do the same thing for free. The sheer volume of this free Internet competition dwarfs the competitors we had with client aps, and sites like CP, open source projects, etc. allow people with far less skill than you to copy and paste their way to a clone in a relatively short amount of time. None of this is diminished by the fact that you have a web site offering something that people want. In fact, quite the contrary. The more this is true, the more likely the amateurs and the Penguins will jump on it for free.
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
However, in the web world, the moment you launch your service oriented web site that charges X dollars, it's very likely that you'll awake a few weeks later to find several other sites who do the same thing for free.
That do what for free? Securely manage my investments? Calculate airflow through a building? Allow me to specify business rules and procedures for cost calculations? Display pictures of kittens with humorous captions?
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Christopher Duncan wrote:
However, in the web world, the moment you launch your service oriented web site that charges X dollars, it's very likely that you'll awake a few weeks later to find several other sites who do the same thing for free.
That do what for free? Securely manage my investments? Calculate airflow through a building? Allow me to specify business rules and procedures for cost calculations? Display pictures of kittens with humorous captions?
Shog9 wrote:
Securely manage my investments? Calculate airflow through a building? Allow me to specify business rules and procedures for cost calculations?
Do you really see a profitable demand for spending time in your garage developing any of these? I'm not talking about the web in the early days when little was out there. I'm talking about today. Kittens. That's where the money is! :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
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The question below about Craigslist got me thinking about the problem of making money with service oriented web sites in general, and wondering if others see a solution that escapes me. There seems to be only a few successful models for making money on the web. One is to sell a physical product, ala Amazon. A benefit to this model is that it raises the bar to entry so that only those who can financially and physically manage such an endeavor are able to compete with you, effectively ruling out the 13 year old kid in the back bedroom. Most non product oriented endeavors end up relying in one way or another on advertising for revenue, with a model of building the numbers to the point where ad revenue is meaningful. This is no small feat on either side of the equation in and of itself, and it's not helped by the fact that you're now competing with the entire planet, including the kid in the back bedroom. The market gets flooded, thus making it hard to generate revenue. The third approach is to find some service oriented model (i.e. something that doesn't require the capital of a physical product model) that you can monetize without depending on advertising. That would seem like a viable concept, but once again the barrier to entry is non existent. No matter what you develop for a fee, some Penguin who believes that people shouldn't have to pay for anything will come right up beside you and offer everything you're doing for free. To me, this appears to kill the web for any serious business venture if you're not an Amazon type operation. And in fact, part of the Great Dot Com Crash was that everyone was focusing on getting venture capital but no one had a viable, profitible business model. Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business. Shareware / freeware did exist, but not in the overwhelming numbers now represented by free apps on the web. So, to elaborate on the Craigslist question below, how does an honest, hard working software developer strike out on his own and launch an application he can live on when he's competing on a web flooded with sites who give away everything for free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Christopher Duncan wrote:
but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business.
I've not had any problems building and selling desktop apps since 1996 right up to today and business is better than ever. Here is my advice, follow this advice and you will make a good secure solid living, you may not get rich quick but you'll be happy. It's not rocket science, it's 49% hard work, 49% patience and 2% inspiration. There are always going to be competitors, that's a good sign, it means that there is a large, willing market for your product and half your work is done for you, you don't have to teach people about your product, you just have to differentiate and be better. You don't have to have an original idea, in fact an original idea is a bad idea, everyone has million dollar ideas every day but it takes ten times more work to make money off an original idea than to make money making a non original idea incrementally better than anyone else. To prove this, one of our most minor apps is address book software and it's made money for us year after year. We first put it out as a proof of concept to get the bugs ironed out of our business and development processes and surprisingly it keeps selling because it has a few little features that differentiate it enough. It's not our main application by any means but it pays for all the costs of our hosting and more and if I sat down from scratch I could rewrite it again in a couple of weeks ready for release. You just have to have a decent idea with a potentially large market that fills a real world need and implement it better than most of the others (all of the others is ideal but most will do for starters), provide superior service (that's actually *very* easy these days), be honest, fair and open about everything and most importantly of all be patient and grow the business, don't try to hit a home run or get a big bank loan to hire more staff or any of that other stuff that is designed to build a weak business designed to sell out of quickly. Ideally grow the business only out of it's own profits, start out in your spare time and go from there. In any major endeavor in life it takes about a decade to get good at it, this rule applies to *everything*. Become a master at online marketing and doing it the right way with proper search engine friendly website and learn the proper use of pay per click advertising like Google Adwords.
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Shog9 wrote:
Securely manage my investments? Calculate airflow through a building? Allow me to specify business rules and procedures for cost calculations?
Do you really see a profitable demand for spending time in your garage developing any of these? I'm not talking about the web in the early days when little was out there. I'm talking about today. Kittens. That's where the money is! :)
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Christopher Duncan wrote:
Do you really see a profitable demand for spending time in your garage developing any of these?
There is demand for all of them. I'm aware of 1-2 person groups working on two of them (and an established company working on the third). Time will tell if they are successful; point is, they're niche markets, too small for Google to be interested, requiring too much specialized knowledge for some kid with a text editor and free time to compete. Seems like a pretty good way to make money in an established marketplace...
