In early 1986 my family suffered a financial setback. We were broke. Actually, worse, we owed $30,000 or so and had no significant assets. Our income was pitifully low. We found enough work to pay rent on a dumpy house and feed our two rugrats, but no way could we get ahead. So, I thought I would try and sell a few more copies of AnonyCAD (as I'll call it here). We had an Aplle Mac by now and a Laserwriter from another failed venture, so we revised and improved the manual. I bought a cheap Taiwan PC clone and improved the look and feel of the program.
We compiled a mailing list from professional journals and other sources of about 900 potential clients in the US and Canada. I estimated that we might sell 15 or 20 copies if we priced it at $999. I designed a flyer and we printed 1000 copies, and mailed it to the list.
Response was much greater than I expected, and in the first year we sold 75 copies. This may not seem like much, but I had no employees, and operated from the basement of a rented house. It cost us about $30 to photocopy a manual, put it in a loose leaf binder and include a floppy disk. So we netted about $70K that first year. My consultant income that year was less than $20K. So we realized we were in the software business!
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