[Alan01252]

I've a few questions if you have the time.

Did you never charge? Or were you charging? What were the reasons it was / you were not ready to make it a money making business? Any mistakes or lessons learned while building/running the software? Where did the 120 users come from?

As someone who is looking to create their own product soon I'd be really grateful for any response you can give.

Thanks

Alan

[renownedmedia]

For a few months I had the ability for users to sign up for a paid account, but I never pushed it. After that, I just disabled the feature altogether.

The most advertising I did do was a 125x125 ad on a website used by web developers (DavidWalsh.name) for one month. I didn't get a single user through that ad though.

The biggest lesson learned is that an app like this really needs someone who is good at marketing. I'm just a programmer, but if I had found a marketer and pursued the development of the app, I'm pretty sure it could have been successful.

Another take away is to research competitors. I never looked them up since I actually built this mostly for myself at first, and just kept adding new features as it got bigger. It turned out the market was very crowded (This page has a list of 17 competitors: http://thomashunter.name/blog/shutting-down-and-open-sourcin...).

Also, "piss or get off the pot". I spent a lot of time developing this but I didn't devote enough of my time to it for it to be successful.

[atomical]

I wouldn't describe a market with 17 competitors as crowded. Maybe others would disagree. I'm building an invoicing app for a niche market so I'm probably biased.

[Alan01252]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply!

Also I know you're getting a lot of stick in this thread for the code which I feel is unjustified, I just want to say I commend you for open sourcing it.

[renownedmedia]

Thanks for the encouragement! I get flack from everything I open, must be a sign.

[scoot]

It's a sign that people are interested in,and paying attention to your code. Take it as a compliment!