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I don't have a lot of experience on this topic, let alone any, but I'll say that if you think you can make it as a solo developer, and you actually want to make a difference to your income then I would say go for it, I mean it's going to be hard work at first, but as soon as you have a good product out there that is selling then you have made it.
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Hardest thing is having the idea
2nd hardest thing is marketing it correctly.
easiest thing - developing the solution.
I can only give you my experience with commercial software which was in the early 90s so it was before the advent of the internet and a major force. We got the idea and found an industry sponsor who basically stopped us starving while we built the app over a 16 month period. Once the app was completed to our satisfaction we started marketing it, at that point we ran into some of the issues:
There are only # of you how can we allow our core businees software to depend on just # people.
It's not Microsoft.
Can you add these features to meet our business model.
What happens if you get run over by a bus - I still get this as a contractor, did you know every developer has a bus following them.
It's not Microsoft.
But it doesn't do this.
I don't like the color scheme (remember it was the 90's).
It's not Microsoft.
Took me 6 years to get out of supporting the customers we did manage to sell the product to. It still runs in 2-3 clients to this day, supported by my ex partner. I think the internet has changed that model dramatically but some of the issues are still there.
When you listen to the people who are running their own show they spend a minimum of 30% of their time selling and or paperwork. I like developing solutions, I hate marketing, if I ever talk to another tax man again it will be too soon and I will NOT get ulcers.
The corollery is I will never be a millionaire so there are trade offs.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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I'm not a solo developer so this isn't my experience. I've considered it a few times, but I think for now I need to gain some more experience first. As I understand it there are two ways of going solo. 1) Create a product/site/app that you can charge for. 2) Charge for your services and skills. Option 1 requires quite a bit of upfront work to create the product, and then you need to advertise or build up brand knowledge and sell it into your target market. Option 2 requires a lot of networking, and building a name for your self, I've seen people say that it often starts by doing jobs free/cheap for people you already know, and spreading the word. There are agencies that can help get you started with work like this for a a cut, and eventually, you'll build up the contacts to get work on your own.
Pete O'Hanlon (Someone who has actually done it) has some articles on going solo[^].
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote: Someone who has actually done it
Many of us have *actually done it* here. I've written extensively many times on why option 1 is the only one that makes sense and option 2 is utter madness.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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While I generally agree (when I have considered going solo option 1 would be my preferred route), I'd be interested to hear why you think option 2 is utter madness?
There seem to be plenty of people around who contract out their skills rather successfully.
Simon
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I've written about it here many times before. Essentially contracting out as a for hire programmer means your time is not your own, you work super long hours for little reward and you're stuck in endless meetings and re-inventing the wheel over and over again. You're fielding calls at all hours from a huge number of entirely different people. You are often entirely responsible for supporting software forever that is completely different at different offices with a different set of people who may have also tinkered with it or hired someone else to. You have to compromise your design endlessly to cater to the slightest whims of people who for the most part have every desire to shoot themselves in the foot with a bad design but don't know it and eventually you realize it's not worth the bother to try to enlighten them. It's super stressful, unrewarding and involves long hours for not very decent reward when you add it all up.
Making software for direct sale is completely the opposite, you're time is your own, you can work on a sane release schedule, you have *complete* control over the design and how it's implemented, you can really craft something excellent and you have all the time in the world to fine tune it and make it the best out there. You only have to write the bulk of the software once but you can sell it over and over and over again. The ratio of work and stress to reward and free time is many orders of magnitude better. I've been doing it for about 8 years now and I'm to the point where I can take 6 months off every year and still make a very good living. If I wanted I could work the whole year and make a killing but that's not what interests me at this point in my life.
Of course both options require a lot of hard work and long hours in the beginning but my option means that tails off eventually, with the contracting option it never tails off.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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You make it sound almost easy 
Now all I need is a killer idea, and the free time to write it.
Do you write your software alone, or have you reached a stage when you have hired additional developers to help? What kind of software do you sell?
