The tech-specific differences are things like: - Compared to setting up a coffee stand, it can take years to build really good technical solutions. (Longer, i

The tech-specific differences are things like: - Compared to setting up a coffee stand, it can take years to build really good technical solutions. (Longer, if you actually care and put in “invisible” effort like making it not crash or delete data regularly.) Yet, that app can still be lumped in with all the rest in the begging-for-scraps models of many monetization schemes. - Unlike a coffee shop, where you can probably assume some amount of traffic and tips on a regular basis, software is often firmly set at ZERO. Or negative, if you consider any other cost. There isn’t a “software neighborhood” where people might walk by and see your project alongside only a couple others in the area. - Unlike any “natural” recognition in the real world, tech projects are recognized in entirely unnatural ways. No one may know about an app for months; yet if/when knowledge finally spreads, the message is generally LOUD and everywhere. Say, being featured in the App Store: you go from “never heard of it” to “almost everyone in the world with an iPhone who checked top-10 lists this week”. That is far, far beyond the reach of normal ads, and also insane: it pretty much guarantees over-rewarding and under-rewarding developers across the board.