Going Indy

2009-01-14T16:00:00.001-05:00

Hmmm, I wonder if it would interesting to integrate "Tasting Notes" with ping.fm. They do have an API.

2009-01-14T15:54:00.001-05:00

Just finished up an over steeped mug of tea. Still good though.

2009-01-14T15:21:00.001-05:00

Wow, there is no shortage of micro-blogging services out here. Yikes.

2009-01-14T14:53:00.001-05:00

PM Lectures giveaway: Win "The Strategic Project Leader (Intro)" worth $60 and 2 PDUs at http://ping.fm/G98ea

2009-01-14T14:10:00.001-05:00

New blog post: Is it OK to be an iPhone App Pirate? http://ping.fm/cjaTQ

2009-01-14T13:59:00.001-05:00

Getting back to work after longish lunch

2009-01-14T12:49:00.003-05:00

New blog post: Updates to Beer Pad, Wine Pad and Whiskey Pad Now Available! Also Image Tip. http://ping.fm/rZagw

2009-01-14T12:49:00.001-05:00

New blog post: Is it OK to be an iPhone App Pirate? http://ping.fm/cjaTQ

2009-01-14T10:28:00.001-05:00

Updates to Beer Pad, Wine Pad and Whiskey Pad are now available on the App Store. Cheers!

2009-01-14T09:11:00.001-05:00

New blog post: Is it OK to be an iPhone App Pirate? http://ping.fm/cjaTQ

2009-01-12T16:00:00.001-05:00

PM Lectures giveaway: Win "The Strategic Project Leader (Intro)" worth $60 and 2 PDUs at http://ping.fm/G98ea

2009-01-07T20:34:00.001-05:00

New Blog Post: Got my iPhone App Icon Created at 99Designs http://ping.fm/oeiuX

2009-01-06T13:01:00.001-05:00

Ok, now that I have changed my Twitter password I have to search out all these sites that used it...

2009-01-06T12:59:00.001-05:00

Testing out Ping.fm

2009-01-05T14:35:00.001-05:00

New blog post: 5 iPhone Marketing Tips http://ping.fm/eBcc2

2008-11-21T08:33:00.001-05:00

Playing around with gmail themes

2008-11-18T10:18:00.001-05:00

tic toc tic toc tic toc

2008-11-18T09:12:00.001-05:00

Time for a walk perhaps?

2008-11-17T08:20:00.001-05:00

Trying to decide what to do at work today. By "what to do" I mean where to eat lunch...

2008-11-14T15:25:00.001-05:00

Just finished up a blog posting about a new iPhone app : http://ping.fm/gOTBS

2008-10-03T13:00:00.001-04:00

Check out Don’t Panic: How to fix your broken iPhone App @ http://app-shop.com/

2008-09-29T20:14:00.003-04:00

Cannot wait to see Joe Biden and Palin go at it. Worth a few beers.

2008-09-29T20:14:00.001-04:00

Settling in for the night - wife and I planning on making a "party" out of watching the debates on Thurs.

2008-09-28T14:27:00.001-04:00

Civ IV: Colonization for a few hours now. Time sink.

2008-09-28T14:23:00.001-04:00

Fixed my newsletter mailing list. Minor setback, but my weekend is back on track with

2008-09-27T11:59:00.001-04:00

Just signed up for http://www.odiogo.com/. So cool - turns your blog into a podcast. @ snoonan thx for tip.

2008-09-27T09:49:00.001-04:00

Uggg, Facebook confuses me today

2008-09-27T09:08:00.001-04:00

My cat has gotten locked in our closed three times this week...

2008-09-27T06:28:00.001-04:00

Getting up early to work on my new blogs. @garyvee psyched me up yesterday.

2008-09-26T18:04:00.001-04:00

Wow - social networking overload. Random IMs - a million Twitter clones.

2008-09-26T17:45:00.000-04:00

Listing to the latest IBMA content

Mentioned on Digg - Sweet!

