Week 12 – It’s Not Looking So Good
So I've been thinking about things for the last couple of weeks. I'm not convinced that I'm going to be able to make Cogitu into something that provides a livable income with my constraints (mainly time & money). I'm not giving up on iPhone/iPad development, but I'm just not seeing a good way to make it into a decent living at this point in time. I know it *can* work - other people have made it work, but for me, I didn't build up enough of a runway for myself AND still have money to dedicate to the business. I still have a couple of months of runway left, but I didn't set aside money on top of that to pay for things like marketing, graphic design, or other business needs. If I had a small team working together, I think things would be a little different, but as is, it's just me and I'm not sure that's enough.
At this point, I'm not sure what this means for the future of Cogitu. I'm not throwing in the towel, but I am looking into options - specifically I'm looking at regular full-time employment once again. I've looked at some contract opportunities (and I'm aware of others that are out there). The more I thought about it, taking on mostly contract jobs just to get by isn't that different that going back to a regular day job. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd come out much better by going back to a regular day job vs contract jobs.
I've been working to add some of the most requested features to Budgee. I don't know that I'm going to get all of the requests into this release, but the next update will fix things so I can make changes faster. I'm making a few updates so it'll run on iPad (and iPhone OS 4) after this update as well. At this point, I'm not going to make it an iPhone/iPad universal app, but I do want to make sure it runs on both (right now, there is a change to SQLite in OS 3.2 that causes a crash when you try to save on iPad). There are still some other app ideas I'd like to work on and I do plan to continue development on them, but I'll need day job income to help make some of the ideas become a reality.
For me, I think app store development was more fun and interesting when I could build things without thinking about sales potential. I haven't really fallen in love with Xcode/Interface Builder - both are great tools and they are extremely powerful, but at the end of the day, I still miss Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. I'm not saying I miss Windows - there are certainly a lot of things I like about Mac in general and there is still no question in my mind that Apple's hardware & OS platform is king of the hill from a user's perspective. I just feel like I spend too much time focusing on some minute technical detail (e.g. tracking down an invalid access exception) instead of the application logic itself. I've gotten much more comfortable with the tools & techniques over the last several months for sure, but it just doesn't do it for me.
If some miracle happens where things start looking up for Cogitu, I'm certainly up for continuing on this course...I just don't see that happening. I did leave enough runway to go into August with this indie journey though, so unless I accept a full-time job (or need to work on something like a professional certification), I'll keep going. No matter what happens, I'll post at least one more indie update next week.
Hopefully you will hit a windfall, I wish we all had pocket sized brain storm groups for times when you need some help coming up with a great idea or even a way to make your idea better and marketable. You know, ill bet there is a blog group for that.. Anyway, good luck in your next few months. I myself work a 9-5 but, like you, would definitely rather run or own a company. I cannot say i agree with the idea that working a contract is a "get by" job, cant remember any given time that the computerjobs.com board was ever missing a .net development contract/perm posting. You should be fine, I hope the best for you.
Good Luck.
Thanks for the note Corey. I know there are a lot of contract type .NET positions out there, but I've just never had a great feeling about doing those types of jobs. Nothing wrong with them and I know several friends that do really well working only contract jobs, but they just feel like something in between working for myself and a regular 9-5 job without the benefits of either. You don't have the security nor the benefits package of a fulltime job, but you also don't have the flexible schedule and choice of what you work on like you do if you're working only for yourself. I realize you have some degree of choice simply by choosing the jobs to take on, but that isn't much different than my previous 9-5 jobs. A really good opportunity recently opened up that I'm looking into - it would be back to fulltime .NET at a large company, but it's *exactly* the job I would want in that type of environment while still leaving enough time to tinker outside of the day job. Anyway - we'll see what happens, but I'm sure things will be interesting one way or another. Thanks again for the well wishes!
- Adam