I've tried a few side projects and being a developer, I mostly enjoy the coding aspect the most. A lot of my domain also tends to be in Software. Marketing which I've realized is as important as tech isn't my forte. Does it make sense to then do open source projects and find a nice? There seems to be a template that a lot of dev tools and cloud offerings of open source and providing managed offerings of said product. I'm wondering if this is overkill if all I want is a revenue generating side project.
What's important is doing whatever the expectations are in the given market. But customer development is just as important as product development, and there is more to even product development than just coding.<p>Nobody is going to just discover you, you need to address a pain point, and sell a viable solution to it. You need to become a student of human behavior, and you need to understand the market you are in. Marketing is about finding which buttons to push, and then pushing them like crazy. Many of these buttons are visual and emotional. You are a storyteller, your job is to get intellectual ideas across emotionally. Humans tell stories to teach, this is why every story must have an element of truth. Your job is to find these truths. Sounds esotheric, but this is how you create a revenue, unless you are in a market where demand outstrips supply. One important thing is to differentiate yourself properly, but you also don't want to be too different because every market has expectations. There is only so much wiggle room between these. You have to find the patterns people are looking for, and play with some of them just enough that you are unique. And of course you have to get in front of people somehow, which can mean running ads, posting on social media, having a blog. You have to be genuinely helpful and constructive in solving the problem. It's better to create a minimum lovable product than a minimum viable one, and if your product is a transportation device it's better to build a complete skateboard, then a bike, then a motorcyle, then a car, instead of starting with an incomplete car. Your product should be loveable first, complete second, and it's worth building different products at different scales.