2008-08-23T15:16:00.001-04:00

Three products from App Shop were in an article that made it to the digg.com front page today. I find it very cool since I am a closet Digg.com fanboy. The article lists 18 different iPhone apps relating to drinking. So Beer Pad, Wine Pad and Pad Lite were all mentioned.

You can digg/read this story here:

Digg story

http://digg.com/apple/18_iPhone_Drinking_Apps_to_Get_the_Party_Started

Putting my Time In + Positive Reports

2008-08-07T21:41:00.002-04:00

So, this week in my business I have finally gotten some encouraging information. Essentially, Apple has started to release daily sales reports. From what I can tell, Wine Pad and Beer Pad are both selling very well (more than enough to make up for my lost day job income). As you can imagine I am pretty excited about this.

There is still tons left to do before I can leave the iPhone apps alone for while. My customers are clamoring for new types of products (even more expensive desktop style apps). Its pretty amazing, but people will do your marketing for you if you listen to them.

The other thing I have been doing is participating in Internet Business Academy.

This is a subscription based website that basically helps you in everything you need to know about internet business. It is well worth the cost and I attribute a lot of what I have accomplished so far to the influence of the owners of the site (and their book recommendations).

A good start...

New Product Just Launched

2008-08-02T08:55:00.002-04:00

This week I had a major success along with a major setback. First, the success: App Shop released another product similar to Wine Pad called "Beer Pad". Beer Pad already had at least one sale with reviewer who gave it five stars. When I designed Beer Pad I took all the feedback I got from Wine Pad and put it in there. Also, the idea of Beer Pad came right from the community. In the web 2.0 world, your customers are partners and they let you know what they want.

The setback this week is that I cannot get an update published to my Wine Pad product. This is very frustrating since I worked on that thing day and night. Also, if the preliminary numbers are at all correct many people have bought the app and are affected by its shortcomings. I do not want to lose this audience, however if I really cannot get that fixed I need to consider re-publishing Wine Pad so I can get the right features in.

This is the problem when working with a huge partner like Apple. On one hand, my website already has over 700 unique visitors with no promotion at all on my part. And I am making sales with no advertising budget. On the other hand, I have little control over my product. I can't take it off iTunes and I can't update it. Things go wrong with iTunes and I can't do anything about it while my customers suffer and my reputation suffers.

So, something to consider. For the time being, I have the iPhone programming bug and if this can maintain some cash flow I will stick with it. Eventually, I will have to expand this business though...

One Week Today

2008-07-21T08:03:00.003-04:00

So its been one week since my product Wine Pad has been available for sale. App Shop is doing pretty well in the first week in spite of a few dings. I got a lot of encouraging email about the product which is very nice and this gives me some indication that people are buying it. The reviews on iTunes have been mixed, some people have encounted a bug that crashes the app. The bug is pretty serious, if you put a single quote into a text field the program can crash. Luckily, I indentified the problem and a fix is in the works.

The bottom line is that my work is just beginning and there is a lot still to do. I am putting off starting some other products and refocusing due to some other customer feedback (there appears to be a demand for Wine Pad clones (Beer Pad, Coffee Pad and even Scotch Pad). Also, there is a pretty strong interest in a desktop application.

My plan is to make sure Wine Pad is solid and has an edge over its competition over the next few weeks. Once I am satisfied with this I will make some clones but customized for the subject matter. The next step is to consider releasing free "lite" versions to help drive traffic to the paid product.

I am starting to become convinced that this business model will work out.

First Product Released!

2008-07-16T06:36:00.003-04:00

Well, this blog has not gotten much attention lately because I have been pulling all-nighters trying to get my first product released. So, I am happy to say that Sunday nite I officially launched App Shop's first product, Wine Pad!

Now, I can officially call myself an entrepreneur. Since Sunday, I have gotten about ten emails and 8 official reviews so the product does seem to be selling. Most of the feedback has been positive or has suggestions that will go into the next update of Wine Pad.

