I've always been good at being given an idea and making it happen. I've not been good at coming up with the idea on my own.
After seeing what it was like to create and sell my first product, I was looking for the next thing to do. Fortunately, the idea was thrown in my face. While browsing the Internet, probably looking for something related to Borland Delphi, I happened upon a post from Bob Swart (aka Dr. Bob). For quite some time, Dr. Bob has programmed with, spoken, and written about Borland Delphi. By the way, I have no affiliation with him. He gets a mention because he's part of the story. And it rarely hurts to give a link away.
Anyway, he had written a magazine article for Delphi. In it, he showed how to use Delphi's Open Tools API to create custom plugins and wizards. Actually, it was an API before OTA but I don't remember the name.
In the article, he prototyped a very lightweight version control plugin. He saw some potential and was looking for someone to do more with it. I liked version controlling my software and this sounded interesting. It was an idea that I could turn into a product. He lived in Europe and I had never met him before, but I fired off an email anyway.
He responded and it didn't take long for us to reach an agreement. In return for his giving me the rights to the product, I agreed to give him a percentage of the sales. In his article, he had christened the prototype ViCiouS where VCS is an acronym for Version Control System. I decided to name the full-fledged product ViCiouS Pro. Not the nicest name, but it worked.
There's a lot to write about here, more than I want to fit into one post. Maybe beginning at a high level is the best.
For my second attempt, it turned out to be more successful than I expected. It wasn't the level of success that you dream about but it was much more profitable than selling $300 worth of magazine article software at a loss. Putting out a hard number, it was $40,000 of revenue over 2 years. [ Note that I'm willing to give out numbers for things I've done in the distant past. If I ever write about things that have happened or are happening in the near, I won't give out that kind of information. ]
At the time, $20,000 a year wasn't enough for me to support my family. There was the desire to quit the day job so that I could turn the product into something that perform well against its competitors. But I didn't have the courage and the timing didn't seem right. So in some ways it suffered due to the amount of time I could put into it.
It started off with 6 months of hard coding and productization. Then an 18 month or so period of selling, hearing from customers, and making improvements. That was a good time, because it showed me where I made some good decisions. And it showed me where I made some bad decisions and where I was weak.