Let me start by some of the lessons learned from my first month as a micropreneur.

1. The most important is it can be LONELY. Yes you read that right, going the micropreneur way can be a lonely endeavor and more so if you are not mentally prepared for it. I have mentioned before that I am a member of the Micropreneur Academy and let me tell you it is important that you have a group of people who are willing to listen and talk to you. I am still thinking how to add a bit more human interaction into my daily routine but suffice to say it is important.
2. You should worry about expenses but not too much. My experience so far has been that you can pay the bills by consulting. Sure it will cut into your product time but not as much as your day job if you have decided to leave that like I did. And consultancy is also a disguised blessing if you are looking for some ideas, since you get exposed to all sorts of problems. Also a good friend pointed out that you get to meet some interesting and smart people when you consult.
3. The hardest part in building a new product is not the building part. Let me tell you this is a horrible one that I am still wrapping my head around. If you are a programmer, the biggest obstacle in your new idea that will help everyone is in letting people know it exists. Building your idea is easy in comparison. GO FIGURE.

So with the above done let me tell you a bit about my niche product. This idea has been banging on my head for some time and I have done a couple of half hearted attempts before but this time I am trying to take it all the way. The idea is to give businesses that are based on appointments a simple and easy web-service that would followup on their clients to remind them of the appointment. Also I wanted the tool to be able to inform the business in all sorts of ways like phone call or email as well as the website of the product itself. Cuevox is the implementation of that idea. Cuevox gives businesses an easy way to do followup but without all the hassle and best of all I plan to offer it to as many countries as I can. The truth is that Cuevox still requires some code in the background to bring it all the way through but I wanted to bring it to as many eyes as possible as soon as I can to hear your feedback on it. I believe the idea has market and little competition, although by biggest fear is that one very successful micropreneur (Patrick McKenzie) is working on the same idea. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds and if I can get enough traffic to turn this into a good product.

As always I shall keep you posted. Until next time have fun and be happy.

First off, let me start by saying that I have actively been a full time micropreneur for almost a month now. I had been working on several ideas for some time before July but few have taking any holding. But when July came, I decided it was time for me to try and make entrepreneurship work (and if need be supplement it with consulting). I am currently working on two products I have built Cuevox, which offers an appointment reminder for businesses, and SmsTheTeam, which allows you to send mass text messages to anyone and collect replies easily. So far I have had a few trial sign-ups but no sale so far and still poor traffic on both.

Second, let me tell you about the slight hassles of entrepreneurship. If you are like me living in a country where PayPal, Google Checkout and every other major payment processing system (and helper such as Chargify) do not offer their service, then you are in for some very heavy lifting. For one thing you need to get yourself a proper company standing (an offshore) in a country where those services are available or you are left reinventing the wheel (the hassle of recurring payments is large). That setup and getting the bank to work with you on the things you need is well hectic. If people would like I might write a post about that too later on.

Third and lastly, let me talk about the Micropreneur Academy and to a small extent StartupToDo. I am a member of both communities but have been spending alot more time in the Academy so I will focus on this post on it (but know that StartupToDo is well worth too). Few will get to see the original version of Cuevox,  but I will be the first to admit that if it was not for all the comments and discussions that I got from the Academy regarding my first attempt as well as my other product then the site could not have reached the stage it is in today. The best thing about the Academy is that you always have someone talking to you and answering you in the forums. If you ask me it is well worth its price (not to mention that they do offer a few things inside that make the Academy repay for itself at least through recovered expenses ).

So as a conclusion, I am not sure where this path will lead but I am excited to find out and cant wait to build some great stuff. And in case you are thinking of following in the micropreneur path I suggest you give the Academy (and StartupToDo) a try, I doubt you will regret it.