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Kevin Walzer, software developer.

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Priorities

I'm a great admirer of Gus Mueller, the main developer at Flying Meat Software. He's one of the leading indie Mac developers out there: his desktop wiki VoodooPad and his image editor Acorn are leaders in their categories. A few years ago he posted a blog entry that outlined his path to indie success, and it has served as an inspiration for many indie Mac developers, myself included.

Given my admiration for him, I was a bit taken aback by the curmudgeonly tone of his latest blog entry.

A bit of context: Gus's blog entry is based in turn on an Inc. article by Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software about how his software company took off: founded right at the moment of the dot-com crash of 2000, Fog Creek struggled financially, laid off employees, found some unexpected success with its bug tracking product FogBugz, tried all sorts of marketing gimmicks to improve sales, then finally settled in to simply improving the product itself, after which sales took off.

There's wisdom here. All the marketing glitz in the world won't help if your product is terrible, or doesn't meet user needs. Marketing helps, but it isn't a substitute for having a great product to sell.

Gus notes that his experience has been similar: improving his own products has been the biggest factor in the growth of his business. And he suggests that if other indie developers aren't succeeding, they should take a look at their own products:

Learn to be your best critic, and you'll learn to ship software that's worth paying for. If no one is buying your app then you've either got a dud and you need to focus on something else, or you need to improve your app so it's worth paying for. And some apps, no matter how flashy or awesome or genuinely useful, will never make money.

His assumptions here are bit surprising: that if someone's application isn't selling, it must be because they aren't self-critical enough. That might be true; the developer might be impervious to feedback, and even have a reputation for being hostile to user input. But it might also be that the product is in a highly competitive market niche. It might also be that there's little demand for the product. It might also be that the product is in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Business success is an inexact process. Quite simply, it's a gamble. If you look at some of Joel Spolsky's other articles, you'll see that luck played a big role in his success. One of his products, FogBugz, took off; another one, CityDesk, did not. Although Gus notes that "some apps...will never make money," I think he underestimates how much luck plays a role.

Applying these lessons to my own software business, I reach the following conclusions:

• All my products sell, some more than others. The best-selling ones target a relatively large user base and were the first in their market niche to do so. (Luck! Being in the right place at the right time!)
• Listening to users and incorporating their suggestions for improvement has led to improved sales over the years.
• The best way to get a jump in sales is simply to have regular releases, backed up by marketing such as news releases, blogging, etc. Many of my programs go for months without selling much but see a big spike when I release a new version.
• Offering good customer support is a way to help improve sales as well. Many of my sales have come after answering customer questions when the customer was running a demo version of the program. Good support matters.

Having said this, taking Gus's advice and serving as my own toughest critic, I also have to acknowledge: my apps don't sell as much as I'd like. I'm not a full-time indie developer, like Gus. And (bad) luck isn't solely to blame here.

Or, to pose the question, "Why don't my apps sell," I could paraphrase Gus: "Maybe they just suck?"

Well, some people seem to think so. NameFind got a harsh reception at MacZot the other day; at least one user disparaged my professionalism as well as noting specific criticisms of the app itself. (Even amid all the flaming, I extracted at least two suggestions that I will use for further improvement of NameFind, so thanks.)

Most of that user's complaints stem from the fact that NameFind isn't written in Objective-C and Interface Builder; it doesn't hook very deeply into Cocoa. (Parts of it do, but not the whole thing.) That's an unavoidable limitation of my software since I don't develop directly in Cocoa but rather with a toolkit that uses Cocoa for basic UI elements that it organizes using its own API. I have to take my lumps there with whatever "suck" factor might apply. (Some users care more about this than others.)

So I concede a certain amount of lost sales because Cocoa's not part of the equation. I don't believe that's the totality of it, however. Some of my products target niches with established competitors. I probably don't market as much as I should. And, at the end of the day, not every product is going to take off. (Gus himself has discontinued one or two slow sellers over the years.)

Bottom line, it's darn hard to be a success as an indie developer. For every established indie Cocoa developer like Gus, there are probably a dozen indie Cocoa developers whose businesses haven't taken off, for whatever reason. I'll bet dollars-to-donuts that most of those developers are tough self-critics, strive to create the best products possible, and provide user support to the best of their ability. (In short, there are probably more Cocoa developers whose business looks like mine than those whose business looks like Gus's.)

Getting back to the title of this blog entry: I think my priorities are in the right place. It's no guarantee of anything.

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