My Lack of Attention
So here&#x27;s the thing. It takes work and effort to get attention.<p>&quot;if you build it, they will come&quot;. Never has one cliche been so exactly wrong.<p>Programmers, myself included, believe(d) that the code is the product. That the code will speak for itself. That being &quot;better&quot; (for some definition of better) is enough. If I build it, they will come.<p>The truth though, the code is about 10% of the effort to make a successful product. It is much more work, and frankly harder work, to to the marketing to get the product in front of the customer. It is then much more work to turn that into a sale (if your work is commercial.)<p>For decades I&#x27;ve heard programmers lament that they do all the hard work, they deserve the lion&#x27;s share, all those guys do is sell it.<p>So here&#x27;s the thing. Your code does not just &quot;get attention&quot;. You earn that by investing time, and money but mostly time, in getting that attention.<p>That means going to where your target market is. Showing them you can add value to the group (I spent a lot of time answering unrelated questions.) showing how your offering can add value to the group. You do not &quot;get&quot; attention, you have to _earn_ it.<p>So, if you want your product to get more attention, then by extension you need to personally get more attention. You need to find your target group, be useful, be helpful, engage with them, built trust.<p>So you&#x27;ve made a tool for people without a smart-phone. OK, not a market I would have chosen[1], but that&#x27;s not relevant. The thing you need to figure out is how to reach those people. Since they are not online, you will need to reach them offline. You need to go to where they are, not expect them to find you.<p>[1] choosing a market first, one you have a strategy to reach, then making a product is usually better than the other way around. Not least because joining a community, and adding value there for s while, before making a product, builds trust. It also helps you build a product they will find useful, not just something you randomly thought of.<p>This is life; through failure we learn more, through persistence we achieve.