[patio11]

Define "hard." It is an eminently achievable goal to build a business which makes $1,000 a month. That isn't a "get into the NFL then win the Superbowl" goal, that is a "get into college" goal on the relative-risk-of-total-failure continuum. The process of doing it is fairly well understood and focused application of effort towards it makes it quite likely that you will succeed.

It does require a bit of a mindset change. You have to stop thinking of yourself as a "skilled developer", for one, since development skill leads to success in software businesses like the ability to cook amazing waffles leads to successfully running a bed and breakfast.

[jamesbritt]

You have to stop thinking of yourself as a "skilled developer", for one, since development skill leads to success in software businesses like the ability to cook amazing waffles leads to successfully running a bed and breakfast.

A few years ago I was part of a small company, and one day we had a meeting to discuss our future (and yes, porn was one of the things we discussed, though we ended up not pursuing it). The question we asked was, "What was the goal of the company?" If the answer was "To make money", then was writing code the proper way to do it? Each of us, being coders, had come to think so.

I sometimes think that having a skill or a passion for some hands-on activity is a detriment because it leads you think you can and should be doing that as the path to success. The whole "do what you love and the money will follow" nonsense.

OTOH, if you believe you have no tangible skill, but think you can recognize or anticipate a market, then you don't bother trying to implement the solution yourself; you go hire people. (Of course pulling that off is a skill in itself, but it's a different sort from the "make things with your hands" realm where coding lives.)

From a business point of view it may make more sense to take a high-paying but soul-sucking Rails contract job and use the money to pay other developers to implement you MVP.

(BTW, the book The E-Myth covers some of this.)

[chopsueyar]

since development skill leads to success in software businesses like the ability to cook amazing waffles leads to successfully running a bed and breakfast.

Well put.

[joshklein]

Yes, a very important point. This is the central idea of The E-Myth (i.e. doing a thing and running a business that does that thing require very different skill sets).

ref: http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/...

[mise]

It is certainly achievable. My worry is being able to do it once (along with a full-time job) but not being able to sustain multiple such projects.

[patio11]

Break down exactly why you think that that isn't sustainable, then engineer those worries away.

Do you think your project will need new features regularly? Pick a project whose problem domain changes rarely, and get out of the features = value mindset because it is outrageously false.

Do you think you will have to be constantly selling? Don't pick something with high touch sales processes for a side project.

Do you think your project will require support regularly? Do something less critical, so you have less time pressure on support. Do something simpler. Give people self-help resources and push them. Automate as much of your support burden as reasonably possible. (e.g. "Hey Patrick I need a receipt" takes me about 10 seconds to answer. It used to take a few minutes, but I get asked it frequently enough to justify 30 minutes of dev to make it quick.)

Do you think you will need to play sysadmin frequently? Become a better engineer. (I have a couple articles about this.)

I am not the sharpest knife in the HN drawer by a long shot. Currently I'm travelling internationally doing some networking at a Silicon Valley startup and, on the weekdays, consulting in NYC. I profoundly hate flying right now. I also have two software businesses and, from their perspective, this state of affairs is exactly identical to me just sleeping in back at my house. It is rather unlikely the businesses will cause significant work for me.

[mise]

Patrick, yes it's a regular selling problem as my membership peaked a couple of months ago and I'm trying to keep current members during this plateau.

Perhaps I have fallen for the features mistake to make more value for those members, but I've not implemented much to start with.

Doing email marketing, email replies to customers, adding testimonials, adding features, creating new info products... this one project takes all the time, but it's multiple times too small to sustain me.

[frankwiles]

Maybe email marketing isn't the right choice? I know personally I never purchase products emailed to me, if I spend 3 seconds scanning the email you're lucky. Granted I may not be your target audience.

[mtogo]

Except that web development is more akin to microwaving Eggo waffles.

[dpcan]

From what I've seen, it's very easy to do poorly, but not so easy to do well.

One might say graphic design is easy because you are simply drawing colored shapes, yet many of us suck at this easy job.