程序员创业开发产品最需要注意什么？

文章是关于出来创业开发产品的程序员，要成功的话需要什么。我是翻译自Brian Knapp写的一篇内容，可能我并不是一字一句的翻译，而是会把原文的要点都尽量写出来。

先来中文翻译版，接着是英文原文。

正文开始

如果你要开发自己的项目，你需要做一件事。我已经做了几十个我自己的项目，其中大部分都没有成功。首先，让我告诉你我的一个故事。

自1995年我的父母买了一台Packard Bell电脑以来，我一直在穷敲代码。当时它运行的是Windows 3.11 for Workgroups和DOS。

从那时起，我开发过各种游戏，小程序（不是“微信小程序”），应用程序和网站。其中有些能赚钱，大多数没有。

我给你举一个好例子。几年前，我开发了一个叫Static Hosting的服务，它提供一个简单而便宜的方式去托管静态网站。

你只需要把你网站作为一个zip文件上传到这个服务，你的网站就马上上线。

我们还开发了一个命令行工具然你上传你的网站。

流程很顺畅吧，并不像Amazon S3上托管需要去做很多的配置。

价格又很便宜，每个网站每个月只收费5美元。

当时粗略计算过，要达到一年有50,000-60,000美元的收入，我们的服务需要托管大概1,000个网站。

我觉得我开发的这个服务很好，我的朋友/合作伙伴也觉得很不错，我们有好几个好友也使用我们这个服务。

但到最后我们一共赚不到100美元，因为几乎没有用户使用它。

这个服务现在已经关掉了，后来一些开发者告诉我太贵了，他们宁愿使用Amazon S3托管网站。

现在回想起来，整个项目我都搞错了。

如果从来，我会先找一些开发者，问他们是否想要这样的产品/服务。

如果他们说“会”，我会让他们预付一笔一年30美元的费用，让他们永久使用。收到钱后我才会开始开发。

因为是这样，直到有人为你的产品付钱为止，你的“产品”并不真能算是个“产品”。

这给我们带来了每个网络企业家最终学习的最大的教训。

现在讲到重点了

开发什么产品都不重要，最重要的是你要能把它卖出去。你需要了解如何销售，然后把产品当做是你人生唯一的收入来源去将它销售出去。

如果没有收入，产品、服务和想法都很快会死去。

所以如果你想要开发自己的产品，就需要善于销售产品，才能从它赚到钱。

接下来是Brian Knapp的原文

There is one thing you need to do if you are going to develop your own project and I say this as someone who has done dozens of my own projects with limited to no success in most of them.

But first, let me tell you a quick story.

I have been hacking on code since my parents bought a Packard Bell computer in 1995. It ran Windows 3.11 for Workgroups and DOS. It was amazing at the time.

I built all kinds of games, small programs, apps, and websites since then. Some of them made money, most of them did not.

I will give you one great example. A couple years ago I built a service called Static Hosting that would be an easy and cheap way to host your static websites.

It was beautiful. All you had to do is upload a zip file of your site and it would be online.

We also built a command line tool to upload your site.

It was super slick and did not require as much configurations as hosting on Amazon S3.

The pricing was not crazy, as it was like $5 month per website or something.

To make a reasonable salary of say $50–60,000 a year we need like 1,000 websites hosted there.

It was a great service and my business partner and I used it. We even got a couple friends using it.

We never got anyone else to use it. It probably made less than $100 total, ever.

Now, I did go around and try and sell this idea to people and developers told me it was too expensive. They would rather use Amazon S3.

Okay, well that did not work.

In retrospect, I went about the whole thing wrong.

If I had to do it all over again, I would find developers and ask them if they want a product like this.

If they said yes, I would offer them a deal - $30/year for life if you pay the first full year right now, before I build anything.

Because here is the thing: Until someone gives you money for a product, you do not have anything. Period.

And that brings us to the big lesson that every web entrepreneur learns eventually.

It does not matter what you build, it matters what you sell. Learn how to sell, then sell like your life depends on it.

Products, services, and ideas all die if you never get paid.

So, if you are wanting to go solo and build your own product, then get good at selling people your product and getting money for it.

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