"patio11's Bingo Cards feels a lot more 'real' to me as a product business"
Why? He's basically selling only to teachers.
What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers?
And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mobile app in development and just because bloggers who are in the market for a custom theme are technically "on the web" doesn't mean they're developers.
Sixty/forty or thereabouts, actually. There's also Fortune 500 companies, people planning a birthday party for grandma, a whole mess of ladies planning baby showers (baby shower bingo is A Thing), assisted living communities, churches, NGOs, and if I remember correctly every branch of the military.
I emphasize the teaching bit when talking about BCC because that's how I thought about it, that's generally how I think about it, and it makes a very good story, but it isn't 100% of the business
It's much easier for us techies to sell things to non-techies than it is for us to sell to techies. To a fellow techie, we have just created a simple django basic application. To a non-techie we have done magic.
He's not saying a web developer can't sell a product to other web developers — he's saying that all web developers can't only sell products to other web developers. In other words, beware of myopia.
Why? He's basically selling only to teachers.
What's wrong with a web developer selling a product to a niche of other web developers?
And, actually, if you're selling byproducts like rejected logos or vector images or stock photos or Wordpress themes, wouldn't that actually be for more than just web developers? We've bought vectors for our mobile app in development and just because bloggers who are in the market for a custom theme are technically "on the web" doesn't mean they're developers.