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote: You make it sound almost easy
Whups, sorry, it's not, it was *damned* hard. You have to either hire someone to deal with a lot of stuff that is not programming or become the sort of person interested in dealing with trademarks, incorporation, license lawyers etc but most of all you need to become a marketing expert.
You don't need a killer idea you just need to find a market that has a *LOT* of potential paying customers spread out globally and is badly served by the current software out there, write something better and market the hell out of it online by ensuring you have a perfectly designed website for natural search engine result first page ranking and paying for per click advertising. It helps tremendously if it's software related to something you have personal experience and an interest in the first place.
Spend a lot of time communicating with your customers and trial users, find out what works, what needs to be added, make it super easy for them to make suggestions and *implement* the most common ones continually.
We make work order and service management software and I write all code that can't be bought as a 3rd party component library. Aside from the writing of the code the other 75% of the work of the business, i.e. support, documentation, accounting and business issues, marketing is now done by others. When I started I did it all myself.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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Now you are encouraging me.
It is Good to be Important but!
it is more Important to be Good
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John C wrote: trademarks, incorporation, license lawyers etc but most of all you need to become a marketing expert.
Marketing is interesting, I'll learn about that, the rest I'll need help with.
So the available market, and existing competitors are more important that the product itself.
How do you deal with the problem of competition from huge companies like MS? They seem to have a finger in so many industries these days. Or do you just hope they don't choose to target your market.
Do you have any unique innovations in your products and do you have them protected by patents? How early did you have to get those patents? before the first sale?
When you started out, was it a 'spare time' project, while you continued with normal employment, or did you write it all without a job and hope you could sell it at the end. Or did you have investment backing? Or did you have customers lined up from the beginning that you worked with as you developed it?
How old were you when you first started out? I'm still too young to have a huge amount of experience in any particular area. How many years did it take to grow from the initial concept to where you are now?
Sorry if I'm asking lots of questions, but I'm just very interested in how you started things.
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote: So the available market, and existing competitors are more important that the product itself.
Well the thing is you can have the best product in the world but if you can't market it properly you will go no where fast. It's a lot easier to market a truly good product than a sh*tty one but either way...
Simon Stevens wrote: How do you deal with the problem of competition from huge companies like MS?
We have a *lot* of competition in our market segment. When we started 11 years ago there was much less that was targetted at small business as ours is so we filled an empty niche, now everyone and his dog has an application in our market segment but ours is the best and we market it better than anyone else. If Microsoft jumped in it would be out of character for them as it's a pretty specialized market but it wouldn't bother me any because we have experience in completely saturated markets as well, one of our little side projects is an address book and we still sell a *lot* of it even though you can't shake a stick without hitting someone publishing address book software and it practically comes with most operating systems and applications. You just need to differentiate yourself in key ways that no one else is.
Simon Stevens wrote: When you started out, was it a 'spare time' project, while you continued with normal employment
Yes, it's the only sane way to do it. Also avoid the temptation to seek investment at all costs. Money people will tell you that if you aren't growing by fantastic percentages each year you're going backwards but that way lies driving a business into the ground, not building a sustainable risk free one.
Simon Stevens wrote: How old were you when you first started out?
When I *first* had my own business I was about 12 years old.  I used to buy frozen bread dough at the grocery store, bake it at home and sell it as "home made bread" at the local farmers market. But when I first started doing what I do now I was 29. There's no age that is relevant for this, just interest and willingness to do hard work and not take shortcuts.
Simon Stevens wrote: How many years did it take to grow from the initial concept to where you are now?
It took about a year from initial concept and starting development to having enough sales that I could do this full time while my partner and wife still ran the computer networking side of our business. We used to both do it then it was enough for me to draw back entirely from that and focus on software. 4 years later it was enough for her to quit the networking side of it and work full time on our software business. We sold our house, moved back to where we wanted to be and haven't worked for anyone else since.
"It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it."
-Sam Levenson
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When I was "my own man" I was doing both 1) and 2), and while 1) was much more fun, most of the money I made was from 2)
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The Dogcow Farmer wrote: Chuck Norris has the greatest Poker-Face of all time. He won the 1983 World Series of Poker, despite holding only a Joker, a Get out of Jail Free Monopoloy card, a 2 of clubs, 7 of spades and a green #4 card from the game UNO.
