Interestingly, I think this model works best for 'software for developers'. Developers naturally empathize with the author of their software much more so than a 'typical user' would.
Developers are typically very bad software customers. As much as they could empathize, more often than not, they think they could do it themselves in a couple of weekends.
I have wasted so many months of my life in this trap, spending a few days coding an app myself rather than paying usually less than $100 for it (usually because I want some small feature it doesn't have) . I dont think its ever been worth it in the long run.
