
Going Indie - A Complete Guide to becoming an Independent Software Developer
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Going Indie - A Complete Guide to becoming an Independent Software Developer
About this book
From starting a company and staying motivated, through designing, building, and launching your first product and beyond.
You're a developer and you're looking to start a business. I was like that once. Starting a business takes a lot more than knowing how to write good code, and as I've learned, starting a software business involves just as much business acumen as it does software development.
I've been releasing software independently for years and I've had a day-job for the vast majority of that time. I've shipped my own software while working at a start-up, in academia, and in government. I've had my fair share of missteps and failures and achieved some modicum of success. This book is a review of my journey thus far and a collection of the lessons I've learned.
Independent software developers come in all shapes and sizes. Together, these developers form the core of the software community. Some indie developers ship software as a hobby, and others do so full-time, but they have one thing in common: they strive to create, to push boundaries, and to build a better world. Are you ready to join them?
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Information
Table of contents
- Going Indie
- Preface
- Who this Book Is For
- Who This Book Is Not For
- What You’ll Learn
- License
- How to Make an Attribution
- Conventions Used in This Book
- How to Contact Me
- You & Your Product & Your Company
- The Dream
- Independence and Success
- Our Approach
- What is Success?
- The Goldilocks Zone
- Staying Motivated
- The Right Mindset
- Setting Goals
- Tracking Your Progress
- Picking Yourself Up
- Reaching Out
- This Sounds Like Work
- Starting Your Business
- Terminology
- Sole-Proprietors and General Partnerships
- Corporations
- Limited Liability Companies
- Locating Your Business
- General Advice for Business Owners
- Developing Your Ideas
- Products vs. Services
- What Makes a Good Service?
- Market Research
- Open Standards and Interoperability
- Wearing Lots Of Hats
- Pricing Tiers And Fulfillment-Driven Upgrades
- The Minimum Viable
- Estimating Timelines
- Technical Considerations
- How to Choose Technologies
- When to Use it Anyway
- Rolling Your Own
- Putting it all Together
- Exiting the Cave
- Let’s Design a Thing
- About Nine9s
- Why Uptime Monitoring?
- The Features
- Pricing Matrix
- Architecture by Example
- What We Need to Do
- Hosting
- The Web Application
- Data Storage
- Application Caching
- Scheduled And Periodic Tasks
- Sending Alerts
- Payment Processing
- Disaster Recovery
- Auditing And Reporting
- System Security
- Honorable Mention: Bash
- Honorable Mention: Turbolinks
- Putting It All Together
- Architecture Review
- Useful Patterns & Questions
- Building Data Models
- Thinking in States and Transitions
- Pricing Tiers As States
- Using Transitions to Write Better Code
- Hosting
- Choosing the Right Provider
- Environmental Concerns
- Choosing the Right Configuration
- Setting Up Your Production Server
- Deploying Your Software
- Living In Production
- Wrapping Up & Showing the World
- Marketing and SEO
- Designing a Landing Page
- Adding a Knowledge Base
- Promoting Your Work
- Content Marketing
- Managing Your Image
- Getting Noticed
- Improving Your Chances
- A Thorny Topic: Ads
- Preparing for Launch
- Beta Testing and Soft Launch
- Improving through User Feedback
- Handling Legalities
- Getting Press
- Press Releases and Social Media
- Launch Day
- The Aftermath & Beyond
- Living on the Long Tail
- Ongoing Promotion
- Planning for the Future
- Consistency
- What Are You Waiting For?
- Acknowledgments
- Notes and References
- Footnotes