When you’re just getting started as an independent developer, you might feel like you’re going through a checklist of things to avoid. Mistakes are inevitable when you’re just getting started, but with some preparation and a few common sense rules, you can avoid them and build a successful business from the start.The biggest mistake new developers make is focusing on short-term goals rather than building a sustainable business model. If you can’t find a sustainable way to make money from your app or website, it doesn’t matter how good your product or service is. You have to be realistic about what you can accomplish in the short term and what you need to do to build a real business that can sustain you in the long term.Another mistake is trying to do everything yourself. For example, if you want to hire a designer, but can’t afford to pay them, you might be tempted to do the design work yourself. Even if it’s not a major project, you have to learn to let go and hire people who are better at specific tasks. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to do it all yourself, but it’s a recipe for disaster. It’s important to hire a professional who can do a great job and provide value to your business. Don’t be afraid to pay a fee for those services if you need them. Remember, it’s better to hire the right person once and have amazing work done consistently than to try to do everything yourself and have everything be mediocre.
If you’re not charging for your services, you’re not making any money, which is a very important part of running a successful business. Unfortunately, there are a lot of developers who don’t charge enough for their services and don’t make enough money. If you’re building a product, you need to charge for it, or you’ll never make any money. If you’re building a service, you need to charge for the time it takes you to provide that service. If you’re charging too little for your services, you’ll either burn out trying to do everything yourself or end up disappointing potential customers by not offering the services they need. If you can’t charge enough for your services, it’s time to get a job or raise money from investors. There’s no shame in that—it’s the only way to make a sustainable business.
We’ve all heard stories of people who started a business and were so focused on short-term goals that they failed to focus on what was necessary to succeed at long-term goals. It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you’re doing, if you don’t have a long-term plan to make money from your business, it will fail. Your business needs to be sustainable in the long term. For example, if you’re trying to build an app, but you don’t have a plan for how you’re going to make money from it, it’s not going to last. You need to make sure you have a plan for how you’re going to make money from your app or website. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You can create a plan that includes ways to get customers, get them to pay you for services, and/or get them to refer their friends. You can charge for your app or website in a few different ways, such as by selling subscriptions, selling advertising, or selling digital products.
When you’re just starting out, it’s easy to get caught up in the weeds and forget about the basics. You need to make sure you have a good marketing strategy in place. If you don’t have a marketing plan, you’re leaving yourself wide open for failure. You need to make sure you’re using every marketing channel available to you. You can’t just rely on one marketing channel. You need to use a variety of different marketing strategies. You need to make sure you’re building an audience for your product or service, whether it’s an app, a website, or a physical product. You need to make sure your audience is engaged so that they’ll keep coming back and refer their friends.
It’s easy to create something that isn’t very good and isn’t useful to anyone. When you’re just getting started, you don’t have a lot of experience or a large customer base. That means your products have to be good. You need to make sure your products are useful and provide value to your customers. You need to make sure they’re high quality and well designed. If your products aren’t excellent, no one will buy them. It’s important to know when your products are good enough and when it’s time to move on. You don’t want to be stuck with a product that isn’t useful to anyone.
In the end, there are no mistakes when it comes to starting your own business. Every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn something new and do better in the future. The best way to avoid making mistakes is to be realistic about your capabilities and what you can accomplish. You can’t avoid mistakes completely, but you can learn from them and do better next time.