This morning I came across two interesting articles about running a small software business that I thought were worth sharing. Both are from authors that made appearances in my “Marketing on the Cheap” list.
The first is another fine article from Daniel Jalkut, owner of Red Sweater Software and developer of MarsEdit, Black Ink, FastScripts and others. He discusses some of the challenges a small software developer has to tackle while running their business.
Working for yourself means a never ending list of outstanding questions. How do I improve my marketing? Can I streamline my quality assurance? Do I need a customer relationship management system? Maybe I should rent office space. When do I hire somebody? Is the printer ink deductible, even though I printed a couple concert tickets? How many free copies of my application should I be giving away? Should I be granting interviews? And if so, what’s my title, anyway?
There must have been some sort of mystic or planetary alignment at work here. Bob Walsh, owner of 47hats (formerly “My MicroISV”) suggests a logical method for tackling all of Daniel’s “outstanding questions”.
So what is a good strategy for prioritizing all those things you need to do – all the 47 hats you need to wear – to make your microISV successful? Here’s a piece of advice a successful microISV passed on to me when I first started: prioritize by revenue.