The Profitable Programmer: Creating Successful Side Projects

Many Rails developers have taken the big step of going out on their own and starting a consulting business. Others have taken the next step of creating web applications that generate at least some part of their income.

A businessperson would need to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement an idea, but the Rails developer only needs an idea and enough time to implement it.

This panel features five developers who have created side projects that eventually became profitable through advertising, subscription fees, or buyout.

We’ll talk about creating an idea, finding the time and money to implement it, designing a profitable business plan, promoting your idea, and possibly selling it to another company.

We’ll talk about the skills you have as a Rails developer, and how to get help in other areas.

The panel members include:

• Tom Preston-Werner, creator of Gravatar with over 100,000 users. Sold to Automattic in 2007.
• Chris Wanstrath and P.J. Hyett, creators of FamSpam while consulting at ErrFree.
• Ben Curtis, creator of Catch the Best while operating as a solo consultant.
• Geoffrey Grosenbach, PeepCode Publishing.