I'm a geek, I'm alone, I want to sell my amazing product. I'm not a commercial. How should I do? [closed]

It's not the culture of PHP developers to pay for frameworks.

And it's certainly not a CEO decision to pick, or give a crap about code frameworks. CTO, CIO - maybe - but often times the actual developers advocate for certain frameworks to be used. So you have to come from the bottom up with a framework not the top down in an organization.

If you want to try and sell it your only option is to:

• Have examples of proven successful projects that are on it. Then you can find other companies that are in those industries and try to sell them on it.
• You would pretty much have to do consulting and just use this as your go to framework - where the client is more concerned with the end product not how it was made
• You would need a marketing website to tout the benefits of the framework
• Video and training materials

But really, your best option is to open source it on Github or something like that. You certainly need an outside perspective on your framework from other educated PHP developers. Do they think it's designed well, smart, easy, and does it have promise. You could have some of the leaders in some of the other frameworks take a peek at it or have them try it and give you some feedback. It's possible they would, most developers are very willing to assist and help.

Plus if you are interested in getting a full time job again in the future it's something that could help you get a job. I know if I was hiring a developer and they said take a look at this custom framework I made I would be intrigued and would love to check it out.

You're going about this the wrong way .. People never buy engines.... People buy cars. Could you sell an engine? Yes... to a small select group of people... but everyone needs a car. Stop thinking engine, and start thinking car.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started out at a different time in history, where there werent too many people like themselves with those skills. Its now 2011, a different world where coders are a dime a dozen. I wish I could travel back into time when computers were new, software was rare, and it took just one programmer to write software that utilized 100% of hardware capability. No one person will write a commercially successful operating system again, just like no one (or two) person can create the next generation of aircraft. Those days are over unfortunately

Find commercial PHP and MySQL based companies that have products or services lines which requiere a framework like yours. Then expose what you offer that is best in comparison to the already existents. Maybe you could license your product to them or make a joint venture to sell and continue developing it with them.

In other words, go for the companies where the money in the open-source world is.

"Olivier", I know exactly where you are coming from. I was that way myself for a good portion of my early life.

Now, here is one key element of forming a business that you really need to wrap your brain around. It's simple. And it's essential. It's your Rosetta Stone to unlocking the code of all of this marketing crap. You must have an answer to this one question in order to make forward progress. Drum roll:

How does your product and service benefit your target clientele?

In other words: why should they buy your product and services?

"It's better" doesn't cut it. "It's cooler" or "it's more elegant" are nice. But the people who write checks are not programmers. They are looking for a bottom line benefit for the business, if they adopt your solution.

Use the reasoning you apply in your own life to things you buy to this question.

The underlying proposition you have to create now, is what the net benefit is for the adopting business that uses your stuff. I have not seen you say that yet.

And make that statement something that you could state in the time, say, that it takes to ride an elevator from the bottom to the top floor of a tall office building. If you need three pages to write it out because "it's complicated", then you aren't doing your job.

What would you spend $10,000 on if you had it? Something to save you money or earn you money? Something to save your life? Something to advance your career?

You'd need to be sold that there was a benefit in it for you before you parted with $10,000.

This is the essential logic that you have to follow here. And you have to do so while putting yourself mentally in your client's shoes.

The answer to this question will not be everything that you need to commercialize this product. But it is essential for moving from where you are right now toward this goal.

Just forget all of the technical merits and poo like that and focus on what the advantage you your customer will be from using your product. Forget PHP, other people's frameworks, etc.

If you get stuck with this question and cannot answer it, then I believe that you do not really have anything yet that can be sold. And you probably need a second opinion from someone else (actually another programmer who could look at it with new eyes) in order to move forward.

Once you understand this and can answer this convincingly - not with answers that sound like "because other programmers will think it's neat/cool" - it is likely that other aspects of this challenge, like the marketing, may start to clarify.

You've gotta answer this question. And nobody else here has posed this question. The answers so far have danced around the "it's a framework" objection. That's a specific problem, but you are not ready to take the competitive challenge on yet.

your psychological behavior makes us think you'll want to move sooner or later because you're both too good for us and you like to learn too much. No kidding, and once again, I'm sorry if it sounds cheeky.

It's basically how almost all businesses reason about candidates. You have to be a "fit", and that includes not only meeting minimal standards but also feeling challenged enough with the variety of work to want to stay around. The surprising element of this is that hiring parties actually told you this. Usually it's couched in language that blames the candidate for being a misfit.

Edit/Addition:

Ryan Doom said:

If you want to try and sell it your only option

He has a good checklist here. These things would come after you figure out what your "benefit message" is. However, there are a nearly infinite number of ways to sell or monetize anything.

One example of this: you could talk to businesses and identify some functional "line of business" need that your framework naturally lends itself to. Then develop an application that uses your framework.

Another example: you write a book on some aspect of web site development and your framework becomes the tool that you introduce as an education aid.

Just examples.

Last point: you will have to talk to someone. There is no universal directory of IT products that all developers can post their products to and expect sales to happen.

This means you need a network. Often someone else can see and identify for you an opportunity that you're not seeing.

If you think it is as good idea as one that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs had, then go for it. With your attitude, you'll succeed.

But, if only you think its great and you can't immediately get others to, then you're in trouble.