5 Mistakes I Made Before Getting My First Sale

Eight months. That's how long it took me to make my first dollar online.

Not because I wasn't working hard – I was putting in 40+ hours a week after my day job. Not because I didn't have good ideas – I built three different products during that time.

I failed to make a sale for eight months because I was making fundamental mistakes that sabotaged every product I touched.

If you're reading this and you haven't made your first sale yet, chances are you're making at least one of these same mistakes. The good news? Once I fixed them, I went from $0 to $5,000 in monthly revenue in just two months.

Here are the five mistakes that cost me eight months and how you can avoid them.

Mistake #1: Building for "Everyone"

What I did wrong: My first product was a "productivity app for busy professionals." My target market was literally anyone with a job.

Why it failed: When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. My marketing messages were generic, my features were scattered, and potential customers couldn't see themselves in my product.

I spent three months building features for:

• Students managing homework
• Executives tracking meetings
• Freelancers managing clients
• Parents organizing family schedules

The result? A bloated app that did everything poorly instead of one thing well.

What I should have done: Pick the smallest viable audience first. Instead of "busy professionals," I should have focused on "freelance designers juggling multiple client projects."

How to fix this:

1. Write down exactly who your product is for
2. Be specific: age, job title, specific pain points
3. Talk to 10 people who match this description
4. If you can't find 10 people easily, your market might be too narrow (that's better than too broad)

Mistake #2: Feature-First Instead of Problem-First

What I did wrong: I fell in love with building cool features instead of solving real problems.

My second product had:

• Real-time collaboration
• Advanced filtering
• Custom integrations
• Beautiful animations
• Dark mode (because everyone loves dark mode, right?)

Why it failed: I was building a solution in search of a problem. I never validated that people actually wanted these features – I just assumed they would.

What I should have done: Start with the problem, not the solution. Find people who are actively struggling with something and build the simplest possible solution.

The problem-first approach:

1. Find people who are currently solving a problem manually
2. Watch them do it (literally, sit with them)
3. Build the smallest possible improvement
4. Charge for it immediately
5. Add features only after people are paying

Mistake #3: Pricing Like I Was Embarrassed

What I did wrong: I priced my products like I was apologizing for them.

• Product #1: Free (with a "premium" plan at $5/month)
• Product #2: $9/month (because $10 felt "too expensive")
• Product #3: Free trial with no clear upgrade path

Why it failed: Low prices signal low value. When something costs $5/month, people assume it's not that important or useful.

The psychology of pricing:

• Free = No commitment, no urgency
• Cheap = Low quality or not essential
• Expensive = High value and important

Your pricing is a positioning statement. Price like you believe in your product's value.

What I should have done: Price based on the value I'm providing, not my insecurities.

How to price confidently:

1. Calculate the cost of NOT solving the problem
2. Price at 10% of that cost
3. If people don't balk at your price, it's probably too low
4. You can always lower prices, but raising them is much harder

Mistake #4: Building in Isolation

What I did wrong: I spent months perfecting my products before showing them to anyone. I wanted them to be "ready" before getting feedback.

Why it failed: I was optimizing for problems that didn't exist and missing the ones that did.

Example: I spent two weeks perfecting the onboarding flow for my task management app. When I finally showed it to potential users, they told me they didn't need another task manager – they needed a way to track which tasks were blocking others.

I had built a beautiful solution to the wrong problem.

What I should have done: Show my work early and often. Get feedback on sketches, wireframes, and rough prototypes.

The right approach:

• Week 1: Sketch ideas, show 5 people
• Week 2: Build basic prototype, test with 5 people
• Week 3: Build MVP based on feedback
• Week 4: Launch to first 10 users
• Week 5+: Iterate based on real usage

Mistake #5: Treating "Launch" as a Destination

What I did wrong: I thought building and launching a product was the hard part. Then I'd sit back and wait for customers to find me.

The reality: Building is maybe 20% of the work. Finding customers, understanding their needs, and convincing them to pay is the other 80%.

I launched three products with zero marketing plan. My entire strategy was:

1. Build product
2. Post on social media
3. Hope people care

Spoiler alert: They didn't.

What I should have done: Start marketing before I started building.

The right sequence:

1. Pre-validation: Talk to potential customers
2. Pre-building: Start building an audience
3. Pre-launch: Get people excited about the solution
4. Launch: Convert interested people into paying customers
5. Post-launch: Keep talking to customers and iterating

The Turning Point

Everything changed when I met Sarah, a freelance designer who was struggling to keep her projects organized. Instead of pitching my existing productivity app, I asked questions:

• How do you currently track projects?
• What breaks down in your process?
• How much time do you lose to poor organization?
• What would an extra 5 hours per week be worth to you?

She was spending 10+ hours a week on project admin (emails, status updates, file hunting). She'd happily pay $100/month to get half that time back.

I built a simple project dashboard specifically for her workflow. No fancy features, just the core solution to her specific problem. She became my first paying customer at $97/month.

That one customer led to five more through referrals. Six months later, I had 47 customers and $4,200 in monthly recurring revenue.

Your Action Plan

If you haven't made your first sale yet, here's what to do this week:

Day 1: Get Specific

Write down exactly who your product is for. Be ridiculously specific.

Day 2-3: Find 10 People

Find 10 people who match your description. LinkedIn, Twitter, local meetups – wherever they hang out.

Day 4-5: Have Conversations

Don't pitch. Just ask about their current problems and solutions. Listen more than you talk.

Day 6-7: Validate or Pivot

Based on those conversations, either double down on your current approach or adjust your target customer/problem.

The Meta-Lesson

All of these mistakes stem from one root cause: I was building products I wanted to exist instead of products people wanted to buy.

The difference is subtle but critical:

• "I want this to exist" = Features you think are cool
• "People want to buy this" = Solutions to painful problems

Your job as a creator isn't to build what you think the world needs. It's to find people with problems they're actively trying to solve, and build the simplest possible solution they'll pay for.

Stop building products and start solving problems. The money follows the value, not the features.

Eight months feels like a long time when you're in it. But every conversation, every failed launch, and every mistake taught me something that made the eventual success possible.

Your first sale isn't just about the money (though the money is nice). It's proof that you can create real value for real people. Once you have that proof, everything becomes easier.

The question isn't whether you'll make your first sale. It's whether you'll learn these lessons the hard way like I did, or take a shortcut by avoiding these mistakes altogether.

Your first customer is out there, probably struggling with the exact problem you want to solve. Stop building and start talking to them.

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Alex Rodriguez is a full-stack developer who went from 8 months of failures to $5K MRR in 2 months. He mentors creators at MarketMee and shares his lessons at alexrodriguez.dev.