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In essence, this is primarily the issue I'm facing. I've been on my own now for over a year and I can't see myself going back to a 9-5 job, I would if I have to but I'd rather not. I've got the skills and the market is out there, but in addition to the reasons that you mentioned, we have to also look at the sheer size of the web. I discover a new tool/idea/site everyday, something that will help me in some way. Its the same way, how could I promote my discovery (and thus my skills) to others. I'm sure I'm not the only one suffering from this. There is a fourth option I believe. That's by introducing a totally new paradigm, something that beats the system, and then eventually becomes the system, Yahoo with the concept of web portal and then google with the search engine, the web has dozens of such stories.
I have very extensive knowledge of ASP.Net and Telerik's rad controls so I can make ASP.Net sites in my sleep. Not too brag too much but a lot of my customers (employees in the co I work for) are amazed with what I produce for them. However, I have found no way to have a comfortable life without a 9-5 job. Every night when I go to bed, I try to think of ideas of something I could create with my skills but so far I haven't come up with anything...
I didn't get any requirements for the signature
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The question below about Craigslist got me thinking about the problem of making money with service oriented web sites in general, and wondering if others see a solution that escapes me. There seems to be only a few successful models for making money on the web. One is to sell a physical product, ala Amazon. A benefit to this model is that it raises the bar to entry so that only those who can financially and physically manage such an endeavor are able to compete with you, effectively ruling out the 13 year old kid in the back bedroom. Most non product oriented endeavors end up relying in one way or another on advertising for revenue, with a model of building the numbers to the point where ad revenue is meaningful. This is no small feat on either side of the equation in and of itself, and it's not helped by the fact that you're now competing with the entire planet, including the kid in the back bedroom. The market gets flooded, thus making it hard to generate revenue. The third approach is to find some service oriented model (i.e. something that doesn't require the capital of a physical product model) that you can monetize without depending on advertising. That would seem like a viable concept, but once again the barrier to entry is non existent. No matter what you develop for a fee, some Penguin who believes that people shouldn't have to pay for anything will come right up beside you and offer everything you're doing for free. To me, this appears to kill the web for any serious business venture if you're not an Amazon type operation. And in fact, part of the Great Dot Com Crash was that everyone was focusing on getting venture capital but no one had a viable, profitible business model. Deride Microsoft and Windows based client apps all you like, but before the web it was possible to write an app in your spare time, sell it and build a business. Shareware / freeware did exist, but not in the overwhelming numbers now represented by free apps on the web. So, to elaborate on the Craigslist question below, how does an honest, hard working software developer strike out on his own and launch an application he can live on when he's competing on a web flooded with sites who give away everything for free?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Christopher Duncan wrote:
offer everything you're doing for free
A couple of comments to this; - offer something that requires at least a small level of labour, so it's less likely to be offered for free - plan a huge list of features, and keep at them, so you're constantly improving. This way, by the time someone actually thinks to copy you, you'll always be 5 steps ahead and they'll struggle to catch up - charge so little, and offer a better product than free alternatives. The less you charge, people will be less likely to think about saving that money, especially if they're really happy with the features. - be the first, become the standard. It's often a time investment to change from something you're using productively and happily to something new, which may not be as good and requires time to get used to. - try and prevent being copied. Harder done than said I think. Patents are hard to enforce. - team up with people who believe in the project, and act fast as a team. For another project to compete, they would need to be a team too, which requires organisation and social skills - raising the bar to entry a bit more. *EDIT: BTW I should have noted that these are from my collection of *untested* theories :doh: :)
"For fifty bucks I'd put my face in their soup and blow." - George Costanza
CP article: SmartPager - a Flickr-style pager control with go-to-page popup layer.
modified on Thursday, March 12, 2009 3:28 AM
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Same way they always did.
I don't think it's the same world it used to be, so I'm not sure this holds true. The ease with which someone of few skills can copy and paste their way to a web site that does the same thing that you just launched is unprecedented, as is the number of people who do it. And the web is far different today than it was in 1996, when it was just gaining notice. CodeProject is a case in point. You were an early adopter back in the days when CodeGuru was about the only other serious player in town, and the entire planet hadn't yet jumped onto the web. You have a dominant position today through years of growth, but also significantly boosted by the fact that you were in the game early. Had you started CP today, with a mature and flooded market, do you truly believe that you would have achieved the same level of success?
Christopher Duncan Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes www.PracticalUSA.com
Stackoverflow was late to the game but has rocketed to the top in a very short amount of time. Their initial release ran on a single hosted box which included both the website and the database (gasp I know!).
Todd Smith
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Stackoverflow was late to the game but has rocketed to the top in a very short amount of time. Their initial release ran on a single hosted box which included both the website and the database (gasp I know!).
Todd Smith
Yeah, but they had name recognition, right (FogBugz)? So essentially they were in the game early, and probably primed their database with stuff from their database. :)
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! A post a day, keeps the white coats away!
