But it leaves one big thing out. You didn't launch with no one paying attention. You already had a fan base - people you could reach out to. I know you had to build your email list from scratch, but at least you know who was going to be in that list, and those people already knew and had a relationship with you.
You should go back farther in time to when you had no following, no people who cared, and no one who knew your name. As you said below, it's a 7 year overnight success. For those who want to replicate your success (not your product), what advice do you have for those who want to build a following so that later they can capture that following into something that will be beneficial?
I'm far from expert in this, but I'll reply with what my wife would say. She's in a completely unrelated, non-technical field and has a pretty good online following. In short: post things people are interested in, follow up with the ones who respond or ask questions and be genuinely interested in the people who follow you. Don't be fake.
The theory is simple, putting it into practice for your particular field is the hard part :-)
Did you get many repeat customers? I see the licence is limited to 3 machines instead of the user. Did this have the effect of getting customers to buy additional licences?
It would be interesting to know if people are willing to pay again so they can use software on multiple devices or if it is more likely to put people off buying the software.
I should definitely do a better job by creating a template and allowing people to use that to convince their bosses. This site is a good example of that: product-toolkit.com
Your post gave an interesting idea - a gallery of products that people can buy to spend their budgets in case they don't have ideas lol
In the next couple of weeks, I should add the premium version on Dracula PRO ;)
NB: Really refreshing how you created this timeline! You should make a (Gatsby) theme out of it :)
Really enjoyed reading the journey, it was long but wow.
Today is a special day. My solo side project has hit 100K in sales, which is absolutely insane. When I started this thing, I never thought this would happen.
Monetizing an open-source project is very difficult, so I decided to share my personal journey and lessons learned.
This is a visual timeline showing all the lessons learned from $0 to $100k in one year.
I hope this can be helpful and inspire your own journey :)
Let me know if you have any questions! I'm here to answer every single one of them.