When you find a programmer who sounds interested in working with you ask the following questions:

• Have you programmed a product like this before? (There’s a fair amount of specialization within programming; if your programmer hasn’t worked in this field, he might have no idea what’s needed.)
  
• How much experience do you have? (Some newbies will work for free to fill their portfolio; that’s fine for you, but it might take a little longer).
  
• How would you improve the product? (Every product can be improved; be suspicious if the programmer says it’s perfect.)
  
• How long will it take? (Take too long and the market could change—or fill.)

12.5 Developing functionality

It goes without saying, but you want to make sure that there is a level of interest within your target market for the software you plan to develop. Again, studying your competition is essential to ensure that your product is sustainable. After all, you would need to at least provide as much functionality in your product as your competitor.

The best way to assess what kind of specifications and functionality should go into your product is by asking your prospective customers themselves. A good strategy of achieving this is by surveying your existing customers and visitors on your website. You could have the survey on your website itself of Email all your customers with a list of specifications for your software product – Just ask them what functionality they would prefer at a given price. Don’t name the software at this time - just list the features and give a short description of what it will do. That should be more than enough to peak your customers’ interests and generate a response.

12.6 Creating a Work Agreement

Even if you hire a programmer through an established freelance site like Elance or Scriptlance, it’s still a good idea to draw up some kind of legal agreement. The last thing you want to happen is that you reveal your idea for the greatest software product since Windows and watch some programmer put it together, cut you off and sell it to the highest bidder.

When you’re entering into a business relationship like this with a total stranger, it is definitely worth paying a lawyer a couple of hundred dollars to draw you up a basic contract.

The agreement should contain the following:

A Confidentiality Clause

If your programmer spills the beans, he gets twenty years in a Turkish prison. That would be nice, but pretty unenforceable. A whopping great financial penalty is enforceable though and par for the course in a work contract.

The information you share stays between you. If the programmer tells someone else and you lose money, you want to be sure you’re going to be compensated.

Payments

If this is going to be a cash job, you want every penny put down. You don’t want to release your product, watch it make millions then get hit with a lawsuit from your old buddy claiming 50% in royalties. If you’re paying, the product is yours and so are the profits.

On the other hand, if you’re not paying, the product isn’t yours.

If you’re working on a profit-sharing scheme, you’ll have to negotiate who gets how much of the profits and for how long. You’ll definitely have to make sure that that’s all put down clearly in the agreement.

Timeline

Creating a software product can take a fair bit of time—at least several months and much longer for really complex programs. Before you write the contract, ask the programmer to tell you how much he thinks each section is going to take and include those in the agreement. You could even put in penalties for failing to meet deadlines, just as you would if you were hiring someone to fix your house.

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