Wow, that brings back painful memories. In high school I built a program called the B3D Tweak Utility, an editor for the Blitz3D file format (a RAD game tool).

Wow, that brings back painful memories. In high school I built a program called the B3D Tweak Utility, an editor for the Blitz3D file format (a RAD game tool). I sold maybe 30 or so copies for $20. Encouraged that I could sell something online and see a return, I followed it up a crazy GUI build tool with Python scripting that supported a ton of extensions for eg building the demo and full versions of a product up to the install file. Completely scratching my own itch, and it took a few months of work. I got zero sales. I posted on my usual dev forums with about two replies. The only email I ever got about it was asking whether I was planning a Mac version, which he'd absolutely need before he'd consider using it. Thinking now about how much money I could make if I worked that hard on something for 2 months today makes me ill... but I'm not sure there are any short cuts around making those painful mistakes in the beginning. Experiencing the bottom (i.e. investing time with 0 return) has made me laser focused on market fit before I start any product today.