Hello and welcome to the annual M Cubed birthday retrospective. Grab your party hat and some birthday cake as you come in and find a seat. Last year I talked about the long road that got me to here. This year I'll be talking more about the past 3 years since M Cubed was founded.
Redesigns
First things first, M Cubed got a new website design for its birthday. I had a designing binge just over a week ago and so spent the weekend creating this new look. It's a lot cleaner and more flexible than the previous design. Unfortunately you need to view it in Safari in order to get the full experience, though the stylesheet degrades for other browsers so the site still looks quite nice.
Targets
So, now for the meat of the post. M Cubed has been alive as a shareware company for 3 years now and each year has been much better than the last. I'm not going to talk too much about the first year as not much happened. Had a product for 3 months, sold it off, spent 9 months without a product. The last two years have been much more interesting and are presented below in a fancy graph:
The graph shows the net revenue for all my apps each month (after Paypal has taken their cut). I've also noted all the major releases of apps. You may be wondering what the horizontal line is... well read on faithful reader.
Not long after I started M Cubed I read a post by Gus Mueller on how to become an indie dev in 1068 days. In it he suggests setting yourself goals, as they let you know you're on the right track. As I also like goals I've set myself a sales target for M Cubed. I calculated how much money I would need to make each month to live off my software and set that as my ultimate sales target. But as that target is a long way away and I like reaching goals I set myself smaller sales targets of a 3rd and 2/3rds of my ultimate target.
The horizontal line represents my first target, a 3rd of what I need to make each month to live off my software. But this is going to change starting in December as I'm moving to my second target. I set myself a rule that if I could surpass my sales target for 3 months in a row, I would raise the sales target to the next level and this month represents the 3rd consecutive month of great sales. The graph brings up some other interesting stuff:
1. Minim doesn't really sell well at all (nor does it get much love unfortunately).
2. My bank balance really likes software releases
3. Having two products that sell well makes reaching your goals much easier
4. I'm a long way off living off my software yet
University Challenge
One of the biggest problems I have is time. Having to balance university work with running a software company is a challenge. You become especially at risk of getting burnt out, which I have done on several occasions, ending up being unable to do any work at all for days. Unfortunately one has to suffer if you're to progress the other, but if you time things right then you can still do well in both.
The best tips I can give to anyone in university or school who's wanting to be an indie dev is to work hard over holidays. This is time uninterrupted by assignments and so it should be used to its full potential. There's a reason I've had so many releases around late Summer/early Autumn, because I've had the time to work on them over the summer.
Try to keep releases down in size too. I've been guilty of trying to do too much in a release, which has meant it has taken a long time to come out. If it's a .1 update then limit it to 1 or 2 medium sized features. This allows you to release updates much more frequently, which is essential for building up momentum.
Lastly, don't let your university work suffer. If you have a lot of work then just put your development on hold. It can wait a few weeks while you bring your workload down. If you're not going to put the effort into your degree then there's not real point spending your money on tuition fees when you could be attempting this full time.
That said, don't try to drop out and attempt this full time. You may need to manage your time more and won't be able to get as much done, but university is a huge safety net. It provides a "sandbox" of the real world, which means that your failures aren't as serious, and you will have failures.
Future Targets
So where do I want to be when I'm writing this post a year from now? Well I've started work on Lighthouse Keeper 1.1, which I'm hoping will be out sometime around the end of the year or early next year. I'll also be working on Minim 2.0 at some point in the new year. However, I will also be working on a 4th M Cubed application, one which promises to help me reach my targets even faster than ever before.
This is important as I will be finishing University in June, so my safety net will be taken away and I will be pushed head first into the real world *queue scary music*. This has given me the target of wanting to be a full time indie in around 7 months time. It will be a big push, but with a 4th application and the momentum I've started to gain I think it will be possible.
It's been hard work getting to this stage, but I'm starting to see lots of reward for my work. Here's to year 4 of M Cubed Software being one where I reach that final goal. Now where's that birthday cake...
Happy birthday M Cubed—long may it continue!
Honestly, this is the reason why my various bits of code are open source—the kinds of stuff I do for “not my employer” (frameworks, utilities, and the like) just wouldn’t sell to more than a handful of people, being optimistic, and so none of it would really see the light of day. Obviously, I could write different kinds of stuff. I mean, my fabled Basecamp client probably *would* sell if I ever actually sit down to write, and conceivably I could turn my EDI library into a full-fledged “B2B enterprise solution” if I wanted to spend all my time dressing in a suit and providing support. Realistically, though, I work on the stuff that I find interesting when time allows, and that’s a pretty limiting set of factors.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: indie devs get a huge amount of respect from me, and indie devs who juggle $DAYJOB or an education get even more. I can’t emphasise that enough. If you can manage to hit your target *before* you leave Uni, you should find it easier to live off it by the time you go full time (in theory—be wary of setting lofty targets that you plan on hitting when you’re able to devote all of your time to it; you never have as much time as you think!)
And, as much I might throw hurl suggestions about LHK at you which give the impression of being an incredibly dissatisfied customer, the exactly opposite is actually true 
I’ll give you a hint on how to instantly increase sales in America. Don’t make all your pricing so EUR centric! Americans are far more likely to buy software when they see the $ sign rather than that scary and confusing EUR sign.
Provide a $ centric version of your site and sales pages (or currency agnostic version) and you will boost sales.
Chris: To be honest I haven’t see any adverse affects of pricing in Euros. Most Americans still buy my products if they want it, I haven’t heard from anyone who’s said they won’t buy my product and cite the currency. The reason for pricing in Euros was simply that the Euro to GBP exchange rate was far more stable than the US$ to GBP exchange rate.
I may re-introduce pricing in US$ in the future based upon the price in Euros but I haven’t yet seen any real demand for it.
This is the M Cubed Software weblog. From time to time we post information about our apps, including updates, tips and tricks or even the story behind how they were created.
If you would like to subscribe you can do so using the link below
You can view our monthly archives by using the links on the left, or search our blog posts using the field below to find what you are looking for.
Nov • Oct • Sep • Jun • Apr • Mar • Feb • Jan
Nov • Aug • Jul • May • Apr • Mar • Feb • Jan
Dec • Nov • Oct • Sep • Aug • Jul • Jun • May • Apr • Mar • Jan
