Tag Archives: ebook

Software products are *not* passive income

Some people dream of creating a ‘passive’ income that generates money on auto-pilot while they go and learn tango in Argentina, or whatever their chosen path to the top of Maslow’s hierarchy is. In my experience, a software product is a long way from being a passive income. I know lots of people who own software product businesses. I don’t think any of them regard it as a passive income either.

While on holiday I’ve run my own business from a laptop in less than an hour per day. But the business would start to suffer if I did this for more than a few months. Even if you are not adding new features, software products require significant effort to maintain. Sales queries need answering, customers need support and bugs need fixing. New operating systems will often break things in otherwise stable products (particularly on Mac OS X). And there is always admin stuff to do: tax, accounts and a hundred other things. Marketing also requires ongoing effort, whether it be in the form of A/B testing, newsletters, SEO, PPC or blogging. If you aren’t continually improving your product and marketing, then harder working competitors are soon going to start eating your lunch. You can hire people to do the work for you. But then you have to train and manage those people. And the most capable people have a habit of going off to start their own companies.

There may be some products that can generate passive incomes. Perhaps ebooks, training videos and mobile apps. But I expect they still need significant amounts of ongoing marketing effort if they are going to earn more than pocket money. Remember – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is…

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide To Launching a Startup

I recently read ‘Start small, stay small: A developer’s guide to launching a startup’ by Rob Walling. The preface states:

“This book is aimed at developers who want to launch their startup with no outside funding. It’s for companies started by real developers solving real pain points using desktop, web and mobile applications.”

Many of you are probably already familiar with Rob’s work, including: a blog, a podcast and the micropreneur academy. Rob’s approach has been to develop a portfolio of niche websites as a solo founder (for example ApprenticeLinemanJobs.com), funding it with his own capital and outsourcing work where appropriate. The intention being to have a business that produces a decent income, but allows the founder a flexible lifestyle. He uses the portmanteau ‘micropreneur’ to refer to this approach. It is not a term I care for, with its awkward shunting together of Greek and French. But I guess it is no worse than ‘microISV’. He develops on these themes in the book, with a particular emphasis on the early phases (as implied by the title).

The chapter headings are:

  1. The chasm between developer and entrepreneur
  2. Why niches are the name of the game
  3. Your product
  4. Bulding a killer sales website
  5. Startup marketing
  6. Virtual assistants and outsourcing
  7. Grow it or start over

As with Rob’s blog and podcast, there is plenty of insight and actionable information based on real experience. Some of the writing is taken straight from the blog, but I believe most of it is new. There are links to useful online tools, some of which I hadn’t come across before. It even includes some of that rarest of commodities – real data. He also dispells a few myths – for example: that creating a software product is a quick and easy way to riches and that Facebook and Twitter are all the marketing you need.

The book is particularly strong on market research – a subject I haven’t seen covered much in the context of small software companies. He includes a step-by-step methodology for measuring market size. It also covers other useful subjects such as: pricing, choosing web vs desktop vs mobile vs plug-in, website design, SEO, mailing lists and buying and selling websites. The paper version of the book is 202 pages long. There isn’t a lot of unecessary waffling or padding, so you are getting a fair amount of information for your money. An index might have been useful. Perhaps for the next edition?

While the book will have most benefit for those first starting out, I think even experienced software entrepreneurs will probably find some of it useful. The book is available in paper, electronic and audio formats from $19 at www.startupbook.net. Given its niche market, I think this is good value.

Full disclosure: I recieved a free (paper) copy of the book from the author.

The Web Startup Success Guide

startup_success_guideBob Walsh has followed up his excellent MicroISV: From Vision to Reality book with The Web Startup Success Guide. While the first book is aimed squarely at at developers of desktop software, the second is aimed more at web-based start-ups. I have to confess, I haven’t had time to read my review copy of the accompanying e-book yet (I’m moving house, moving office and putting out a major new software release). But I see from the contents it includes chapters on:

  • the idea
  • choosing a platforms
  • tools
  • fund raising
  • social media
  • getting the message across

And interviews with

  • Dharmesh Shah
  • Eric Sink
  • Joel Spolsky
  • Pamela Slim
  • Guy Kawasaki
  • …and others

If it is anything like as good as Bob’s MicroISV book, it will be worth a read by anyone doing (or thinking of doing) a web-based start-up. It is currently $19.79 on Amazon.com. You can also buy the e-book from Apress. Here are some reviews from people that have actually read it:

Neil Davidson

Willie Faler

How to generate traffic to your website

Fellow software entrepreneur and blogger Stephane Grenier sent me a review copy of his “How to generate traffic for your website” ebook a while back. I have finally had time to read it. It is an introduction to marketing your website, covering a wide range of topics, including: SEO, Google Adwords, social news sites, blogging, directories and PR.

On the whole I think it is a very good introduction to marketing websites. At 136 pages there is plenty of ‘meat’ and a good balance between depth and breadth of coverage. Steph illustrates many of the topics with his own real-world experience with landlordmax.com .

There is less there for experienced marketers, but I still picked up some useful tips and there were links to resources I hadn’t come across before. I found his illustration of optimising a Google ad particularly interesting. But I disagree with his recommendation to allow Google Adwords to optimise which ads are shown most. The problem with this is that Google may choose to show ads which are making lots of money for them, but not much for you (e.g. high clickthrough, low conversion). I prefer to show all ads equally and then kill off the under-performers myself.

I have a couple of quibbles:

  • Some of the writing isn’t as polished as the prose in Steph’s blog and there were a fair number of typos. I have pointed some of them out to the author, so they should hopefully be fixed in the next version. Also some of the screen captures looked a bit mangled. But this may be due to the vagaries of PDF formatting.
  • I am not keen on the use of undisclosed affiliate links in a paid-for ebook. Affiliate links call the impartiality of the author into question. Is he sending me to this site because it is a useful resource, or just for the commission? I feel that any affiliate links should at least be clearly marked as such. But this is a grey area and that is just my opinion.

You can read the first chapter for free here and purchase a copy here.

Full disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy.