Hello inter-net! I hope the weather is okay in your area.
I would like to take this opportunity to announce that this web site is about you. Or at least, something that you care about. And what do YOU care about?
That's right! Me.
But what will I be writing about? Is it something that you, the reader, would be interested in?
DO PIGS LOVE SHIT?!?!? Of course it will!
That is, if you're passionate about things that I am. And because that is hard to tell, I decided that a good way to start is to post a short introductory post for each of the things that I would most often be talking about. So here goes:
uISVs/microISVs
For those that are not complete fucking nerds, ISV stands for 'Independent Software Vendor'. The prefix stands for 'really small' and the terms are used for people who decide they want to take a shot at being their own boss in the jungle that is the Computer World. Running your own business is a really rewarding experience whether it fails or not, which is good, because so far I'm failing. I'll talk about lessons learned in research, development, marketing, selling and supporting a product, which is only a subset of the roles that a microISV has to play. If you're planning on giving the finger to the Man with another kind of small business (that will still pay taxes to the Man so He will disregard the earlier Gesture), you'll still probably find a few things worth noting in what I write.
News item:
Following a common advice from more successful people at the Business of Software forum, including Mr. 'microISV autopsy blog' Patrick McKenzie, I'm offering something small, nice and free over at Gatehead. My Vista Volume Indicator is a dumb little gadget that actually has measurable demand, so a short-term target is to get people to see that it exists. That will help me analyze what is probably the most serious problem I have right now: Ridiculously low traffic.
Now, there can be tons of reasons for very low traffic, especially for a starting site. No links pointing to you is one of the most obvious, and another is that people can't find you when they're searching for what you're offering (these two reasons are, of course, heavily correlated). Well, I'm offering a background music and announcement player and searching for that shows no sign of my stuff. Hell, searching for MY PROGRAM doesn't even bring up my site in the first page of results. So obviously we need to get to why my site is not considered the Headquarters of Time2Play, and why Time2Play is not considered an option when looking for something like it. I'm already trying out some basic measures, and I will report on my findings.
Okay that's one thing. Next time: SHARKS! Or transhumanism.