as to how to get started and a few pitfalls to avoid.
To add to the pile:
Do this as a side deal. Don't develop anything out of the blue in the
hopes it will be deemed brilliant and make you rich. It could happen
of course, but by dovetailing your in-house projects with your
software offerings you will be subsidizing your development costs down
to an acxceptable level.
Paypal IPN is easy to set up and they only want about 4% of the take
when all is said and done. In the last couple of years I have only
had one developer gripe about Paypal (a couple of weeks ago, oddly
enough). Our class of customer typically has the knowledge and
wherewithal to a)use this small-time service and b)understand that
buyuing tags ain't big business here; so don't expect the developer to
shell out US$100 monthly for a dedicated ecommerce gateway and a
seamless cart experience. Building your own auto-downloading software
scheme will take a bit, but not much.
As your visibility grows, expect to make money off that almost by
default as other developers come to you with projects they need help
with. Personally this is my #1 or #2 source of income now, but it
takes time to build up a body of work, and no small amount of effort
to maintain it, which is more important as your tag gallery grows.
Your programming skills and overall awareness of the scope of this
realm will increase significantly in short order, either the easy way
or the hard way. As Matthew said, selling multiplatform code to a
developer audience is a far different world than writing the stuff for
yourself, a single CF platform, a single db platform etc. There are
all sorts of things you'll have to account for as your list of
supported environments grows which you never even needed to consider
before.
And as he says, it is very rewarding, and a great challenge.
--
--Matt Robertson--
MSB Designs, Inc.
mysecretbase.com
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