Think about what you like about your job. This is where you want to go first to start your business. By the way, we can start down this path at any time. However, we are more likely to succeed if we have spent some time honing our skills before we try to go out on our own. Also, starting down a path of self-employment does not mean you have to quit your job and go all-in. The risk of starting a business can be reduced by working on a side hustle until it can sustain itself.
In choosing your path, it is helpful to know that the options each have traits and approaches that are better suited to different joys of work. Here are some thoughts about each path.
Creating Products
This path is one of the higher risk and reward choices. It is possible to spend a lot of time and effort on a product that goes nowhere. I speak with the experience of a few products that never made a dime. On the other hand, a successful outcome can bring life-changing wealth and responsibility. Ask the creators of Facebook, Twitter, or Angry Birds.
Product creation is an excellent use of a broad skill set. You will go through all of the steps of the software development lifecycle. Creating a product often includes going deep in at least a few areas of technology. Even a small product requires finishing touches that are often missed in a tutorial or class. Of course, design and architecture are needed, and you will need to stretch your creative muscles.
Providing A Service
There are some similarities in building your business for a product or service. However, the big difference is whether you drive creation (products) or implementation (services). You can provide a service that is the creation of products. However, the creative part of the task is almost always performed by your clients. They have the vision and ask you to make it real.
A service provider can become much more specialized than one that sells a product. You can even avoid steps of the SDLC. For example, you can offer your services as a Java Middle Tier Developer and dodge front-end work, design, deployment, and other languages. This can be heaven if all you want to do in life is write Java code. A service-based business has less risk than products and less reward as well. You may be able to provide a unique service that demands high prices. However, you still are trading time for money at some level.
Generally speaking, a service-based business will drive you to be more in-depth in skills than broad. Although you can go with general consulting (I do), you can still be as broad and deep as any product-based developer. The thing about a service is that you will be pushed to be better at it while you also will get a lot of practice. The more niche or specialized your service. The deeper you are likely to become in delivering it.
Providing Content
When you struggle to find specifics on your own and get bored of “doing” IT, there is the path of delivering content. This is a more academic pursuit than the others listed. However, it does offer you the options of going deep or broad. One can still implement as part of producing content (e.g., create a tutorial for building a web form), so there is an appeal to people with a wide range of likes.
This is a low-risk approach and low reward as well. There are very few people making a living providing content when compared to those that are attempting it. This has to be done on a pretty large scale. For example, daily posts, writing books to the tune of a few a year, or speaking engagements. There are options such as becoming an affiliate marketing site, but there is a need to push a flagship product to make real money at it.
The upside of this approach is that it can be part of any of the others. You can provide content to market a product, build a client list for a service, or educate about your target market. Although the revenue stream of a content provider tend to be smaller than a product or service this approach can be a platform for expanding skills in any direction. An excellent example is the Devepreneur mentor classes. We have presentations every week, and many of those come from a drive to learn more about a technology or platform.
