A very pertinent question. If you're asking if Avo "pays the bills", it doesn't. I hope it will some day. Damn, I hope I earn money in some other way and donate Avo to Ruby central, becomes free so it becomes the default way of building Rails apps.

Until that time, I am pretty stocked that other developers want (and pay) to use something I've created.

Yeah, it takes a lot to build the messaging around a product. This current message "Build apps 10x faster" is probably the 10th or 20th iteration. I had to speak with a lot of users and try to figure out how it helps them in their daily dev life.

Building the product is the easy thing (for a developer), doing the marketing, steering it into the right direction, figuring out what the best features are, sales, funnels, etc. Those are the difficult things. They are difficult for me because I don't have a following.

Regarding your "Bold and cynical claim", I respect your opinion. I wouldn't go to say that everyone just want to build a following and launch useless product to achieve that.