[semicolonandson]

Sure it would be nicer if good products were automatically successful on their merits alone. But the world is a very, very big place. Therefore a major part of the problem resting on your shoulders as a business owner is getting your product into the attention spheres of people who will pay for it.

IMO it's better not to fight realities you can't change. The best you can do — from both a business and a mental standpoint — is accept that marketing is a necessity and find a way to enjoy it.

I'm a programmer who's been indie for 10 years and I treat marketing as a series of open-ended experiments; this arouses my intellectual curiosity. I also gamify it by gathering real-time stats; this emulates the dopamine hit I get when a piece of code compiles.

I've vlogged and blogged a good bit about marketing from a programmer perspective, so if you'd like more on my take, check the links in my profile.