For twenty years I tried to build products and sell them to others, to no avail. "Marketing is the problem" - I always told myself about my failures.
I still have one product up from those days. FileSculptor is a file converter used by non developers to automate CSV to XLSX conversion. What was the last time I used it myself? Excluding testing before new releases or support issues, never.
I decided that my next product should be something I really care about. Something that scratches my on itch and that I would use on a daily basis. I should be the first one to find bugs on my product, not my users.
I always kept track of my expenses, but was less so with my budget. I used a spreadsheet and would update if once or twice a month. So I decided to create an app with the budget and expense tracking I wanted. I always had lots of ideas of how it should work, how it would forecast transactions automatically from a detailed budget and how it would deal with credit card purchases, hitting the budget on the month they'd appear of the credit card statement. It would support credit card purchases with installments, something always missing in the apps I tried.
I created Pleke to be the personal finance app I always wanted, and use it on a daily basis. For the last six months its been the only source of truth about my finances. At my day job I work on a product used by others. I'm grateful and want it to work well because it pays my bills. But with my app, its quite a different relationship. I'm always proud when I input data in it and it works as designed. When something breaks, I want to fix it ASAP. I have a text file with planned features for version 2, version 3, 4 and 5.
Pleke is the app I want to work on for the next ten years, even if others do not value it as much as I do. "Marketing is the problem" - I will tell myself, to their loss.
Be the first user of your product! A person who takes good care of their garden will work on it and admire it on a daily basis. So should we with our products.