Comment by bruce511

Firstly, I should say, there's no "formula" here. If there was I probably wouldn't post it on the internet :) Luck plays a part. (But you can work to give yourself more chance of good luck.)

If I had to try and distil it down, we dabbled a bit here an there, but what ultimately made the difference was "marketing". In the sense that we travelled quite a lot in the beginning, went looking for distributors (in international markets), tried to connect with potential customers wherever they hung out, and so on.

For example we make plug-ins to a very niche tool - but the users of that tool would have (in person) user groups - typically 10 to 15 people or so. I travelled the world going to those group meetings, organising meetups in places that didn't have them, showing an interest, and of course selling plugins. Today our user base is "established" and I hardly ever travel anymore.

For a major commercial product I visited similar markets to ours, knocked on the doors of distributors, tried to find people who wanted to integrate our product into their market. I failed a lot but succeeded twice, and those 2 have been paying us lots of money every year for 20 years as they make sales.

Your approach may vary. Start locally. Talk to shop keepers, restaurants, businesses, charities, schools and so on. Look for markets that are not serviced (which is different to where the person is just too cheap, or adverse to tech for other reasons.)

Of course it's a LOT harder now to find unserviced markets. There's a lot more software out there now than there was when I started out. Ultimately though it's about connecting with people - real people not just sending out spam emails. And so meeting the right person at the right time is "lucky". But if you're not out there luck can't work with you. You need to give luck a chance.