In my opinion you have to overcome at least one of two obstacles to make money with a product:
- Either know an interesting ___domain / niche-market which is not known by thousands of other developers (This is suprisingly hard for me)
- Or you have to work your ass off / be very smart to create something which is significatnly better then the free alternatives. Because, most of the time, there are free alternatives, and most of the time they are good enough. Sometimes they are not just good enough, but they even have enthusiastic fans.
(The third alternative is to create something so innovative that has no competitors, but there is a huge risk that the idea is just not good enough, there is not enough user need for it)
I am working on a markdown editor for windows (in fact multiplatform, developed in Qt), which no doubt will be the best in its category. The question is not that whether will it be the best or not, the question is this: Is the free alternative good enough? The answer is not trivial.
- Either know an interesting ___domain / niche-market which is not known by thousands of other developers (This is suprisingly hard for me)
- Or you have to work your ass off / be very smart to create something which is significatnly better then the free alternatives. Because, most of the time, there are free alternatives, and most of the time they are good enough. Sometimes they are not just good enough, but they even have enthusiastic fans.
(The third alternative is to create something so innovative that has no competitors, but there is a huge risk that the idea is just not good enough, there is not enough user need for it)
I am working on a markdown editor for windows (in fact multiplatform, developed in Qt), which no doubt will be the best in its category. The question is not that whether will it be the best or not, the question is this: Is the free alternative good enough? The answer is not trivial.