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More than anything else, the worst nightmare is the dirty politics. I really don't know why people succumb to base and mean-minded pleasures to satisfy their bestial instincts to satisfy their selfish personal chores. They fabricate stories on other poor scape goats just to advance thier prospects and have thier asses securely glued to the seats. 
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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Man you need to change employers, if that is your environment get out and get out now. No amount of money or opportunity can compensate for such an environment.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Sometimes it is a cheap ploy deployed by base-minded skunks in isolated parts of this region wherein, they would prefer getting a newer cheap resource on whom they have more control than the one which has more control on the current established enviroment.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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I enjoy taking the CodeProject polls and reviewing the results of the assembly, but I think this poll was very short-sighted.
Many of us are employees of an IT department that is integrated into an industry not traditionally technology-integrated. The position I hold with a Financial Advisement company (not handling financial transactions, but prescribing portfolio recommendations) is considerably more volatile in a bear market than in a bull market and has almost nothing to do with performance.
(Sometimes I miss working in a programming shop where it really was performance-based.)
--Taf
P.E.B.C.A.K.
(Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard)
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Taf Greenstreet wrote: Many of us are employees of an IT department that is integrated into an industry not traditionally technology-integrated. The position I hold with a Financial Advisement company (not handling financial transactions, but prescribing portfolio recommendations) is considerably more volatile in a bear market than in a bull market and has almost nothing to do with performance.
"It's an ill wind that blows nobody good." For the same reasons, we have customers that are extending their service with us (we provide subaccounting back-end services for mutual fund administrators), such that they are making up for other clients we've lost who no longer see our services as affordable. Plus, our department is making inroads on some of our biggest costs without requiring us to cut personnel, and our programming staff (me and one other guy) are the reasons why...which, in our company which seems to be run by hard-headed realists who can be convinced by hard data, means we've survived three rounds of layoffs without losing any of our people (instead, we've expanded). Sometimes it works  .
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That is what it takes. It will give you the security to quit any bad job without hesitation and the comfort to know that even a good job that turns sour can't ruin your disposition.
Can any one donate $49,999.99 to my job security fund
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.
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If you lend it to me. I fell pry to evil credit cards. (My fault). So now my savings is gone.
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Hello,
I was in a position for 15 years and got terminated. I was in a position 13 years and got riffed. I now keep looking for a "permanent" position.
Stress is not helping the health, but what are you to do?
djj
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Quit working for someone else and start your own company.
Is the glass half full, half empty... or twice as large as it needs to be?
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Be diversified, have skills that keep you employable. No job lasts forever anymore...
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Well my degree is in Mechanical Engineering but I am now employed as a DBA. I have worked in material testing, database programming (FoxPro), database programming (Oracle/SQL), VB .NET programmer and now the MS SQL DBA.
I try to go with the flow but seem to be on the short end of the stick.
I have too low self esteem to start my own company. Hey that is probably why I get let go. 
djj
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As Don Lancaster put it, it is foolish to be getting all, or even the majority of, your income from a single source. Better to have lots of small sources of income than one big one. When you have lots of small sources, when things start to go bad (e.g., customers stop coming back), you can analyze what's going wrong and fix it before it gets really bad.
In the software biz, that's a bit tough to accomplish, but I have found a couple of alternative businesses that I can pursue that minimize the impact of losing my main day-job. Which I will lose anyway in at most about 8 more years.
I already make about $15K/year teaching violin lessons, and I have to turn away students despite my recent rate increase. I also made about $12K/year teaching another class (for a state license), and I currently have to limit the number of students I have for that, too, simply because I only have time enough to teach the class once per month. Plus, I still do small programming projects on the side, which is currently not a major money source. Since my wife also works (she is a CPA), when I lose my current job as a programmer, that will be the loss of a little over 1/3rd my total family income -- bad, but not catastrophic. I should be able to make up most of that in 3-4 months by expanding my violin and other teaching schedules, and by starting other businesses.
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