[davidw]

Here's why I think it's true in some abstract sense. Actual details may not be quite so clear cut - apologies to patio11 if I'm tweaking things a bit to make a point.

Let's take the bingo card thing and ignore Appointment Reminder: it makes good money, but seems to have some kind of upper bound in that he's never going to turn it into a multi-billion dollar business.

On the other hand, he's developed some serious competence in things like A/B testing, email marketing, and things like that, and is able to demonstrate their effects on companies' profits and thus command a percentage of those profits or at least get paid really well. So, by selling to companies that deal in the millions of dollars, it's almost mathematical that he's going to bring in more money than by fiddling around with niche products.

That's not to say he could have gotten to B without first going through A (sorry:-), as he gained those skills with the niche product.

[fooandbarify]

Ahh, I think I may have originally caught you before an edit (or just misread). There is probably more money to be made teaching eg. email marketing for someone in patio11's position, but that doesn't extrapolate well. For young developers like myself, I think it would be foolish to target other developers when there are so many valuable business problems that software can solve. (IOW I was contesting the idea that there is generally more money to be made selling shovels, but I do not contest the idea that patio11 or perhaps bdunn might be able to make more money selling shovels at this point.)