Why small products die

Only if you already have the crowd. A marketplace is empty until it's crowded, and every time I filled one side, the other side emptied.

No. Free users prove that people like free things. My shared shopping list had more users than anything I've built, and almost all of them left the month it asked for money.

Write the kill date while you're still hopeful, before launch. I kept a driving instructors' tool alive for 36 months after I knew it was dead.

20 minutes, the week it dies, on one card. What it was, who it was for, what actually killed it, and the rule it leaves you. The version written 6 months later is a story about yourself.

No. A store is a shelf. It puts your product in front of people searching for something with a similar name, and it never walks anyone over to it.

Only if you're genuinely one of them. I spent 3 weeks beside a builder and a decorator, called myself inside the trade, and built on 2 yeses. Nobody else ever heard of it.

No. One yes is one person's problem. My bookkeeping tool paid for itself, exactly, with one customer for 5 months, until he changed jobs.

Close it cleanly and quickly. I found out from a Tuesday changelog, gave 6 weeks' notice, refunded the month and wrote a guide to moving across.

Then a monthly price will bleed it. Match the shape of the payment to the shape of the value. My stock-take planner's value arrived twice a year; the charge arrived 12 times.

Because they're launched to the wrong people, once. A launch is a morning; distribution is every week after it, in the place your customers already talk.

Mostly because nobody who has the problem ever hears about them, or because the people who do hear don't want them enough to pay. 23 of my 25 dead products died one of those 2 ways.

Because "freelancers" is a contract, and nobody gathers under it. You can't email it, find where it complains, or notice when 3 of them say the same thing.

Many do. They already pay for insurance, hall hire and the van. I gave a volunteer rota away for 9 months on a belief I never checked, and the support queue grew with every group.