2) Research some product / markets, see what other products are out there. Chasing some noble idea, or "hidden gem" just to gain first-move advantage isn't all that, IMO. It's almost always better to join an existing market where proof of concept has already been done for you. Even better if the existing products are stagnant or lacking.
3) Figure out a business and marketing plan, doesn't have to be the most complex thing in the world - but it forces you to do some research before just diving into something blindly.
4) Start developing your MVP. Reach out to users in the relevant places, which means going to forums, twitter, subreddits, etc. Try your best to get user feedback, iterate your product on said feedback. Any money you get from donations, purchases, gifts, family, whatever should go towards infrastructure and marketing.
5) With enough users, look into how you want to monetize your product. Ads? SaaS? Purchases? Lots of ways, but they all have their pros and cons.
But, to be honest, it's a lot of work for a single developer. Especially if you're not already experienced with all the various aspects. You're basically gonna be doing everything on a smaller scale. Lots of things to learn, lots of things that can go wrong.
And importantly, it can take years to build up a userbase large enough to live off the project. Sometimes you never grow to that size, and the product life-cycle has peaked, on its way downwards.
The people that do this kind of stuff, have tried and failed multiple times before. But there's always something to learn, which you'll take to the next project.
You make good points, but let me ask you something without malice or bad intentions, have you put any of this in actual practice?I have always been fascinated about the huge gap between giving good advice and actually following it. I am talking from personal experience here.
There are four things need to have a potential microstartup.
#1 Problem that has business potential and big enough
#2 Audience who has that burning problem
#3 Distribution channel to get the solution into users hands
#4 Business model aka pricing fit for the Problem-Audience
I empathize with you. I applied for disability and am really limited in my ability to work. But I want to create income-generating businesses so I can have income that's not directly tied to my time and effort.
Depending on your disabilities it may be a tough road. The common wisdom is that most businesses fail — it takes a lot of skill, creativity, luck, and hard work to make a business that generates income, even for people without disabilities. I would say if money is your sole objective you might be better off doing light contracting work.
For generating business ideas, you might look at this post from IndieHackers creator Courtland Allen. He lists a lot of the pitfalls about business ideas he's seen when interviewing indie hackers: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-bu...
You might also want to limit your idea generation to businesses that will reliably generate income month-to-month (if that's important to you). And if you want it to be lucrative you might consider a business that solves problems for other businesses (since they tend to have money and are willing to spend it if your service is valuable — it can be hard for consumer apps to be very lucrative).
One thing I learned as someone with limited abilities is that it helps to be very clear about your own goals and spend some time thinking about a roadmap of what tasks (marketing, developing, etc) will help get you there. This is so you can minimize wasted time and effort, which is extra precious when you're limited.
I made https://extensionpay.com and it generates a couple hundred dollars a month with very little ongoing effort. It also helps other developers generate revenue from their browser extensions, so that gives me a good feeling.
1) Learn the tools to build your product.
2) Research some product / markets, see what other products are out there. Chasing some noble idea, or "hidden gem" just to gain first-move advantage isn't all that, IMO. It's almost always better to join an existing market where proof of concept has already been done for you. Even better if the existing products are stagnant or lacking.
3) Figure out a business and marketing plan, doesn't have to be the most complex thing in the world - but it forces you to do some research before just diving into something blindly.
4) Start developing your MVP. Reach out to users in the relevant places, which means going to forums, twitter, subreddits, etc. Try your best to get user feedback, iterate your product on said feedback. Any money you get from donations, purchases, gifts, family, whatever should go towards infrastructure and marketing.
5) With enough users, look into how you want to monetize your product. Ads? SaaS? Purchases? Lots of ways, but they all have their pros and cons.
But, to be honest, it's a lot of work for a single developer. Especially if you're not already experienced with all the various aspects. You're basically gonna be doing everything on a smaller scale. Lots of things to learn, lots of things that can go wrong.
And importantly, it can take years to build up a userbase large enough to live off the project. Sometimes you never grow to that size, and the product life-cycle has peaked, on its way downwards.
The people that do this kind of stuff, have tried and failed multiple times before. But there's always something to learn, which you'll take to the next project.