Perham had blogged about Ruby and open source since 2007, well before Sidekiq existed, building the audience Sidekiq later launched into.

“I had been blogging constantly about Ruby and OSS projects since 2007 so I had an audience and a reputation already built up.”

The blog built personal credibility that made developers trust him enough to become paying customers.

“My own personal blog was important to developing the trust of other developers and converting them to Sidekiq users and then customers.”

Ruby developers who used the paid product at one job kept buying it when they moved to new companies, and evangelized it to peers.

“they grew comfortable and evanglized them to friends and to future companies that they hired into”

Face-to-face conversations with Ruby developers at conferences, answering questions and addressing concerns directly, converted attendees into Sidekiq Pro buyers.

“when I meet and network with other Rubyists to answer their questions and soothe their fears, they buy Sidekiq Pro”