swombat.com

daily articles for founders

Running a startup in the UK (or with a UK subsidiary)? Get in touch with my company, GrantTree. We help with government funding.
My first 100 sales  

A detailed post by micropreneur John Forsythe, about how he launched his photoshop layer styles and made his first 100 sales.

Some choice quotes:

Hacker News and Reddit

Both of these communities provided me with invaluable early feedback. Reddit was especially harsh. Nobody wants to hear "your site is ugly and you charge too much", but committing to an early site redesign probably saved my business. If your landing page doesn't inspire confidence, no one will buy your product, no matter how good it is.

and

I dove into the layer styles niche with a lot of optimistic naivety. I knew people would be willing to pay more for a superior product, but I overestimated by how much. Style packs I thought would go for $50 ended up selling for closer to $20. One of the problems with niche markets is the difficulty of exploring the demand curve. Getting enough data points to support or reject your pricing strategy can take weeks, and you'll probably be losing money in the meantime.

Worth a read if you're looking to leap into the world of micro-businesses.

More from the library:
Stop looking for a cofounder
Side projects
Advice for a young entrepreneur