Since you didn't specify the type of business ( http://www.dot-com-it.com) ; I run a consulting business as a programmer that is just me. In the 'early' days (I started in 1999) I sort of fell into it. I was burnt out and walked out of a job.
Networking got me 2 consulting client, and things just ballooned from there. I fell into it accidentally and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way.
In the early days I did a lot of fixed fee projects for small businesses. On some projects I made tons of income; and on other projects I put in a lot of unpaid time [due to me incorrectly bidding the project and/or improperly handling change requests.
I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( http://www.theflexshow.com ). That made ~$30K throughout its' life. Even though I had a huge audience for the size of the market, no one was trying to sell anything to that market. I make ~$30K or so throughout its run and gave away a bunch of sponsorship in exchange for other services. Not bad; but not enough to pay the bills.
I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( http://www.flextras.com ). I did this full time, stopping all consulting. The business was, in essence, a failure. It generated $10K per year which is a nice side income; but not a "pay your bills income. The business was slowly growing, until some Adobe PR mishaps killed executive confidence in the Flash Player as an application development platform; which killed our sales. It was generating about $10K per year and was growing. But, that is not enough to pay the bills. I shut it down and open sourced all the code.
Now; I'm back to consulting, however the bulk of my clients right now are hourly as opposed to fixed fee. This is very profitable because many clients just keep renewing contracts and giving me work. However, it is the least bit satisfying because there is no defined end point and it feels like I'm just churning my wheels to kill time. Sometimes it feels like clients are creating just enough work to keep me busy so that I'll be there when they really need me.
Despite having multiple ongoing clients; it doesn't feel like I'm a business owner because they are paying for my time, explicitly. That isn't scalable in any way.
I'm prepping to launch a book under the Nathan Barry's "Authority" model which will teach Flex Developers how to program in AngularJS. More info at ( http://www.lifeafterflex.com ). People seem excited about this beyond anything I ever expected. I asked my newsletter if anyone was interested in reviewing a pre-release copy and I got 20+ responses which is a significantly higher response rate than usual. If the early interest is any indication; more people will read my book than ever bought a Flextras component.
Networking got me 2 consulting client, and things just ballooned from there. I fell into it accidentally and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way.
In the early days I did a lot of fixed fee projects for small businesses. On some projects I made tons of income; and on other projects I put in a lot of unpaid time [due to me incorrectly bidding the project and/or improperly handling change requests.
I tried my hands at podcasting with a sponsorships model ( http://www.theflexshow.com ). That made ~$30K throughout its' life. Even though I had a huge audience for the size of the market, no one was trying to sell anything to that market. I make ~$30K or so throughout its run and gave away a bunch of sponsorship in exchange for other services. Not bad; but not enough to pay the bills.
I took the profits from the consulting business and pumped them into a product business selling advanced components to Flex developers ( http://www.flextras.com ). I did this full time, stopping all consulting. The business was, in essence, a failure. It generated $10K per year which is a nice side income; but not a "pay your bills income. The business was slowly growing, until some Adobe PR mishaps killed executive confidence in the Flash Player as an application development platform; which killed our sales. It was generating about $10K per year and was growing. But, that is not enough to pay the bills. I shut it down and open sourced all the code.
Now; I'm back to consulting, however the bulk of my clients right now are hourly as opposed to fixed fee. This is very profitable because many clients just keep renewing contracts and giving me work. However, it is the least bit satisfying because there is no defined end point and it feels like I'm just churning my wheels to kill time. Sometimes it feels like clients are creating just enough work to keep me busy so that I'll be there when they really need me.
Despite having multiple ongoing clients; it doesn't feel like I'm a business owner because they are paying for my time, explicitly. That isn't scalable in any way.
I'm prepping to launch a book under the Nathan Barry's "Authority" model which will teach Flex Developers how to program in AngularJS. More info at ( http://www.lifeafterflex.com ). People seem excited about this beyond anything I ever expected. I asked my newsletter if anyone was interested in reviewing a pre-release copy and I got 20+ responses which is a significantly higher response rate than usual. If the early interest is any indication; more people will read my book than ever bought a Flextras component.
I've also dabbled with a in Mobile Game ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=air.com.igorKn... ), a recording studio (not online), and a CD duplication business (not online). All had varying levels of success.