Revision as of 16:45, 27 November 2012

Why Product Creation Works

Software makers selling on the internet have an amazing potential for growth with very little expense. If you miss this opportunity, you'll know it in a few years, when you see ideas you should have brought to life making money for others. The reasons to begin right now are obvious:

• Global sales: There are 195 countries. We can sell to all of them no matter where we are, and we pay no customs, no tariffs, no shipping fees.
• No third parties: Set up a website and, short of Paypal or your Payment Processor taking a few percent, there are no distributors or retailers cutting into our profits.
• Free tools and education: Most of the software we need to build a business with was not only available to download, it came with more free education than any university. It was all there for the taking.
• No up front costs: We don't need offices or fax machines or secretaries to get going. We can rent everything for next to nothing until customers start using our services and taxing our servers. This means “no money down!” and no need to go take out a costly, dangerous loan.
• We can build a brand: We don't have to convince journalists we're worth writing about, and we don't have to pay for ads to get our name out. All the tools to create your own press, everything from Twitter to SEO to PR Articles, are free. We just have to learn how to use them.

Contrast this with just about any other marketplace in the world. No one is as free as software makers selling via the internet. All we need is an idea for a product that people are willing to pay for and the skills to pull it off. Ideas are all around us and the skills are learnable.

So where do we start?

Begin With An Idea

• Build something new that the world has never seen.
• Build something more beautiful than it was before.
• Make something faster.
• Make the same thing, cheaper.
• Create a product that's easier to use.

How To Build A Business

There are numerous free resources to give you an introduction. Here are a few we like:

• "Getting Real" is a (now) free e-book about building web apps: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/.

  Written by the successful folks behind 37Signals (Basecamp, Highrise), Getting Real is part business management, part software creation guide. It will help you skip straight to the good stuff about starting your product creation. "Want to build a successful web app? Then it’s time to Get Real. Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software."

• "Unleashing the IdeaVirus" by Seth Godin is the most popular e-book of all time: http://www.sethgodin.com/ideavirus/downloads/IdeavirusReadandShare.pdf

  "If you don’t have time to read the whole book, here’s what it says:

Marketing by interrupting people isn’t cost-effective anymore. You can’t afford to seek out people and send them unwanted marketing messages, in large groups, and hope that some will send you money.Instead, the future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other. Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk."