After some deliberation, I've decided to take the business in a different direction. Custom development work has been good to me and for the time being that's what I will be doing. But I'm going to start spending more time on shrink-wrapped software.There are lots of reasons for this:
- I started programming in 1993 with QuickBasic and some desktop software for testing audio devices. This represents a return, of sorts, to my roots. Or whatever.
- The custom development business has become very competitive, especially with cheap, foreign labor. So much so that I've stopped bidding using sites like guru.com and elance.com.
- Shrink-wrapped software is no less competitive but offers advantages that custom development can't touch. For example, build once and sell many times represents more work up front but potentially more revenue for less work in the long term.
I am totally pumped about this change and am looking forward to building my first applications.
