How to earn first love dollar from software development?

[million]

I really enjoyed steve's article How to Earn Your First Love Dollar. Software development is my passion. I already do freelance web programming, but its not at the level where i would call it 'love'. In fact, it feels like doing the same thing over and over again for different people, with just a little twist each time.

On the other hand, if i was building a product I believed in, I'm sure i would feel completely different. But with products, you usually don't make $1-2, the minimum license is usually $20+. What if you build a product and it never makes that first $20 from a sale?

[Lauxa]

Hi there million, not sure if I have an answer for you or not, but wanted to share my experience.

I also love web software development. A couple of years ago I decided to build an online flashcards site targeted to young kids. Here it is:

Moone Leaf Flashcards: Picture Index

I had all sorts of ideas on how I would eventually make money from this site by selling subscriptions or premium content, but building the prototype didn't get me to the level I needed to really do this. Basically, I felt that the content presentation was all right, but the user interface for adding new content was really sucky, preventing me from building a community around my site and leveraging a lot of Web 2.0 technology (all the content on the site right now was created by me). So I started working through a programming book on Zend Framework and building the next version of my product.

Meanwhile, I realized that I could spend a lot more time programming and honing my craft if I did it professionally. (I'm a stay-at-home mom and could spend more hours programming if I had some extra money to cover daycare.) So I applied for a few PHP programming jobs, and got a perfect fit -- a 10-15 hours/week mostly telecommute job working almost exclusively on Zend Framework. I LOVE MY JOB. It is challenging and I am learning so many new and exciting things -- things I hope to eventually apply to my own website. And today they offered to raise my hours to 20-25/week, which is great.

(If they hadn't, I might have finally had some time to get back to my own site, which would have also been great.)

I think with Web 2.0 and community sites, there are opportunities for things like ad-based revenue. Maybe there's even a grant application in there somewhere for an educational product like mine. In my case, working on my project led me to a job with great synergy for the skills I am interested in acquiring.

I hope you'll post back with more of your experience in web development and what areas/products you are interested in -- I would love to hear more of your story!

[BlueCrane]

Interesting that you bring this up at this point in time!

We've just launched a software project we really believe in and we want to monetise it now, the basic version is free. The SiteKist WMS is a program that gives people everything they need to create and manage their own websites in a single program - including all sorts of tools as plugins and widgets for internet marketing and we're sure there is a big market for that, it's never been done before like this as far as we know.

You may be aware that Steve recommends Site Build It! on his site and blog - I have followed him on that and built my website for translations with it and SBI! is great when it comes to teaching you marketing techniques ... but the actual site-building is cumbersome and slow; that was the trigger to actually develop SiteKist further and now offer it to others, because it is a lot better in that respect.

I agree with you that software development is very exciting and rewarding and I am sure there are millions of ways to earn love-dollars with it. So what if it's a bit more expensive? For good stuff, people will always pay good money.

[Jarrod]

Originally Posted by BlueCrane

For good stuff, people will always pay good money.

That's right, it is just a matter of making people see the value.