[vdm]

I hate to seem cynical about this, it was an interesting article, but I can't help noticing that all the product examples were for a market of other web developers.

I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers.

patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business, and I would be interested in hearing other examples done by small teams.

[muhfuhkuh]

"patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business"

Why? He's basically selling only to teachers.

What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers?

And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mobile app in development and just because bloggers who are in the market for a custom theme are technically "on the web" doesn't mean they're developers.

[patio11]

Why? He's basically selling only to teachers.

Sixty/forty or thereabouts, actually. There's also Fortune 500 companies, people planning a birthday party for grandma, a whole mess of ladies planning baby showers (baby shower bingo is A Thing), assisted living communities, churches, NGOs, and if I remember correctly every branch of the military.

I emphasize the teaching bit when talking about BCC because that's how I thought about it, that's generally how I think about it, and it makes a very good story, but it isn't 100% of the business

[rmc]

It's much easier for us techies to sell things to non-techies than it is for us to sell to techies. To a fellow techie, we have just created a simple django basic application. To a non-techie we have done magic.

[chc]

He's not saying a web developer can't sell a product to other web developers — he's saying that all web developers can't only sell products to other web developers. In other words, beware of myopia.

[tptacek]

"Selling ice cubes to eskimos" is a cliche for a reason.

[jleader]

Any company selling to a group of people has to understand the needs of their customers.

Many companies do this by hiring people called "marketers", who specialize in studying the needs of other groups of people.

An alternative is to create products for a group you belong to.

Hence, if a web developer (who is not also a marketer) is going to develop a product by themselves, it might make sense for them to create a product for other web developers.

Note that this doesn't mean all web developers will only make products for other web developers. Many web developers work for companies that have marketers to handle the "understand the needs of your customers" part. Other web developers have (or can teach themselves) sufficient marketing skills to develop products for people unlike themselves. Still others develop products for other groups they are members of (e.g. web developers creating products for people who share one of their hobbies).

I don't know why the original article didn't include these last 2 categories of developers, though.

[xiaoma]

I doubt this is a sustainable market; surely, all web developers can't just sell to each other. The market for web development products can only be created and paid for by having a sustainable web product market for non web developers.

This is an interesting idea to me. Why not?

The group of "all people" sell to each other and no one else. Literate people could certainly make a living selling only to other literate people. In theory, why couldn't web developers do the same if no other customers were available?

[billswift]

Sure, you could if you didn't need food, shelter, transportation, new hardware, et cetera. But since web developers DO need these things they need to sell enough to others to get the money to buy them. In international trade, this is called the import-export balance, or balance of trade.