I wonder if it skews both ways. I tend not to post on these threads because a.) they come up so frequently and b.) it sometimes files like it's just bragging to keep telling everybody that my business stuff is successful.

I definitely agree on not getting discouraged. It's not in any way as hard as you think it is before trying. And you get better at it the more times you try.

My history of products looks like:

  - Hey, I built this cool piece of technology.  Maybe I should try to turn it into a product.  
    (... but never finished it) (X3)

  - Hey, Google Maps is cool and I like travelling.  Maybe I should launch a Travel Blog host.
    (... without any fathomable way to monetize it)

  - Hey, look at this cool one-day hack that got tons of Reddit love.
    We should totally start a company!
    (... with a flaky co-founder who never got around to doing any of the "business" stuff 
     before bailing for the next shiny thing)

  - Hey, I bet you could transform Amazon's cloud storage logs into CLF and
    feed them into Webalizer.  I should totally sell this for like $1/month!
    (... which actually turned out to be a good idea, but for $10-$300/month)

After all that, I expect my next product will be something with some form of actual market of people willing to pay money for it before diving in to the IDE. But then you never know...