I’ve slightly modified the theme of this blog. Yesterday, I changed it from “Insights on Writing Successful Software” to “Occasionally Relevant Insights from a Software Builder”. The reason for this is that I post on topics frequently outside of software development.

I also changed the front page’s site title to “cyprich.com - Make Money by Writing Software”. This is what I’m trying to do with my part-time business: make significant amounts of money with the software that I write. This is a journey which I will share with my readers on what I’m doing in building a profitable software business.

This blog originally started with a Visual C++ .NET 2005 programming theme. Then it became focused on .NET development, and later on general programming. The longest transition was one to “Building and Marketing Software” where the emphasis was trying to make money from my software.

Making Money Online by Writing Software

I’ve been told that a software business is 1/4 programming and 3/4 marketing. It takes more than being a good software developer to build a successful business. You need a good web site to promote and support your products. You need to understand marketing, basic bookkeeping, and many other business skills.

I remember reading about a Facebook developer in Vancouver who was getting about 25,000 page views per day on his web site and only making $5 each day. By his own admission, he lacks marketing and business skills. If he knew about the benefits of Google Adsense, he could have been making about $2200 per month by placing these ads on his site.

The Problem with Programmers

Most programmers spend their time reading technical books related to their profession and not enough time reading business and marketing books. While developing good software is important, being able to deliver them to customers is just as important if not more so.

One of the reasons I think that many software projects go open source is because the developers lack the business skills to successfully market their product. A good example of this is DotNetNuke. This started out as a commercial product but didn’t make much progress, so then it became open source. There are currently 500,000 registered users on their web site. This could have been a half a million paying users if the product was marketed correctly. ASP.NET users typically typically pay for software due to the lack of free counterparts.

As before, I welcome praises and criticisms for anything I post here.

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The “YOUR LIFE AMBITION - What Happened??” comic is amazingly accurate with how people’s dreams and ambitions fade over time. We all start out with plans to take on the world, but our doubts and fears cloud our vision and we end up focused on paying bills and maintaining our standard of living.

To stay focused on a goal, you need to write it down and review it daily, or even review it several times a day. The goal should be something that your passionate about in order to maintain your interest in it.

The problem with not being focused and goal oriented is that you become controlled by your environment. We’re all here for a higher purpose and need to discover it and fulfill it.

Source: PHD Comics

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In today’s world, attacks on web sites by hackers are common. We need to take precautions to prevent the security in our web sites from being compromised. There isn’t any built-in utility for WordPress to test security, but there is a plugin by Michael Torbert that can be installed for this purpose.

WP Security Scan examines a WordPress installation for security problems and if it finds them, recommends a course of action to correct them.

Some of the functions that it performs are:

• test the strength of passwords
• examine file permissions to prevent unauthorized usage
• checks the security of the database
• hides the version number of WordPress
• protect the WordPress admin account
• remove the WP Generator META tag from the core code

The plugin is easy to install and it found several problems on my blog, which were also easy to fix. I strongly recommend all WordPress users install this extension and properly security their web site.

You can download WP Security Scan at wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-security-scan/.

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The following are some inspirational quotes that I’ve recently come across.

Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.

Nido Qubein

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

Anatole France

We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do.

Samuel Smiles

If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator. He will not be striving for it as a goal in itself. He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of the day.

W. Beran Wolfe

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Thomas Edison

The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.

Benjamin Franklin

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life — happiness, freedom, and peace of mind — are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Peyton Conway March

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

Albert Ellis

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

Tony Robbins

My richness consists not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.

J. Brotherton

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

Thomas Edison

Work like you don’t need the money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. Dance like nobody’s watching.

Mark Twain

Imagination is more important than knowledge for while knowledge defines everything we know, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.

Albert Einstein

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

Tony Robbins

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Vincent Van Gogh

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.

Napoleon Bonaparte

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Albert Camus

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.

Doug Larson

Worrying is using your imagination to create something you do not want.

Esther and Jerry Hicks

It’s natural to be afraid of something you’ve never done before, but it’s not wise to let that stop you.

Tom Hopkins

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Version 2.5.1 of WordPress was recently released. This update includes 70+ bug fixes, improvements in performance, and a critical security fix. Its worth upgrading just to repair the security issues of the previous version.

The major enhancements in this version are:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

The update to this blog was easy to do and went very smoothly. The theme and the many installed plugins are working properly. I recommend all WordPress users to update to this latest version.

You can download WordPress 2.5.1 at the WordPress web site.

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