The problem with this question is that it treats these three activities as equal parts of a successful $1,000/month web app. They aren’t.
Building is what happens before you even have a product to sell. Marketing and maintenance take place after the launch.
Yet, all of the value for the potential end customer is created in the building stage, which determines the quality of your product.
Sure, you can wow people with great service and new features, but those won’t do you any good if you never get anyone to pay in the first place, because your product sucks.
The harder it is to build something, the easier it is to market and maintain later.
The reason the answers to this question vary so wildly is that some people have focused on the first half more, which made the second half seem easy, while others got something out the door quicker, but then struggled to market and maintain it.
However, I think those who claim it is easy omit one variable: research.
You can bet they spent a lot of time researching the market, the idea, understanding the needs of future customers, and making a product that fits the market well.
But this is a lot of fun!
When you find a trail of bread crumbs behind a problem and get to uncover it step by step, piecing together a solution doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a mission.
The more meaning you can find in the first half of this equation, the less it’ll feel like hard work – and the easier your life will be after launch.
When I started Four Minute Books, my research and writing ran almost entirely on fun and meaning. It made writing a book summary a day for a year easy, or at least, easier.
Now that I’m publishing a lot less, it markets and maintains itself – and it does make a cool $1,000/month.
So find a mission you can get behind. Obsess about the research. Be fanatic about the build. The marketing and maintenance will follow.
