Show us what is paying your bills. Inspiration for those that are not there yet.
How did you go about getting your first 1000 users when as you say , you had almost no money to spend?
I don't spend much time in forums anymore. The people that were part of my communities have moved on to newer ones, while young Indians seem to have taken over much of the old ones, creating a very different atmosphere.
I don't have employees, have very low overhead, have zero consumer/business debt, and we're in the process of building a house. I choose new projects primarily based on what I find most interesting, and I have no need to chase financing to grow.
My wife also runs a bootstrapped six-figure publishing business in a different market. That business was built in a lot less time, and she was able to recoup production expenses for three high-priced professional training courses that sell very well to an addressable market.
We also spend a lot of time with our daughter, which is why we both chose to build bootstrapped businesses.
Building a great bootstrapped business is definitely possible. Keep at it.
Btw, love the book.
For book projects, I work with a trade publisher or publish myself, depending on the project.
If a trade publisher handles the project, they take care of printing and distribution. (One of the major benefits of trade publishers is that they'll get you shelf space / promotion at major retailers.) I generally work with trade publishers if I think the book has mass market appeal that would benefit from broad distribution. (The threshold is 20k+ copies.)
If I'm self-publishing, I use Lightning Source (http://lightningsource.com/). They're print-on-demand, and owned by Ingram, so you get instant distribution on Amazon and bookstore websites. Most bookstores will also list your title as "available for order" if a customer requests a copy by name. 48hrbooks.com is great for one-off workbook or other specialty orders that don't need retail distribution.
If I'm self-publishing electronically, I use my own delivery system and/or Amazon Kindle Direct publishing. Lots of control if you do it yourself, and/or hire specialized contractors.
Hope this helps!
TBH I am not sure it counts as we managed to secure a government grant for building our initial product. We've got a year left of "runway" before we need to either become cash-flow positive or bite the bullet and seek outside investment.
As I said, I realize this may not really count as bootstrapping, but I mention it as I think it may be an interesting (and oft overlooked) way to fund the early stages of a tech start-up, at least in places where local governments have programs in place to encourage economic development.
(For those who don't know what PageKite is, its main use is as a tool for web developers to demo and test sites on localhost against the public Internet - but we have ambitions to grow and become an alternative to traditional hosting and help make desktop apps and embedded devices integrate better with the web.)
Took no salary for 6 months, then a small salary to pay the bills for the next 9 months.
Then... business started to grow to yearly low seven figures in revenue and we're now paying ourselves a reasonable salary, contributing to retirement, and building up our company's cash reserves for future investments.
Income from delivering monthly tea is slowly climbing every month.
http://www.addedbytes.com/projects/
I'm working hard on the top three, and aiming to start making some real money out of them by the end of summer.
Selling scientific research chemicals and supplies.