Ideas for people who build and buy small software
Practical writing for indie makers and independent professionals: building tools with AI, selling them, escaping bloated SaaS, and owning your software again.
Getting found by AI: what changed for small software in 2026
More than half of searches now end without a click, and the answer people read is written by a machine that never visited your site. Here is what actually decides whether it mentions you.
Read article →outbid.lol made over $200,000 in a week. The lesson is not the leaderboard.
A German developer shipped a pay-to-rank board in about three hours and watched it take over tech Twitter. The interesting part is not what he built. It is what people were so eager to buy.
Read article →How to tell a free tool worth using from one that wastes your afternoon
There is a lot of free software and most of it is abandoned, half finished, or quietly selling something. Six checks that take two minutes and save you the afternoon.
Read article →Creativity is the new coding: how anyone can build an app in 2026
With tools like Lovable, Bolt and Claude, the hard part of building an app is no longer the code. It's the idea. Here's why creativity is now the most valuable skill a non-developer has.
Read article →Everything is a subscription now, and you own none of it
Your software, your music, even features already built into your car: it's all rented. Here's the quiet cost of a world with no 'buy' button, and why owning your tools is quietly coming back.
Read article →Build vs. buy: when a $12 tool beats a $40-a-month SaaS
Most professionals overpay for software they barely use. Here's a simple way to decide when a tiny one-time tool wins over a monthly platform.
Read article →How indie makers are turning one-off scripts into income in 2026
The little script you wrote to fix your own problem might be worth money. Here's how solo makers are packaging and selling them without building a company.
Read article →The quiet rise of local-first software
Professionals who handle sensitive data are moving jobs off the cloud and back onto their own machines. Here's why local-first is becoming a selling point.
Read article →You don't need to be a developer: shipping a useful tool in a weekend
AI assistants have collapsed the distance between 'I have an annoying problem' and 'I have a tool that fixes it.' Here's the realistic path for a non-developer.
Read article →Reading gives you the idea. The Solo Market gives you the tool.
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