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In the Olde Tyme Days we used to duplicate the disks and hang them on hooks in baggies at the local computer store. Sadly those days are gone.
Then there was start your own company and find a software publisher like Hayden or Ashton-Tate. Sadly those days are gone as well.
Then there was the hope that you'd be bought out by some larger company that wanted to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. (you know who I'm talking about)
Today I'd say you'd at least have to purchase a domain name and put up a web site. PLEASE don't come up with a goofy name and then fill your pages with how it slices and dices and will restore your virility and forget to mention what it does. I've seen too many of those.
If you have a working prototype, maybe go to Kickstarter and ask for funding to at least get the name out there and have money to pay for a well written user manual and/or packaging.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I like your poetic answer.
Yeah, I agree with your comments.
I wrote my question hoping to obtain wise answers that would help me develop real insight.
Which is exactly what I've been getting and trying to do. Now I have to be sufficiently wise enough to understand what has been said and to make a few business decisions.
One conclusion: I'm not open to being bought out my America's biggest companies. But I might go for selling out to a slightly smaller firm. Less money, I know. That would be okay.
I have two products, each is completely unique, with no competition at present. Only one is camera ready complete, which is all I need.
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Serendipitously this link appeared in my newsfeed Crowdfunding[^]
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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You definitely need a website; and so that people can find you, you need to read up on SEO (search engine optimization).
Think up some key words that describe you product, Google them, and check out who your competition is. If you can create a page that will "rank up there", then you will get noticed.
Google has guides to help you with making your pages "search friendly" (SEO is actually not that difficult).
Further on, there are some really simple and economical ways to create an e-commerce site, with shopping cart and a link to PayPal that can be managed by a one-man operation.
(I'm currently supporting someone else's desk-top app that is sold on the internet; so I know it works. Anyway, most users can't tell the difference between a desktop app or a "web app" since almost everyone has a full-time internet connection these days...)
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Member 10214013 wrote: I live in America North America, a country with great national parks, wonderful bookstores and libraries, well organized sports teams, and hey!, this is where the internet was invented (even if it wasn't invented by a foolish man from Tennessee.)
Sorry, but America is a whole continent. 
Regarding your questions, if you have only done programming, and never ever attempted being a sales man, then you will face tough times, my recommendation is to get a team that's well balanced to sell, promote and develop your solutions, it doesn't have to be a big team, just around 4 persons will suffice, but they must be motivated and tough, because, most likely, at the beginning there won't be any money.
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RafagaX wrote: America is a whole continent
Two whole continents and several nearby islands (some a little too nearby).
This space intentionally left blank.
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FWIW from WikiPedia :
"...Gore's legislation also helped fund the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, where a team of programmers, including Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, created the Mosaic Web browser, the commercial Internet's technological springboard. 'If it had been left to private industry, it wouldn't have happened,' Andreessen says of Gore's bill, 'at least, not until years later...."
There's lot more in WikiPedia regarding Gore's involvement and a lot of credit given to him by many in the industry.
Again, FWIW.
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None of what you say involves Al Gore sitting down and thinking "Hey!, why don't we develop inter-machine communications so people can communicate over a network."
That's the key component with regard to the internet and that was the work of others, such as Mr. Andreesen.
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Member 10214013 wrote: But ah, how does one sell software these days?
Same way one sells a car. Same way software was sold in 90s (social media is just another media.)
Member 10214013 wrote: I tried to do business with MS, they made the right noises for a while but, no, turns out they were just kicking the tires. And really, I'm just not a Microsoft kind of guy.
The most likely way to succeed at sales is to have someone that is actually a salesman do the selling. And if you have a really good salesman then you will have sales.
And none of that of course has anything to do with being a good programmer.
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I once read somewhere (but I don't remember who said it) that, if people know you they will listen to you, if people trust you they will buy from you.
You will still need to be out there where people can see you (even if it's just digitally).
You will still have to sell a sales team on your product before they can sell it for you.
Unless someone sees an opportunity that your product provides for them to make money.
Try to get people talking about you and your product (good, bad or indifferent).
modified 31-Jan-14 18:17pm.
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Kanye is threatening...[^] (image)
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.-John Q. Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering.-Wernher von Braun
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-Albert Einstein
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He's got my vote to leave! 
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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I hope he doesn't end up in Kenya.
"Bastards encourage idiots to use Oracle Forms, Web Forms, Access and a number of other dinky web publishing tolls.", Mycroft Holmes[ ^]
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d@nish wrote: I hope he doesn't end up in Kenya.
I hope he does. 
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No! That would be worst punishment for being anagram for this name.
"Bastards encourage idiots to use Oracle Forms, Web Forms, Access and a number of other dinky web publishing tolls.", Mycroft Holmes[ ^]
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Please do and don't let the door hit you on the way out!
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Hi folks,
I've spent the last eight months working on a responsive framework as I wanted an alternative to the ones that I saw out on the interwebs.
Here it is.
http://responsivebp.com/[^]
We use it at work for every site now and I've got a bit of pick-up in the wild (mostly within the Umbraco community) but no matter what I do I can't seem to get it really noticed. I've written up comprehensive docs and tweeted the crap out of it too.
Most people just seem to want to jump on the Bootstrap (bloated, buggy) bandwagon or worse still that weird Semantic-UI framework that to me makes absolutely no sense. (Why make divs look like buttons?)
I find it very frustrating and at times I wonder whether to keep going on it as it's a hell of a lot of work for one guy or just throw in the towel.
The code is lightweight, good and well tested also. It hasn't let us down at work yet and has saved us tons of development time.
How would you go about getting it noticed? Should I bother, am I simply wasting my time?
Any advice is welcome.
Thanks
JimBob SquarePants
*******************************************************************
"He took everything personally, including our royalties!"
David St.Hubbins, Spinal Tap about Ian Faith, their ex-manager
*******************************************************************
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It would seem logical to me that one way to publicize your framework is to write an article for CodeProject about it, talk about its advantages, and give concrete examples of them. Discuss your goals, and strategy, in creating the FrameWork.
“But I don't want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”
“How do you know I'm mad?” said Alice.
“You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.” Lewis Carroll
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It's like dating; if you've got a girl friend all the women want you and if you don't have a girl friend none of them want you.
People resist change, I tried pushing C++ years ago at a large company I worked at wrote classes, taught classes, and tutored but no one would use it. But later everyone adopted it and it became the language of choice.
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I disappeared for a while, once again. -_- I don't know how often I'll be around. I know I'm not entirely familiar with everyone, even after all these years, but you may have seen some of my posts. Just wanted to say HI AGAIN, CP!
I've finally stepped into the real world of development. It's about time. It only took about 15 years, from the time I was about 12 years old. 
djj55: Nice but may have a permission problem
Pete O'Hanlon: He has my permission to run it.
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Welcome back... are you on parole now, or did you serve your full sentence? 
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The sentence begins now as he has to work with incompetent managers, clueless top management and brain-dead users.
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Vivic wrote: incompetent managers, clueless top management and brain-dead users.
You named only three, but there are four horsemen of the apocalypse. Who is the fourth and worst to be revealed last?
Edit: It must be the harebrained customer who puts the entire project at stake for some impossible requirement (Which one of the other three has promised to deliver. A promise you have to keep somehow.)
Just had that yesterday.
The language is JavaScript. that of Mordor, which I will not utter here
I hold an A-7 computer expert classification, Commodore. I'm well acquainted with Dr. Daystrom's theories and discoveries. The basic design of all our ship's computers are JavaScript.
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