I agree with your comments above, but I mean that ease of use (even in its best incarnation) is not enough to let people find your website. Google can’t determine whether you application is easy to use or not and then rank its search results based on that criteria. Being easy to use might get you some word of mouth, but you have to make it convenient for your customers to let other people know about the program. Ease of use is not a marketing plan, it’s a customer retention plan IMO. Once your customers find your website, then yes, ease of use becomes a huge factor.

The problem is: how does that ease of use translate into them finding your website?

It takes a _whole_ lot more to make an easy-to-use application that to just drop buttons on a GUI and make them line up nice. Sure it’s easy to click on your toolbar and organize stuff in folders. To make it really easy to use, come up with a design that doesn’t need a toolbar or doesn’t force you to stick stuff in a hierarchy.

True ease of use requires a real understanding of the pain points and thinking hard about the solution. If you have a normal application you think and really really wish was easy to use, don’t market as easy to use because it won’t be any easier than any others. If you really do have something that is demonstrably easier to use, sell it!

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.” – Heisenberg

“The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.” – Phelps

“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.” – Hilton

The list goes on, but I will not :¬)

Then you can round off your product line with an RSS reader. ;0)

Crap. I have a freeware GTD app too. http://vizonware.com/downloads.html

It’s based on the Marc Andreessen’s “3 lists” idea from his blog.

I guess I have to get started on some developer tools…..

@Taylor: as to #6 and your question: Yes and No. When I was writing that I was thinking of a variety of different situations. The three I had in mind were:

1. Talking to potential customers and telling them you have an idea. I mean this for consumer applications, talking to people from your target demographic and simply seeing what they say.
2. I meant doing something like starting an Adwords campaign before you make the product to see what kind of response you get and what keywords are available. Tim Ferris from the 4 hour work week suggests putting up a web page with a “notify me when it’s ready link” or similar.
3. Take your idea to a company that can use it (this assumes B2B type product). Introduce them to the idea and let them help you mold it into something useful, and in return they get either free or reduced pricing. Imagine this as selling them the idea (which is vaporware).

For the consumer type applications, I don’t think it would be possible to get money (at least not enough) to fund your development with the product (from options #1, 2). I wouldn’t collect money, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sell it to them. It’s energizing when someone tells you they are eager to buy the software you are making or going to make.

Option 3 is a possible source of money in that the company may want your product enough to help offset the costs of development. This is a commonly used tactic in businesses other than software. You collect from your customers as soon as possible and pay your suppliers as late as possible and on the float you can make your product. I admit that is risky and might not be ideal for every product or company. As a contractor I receive payment all the time for jobs that have no code written at all, most often on jobs that are fixed-bid style jobs. If you can negotiate the retention of some of the rights for the software you are making for a client, then they are effectively paying for your development, upfront and assuming you negotiated your rights well you can still make it a complete product. This scenario is actually what happened with Llama Carbon Copy. I was paid to write it, but retained rights. Admittedly, I completely rewrote it before it ever was available online but the concept is the same.

So, Yes, take money for vaporware. Why use your money for development when you could use someone else’s? Make sure you back up your word. I mean it; I don’t want people blaming me for asshats selling vaporware and then doing nothing. Honor your word.