Also, the app-shop.com website is getting much more traffic than any other blog I have used. Chalk that up to iTunes...

This is a huge personal success for me, four months ago I never would have even thought of starting a business. Today I have a registered business, bank accounts, web presence and customers. This is a start and the actual cash situation is still uncertain - but at least there now is a cash flow situation.

Now, I have a lot of work to do. My main focus this month is to establish a community around Wine Pad by over delivering to my present clients. Well, off to work!

A Small Victory

2008-07-09T11:03:00.002-04:00

I cannot go into the details because of NDA, however, today I just got through one hurdle in the process of making a product available. Its a small victory, but I believe that at least it will be a human in the partner company that is looking at my work.

Very excited, if all goes well I cannot describe how happy I will be with this. Either way, I will be spending a lot of time over the next month on company housekeeping (bank accounts, web sites, VAs). Also, I want to release the version 1.0.1 of my product as soon as possible after things have settled down and the community comes back with some feedback.

Next on the list is that I need a real live version control system. Right now the contenders are Subversion and Git; both are open source solutions; however I will probably go with Subversion because its a cool name and intergrates with my developement environment.

Very, very busy

2008-07-08T20:16:00.003-04:00

Even though I didn't officially start my new work schedule I have been very busy with my new company. Since I have made much quicker progress that I anticipated learning how to do iPhone programming I decided to try and do a series of all nighters in order to get an app on iTunes by Friday.

Sadly, I did finish my first product but for a lot of technical reason I couldn't actually get it submitted into the system. However, I am very happy with my work and all I really need to do now is to deal with the details of putting the product on sale.

Other than that I have started work on my company's website (app-shop.com), but its not quite ready for public consumption. I am considering hiring a VA to help setting up the various blogs and other content I want on the site. Also, I need some help with search engine optimization. I plan on using GetFriday and I will let you all know how that goes.

New Company Launched and more news

2008-06-28T07:58:00.003-04:00

So, since WWDC I have felt an amazing pressure to get out and do
something. Yesterday I got two steps closer to doing just that:
My hours are officially reduced to two days per week and the paperwork
for my new company arrived from LegalZoom. July 9th will be
my official launch of my company as well as my new life. My first
milestone for this is to get my first product, WinePad, onto the
Apple App Store. I am hoping that this will be done by the App Store
launch date.

Just Read a Great Blog Post for Entrepreneurs!

2008-06-21T10:38:00.003-04:00

The author says it better than I can so:

Here it is

Blogging is a Lot Harder than it Looks + Google Analytics

2008-06-21T09:17:00.005-04:00

Blogging turns out to be a lot harder than it looks. Each time I sit down to write a post I have a great writing idea that I think people would be interested in reading. But, the execution so far has fallen flat and the idea only gets half expressed. Maybe it is just the amount of time that I can actually put into it...

One of the reasons I am doing this blog is to get into the habit of blogging and learning about the tools that are used to understand and drive traffic. I will write a more detailed post on this later, but an amazing tool that I am using is Google Analytics. This tool presents all the data about the users of your sites (how many are unique, how long they stay, where they come from, etc).

Google Analytics has this great feature that overlays an image of your site with the % of times people clicked on each link. This is a great way to listen to your users - they tell you by clicking what they want.

What I found is by far the most clicked link on this blog at the very bottom where there is a list of links to other independent business sites (26%). The second most clicked thing was something like 10%. So, what I am going to try next is to add to this list resources that I think are valuable and see if these component still gets as much attention. I'm also thinking of a way to make that component more visible so that maybe it will draw the attention of the majority of users who simply click away from this site after being referred from StumbleUpon or Digg.

When Do You Know Its Time to Leave Your Job for Your Business?

2008-06-19T17:42:00.001-04:00

Anyone who has thought about starting a new company has had to wrestle with the idea that their life was going to change drastically as a result. Most people have grown comfortable in the typical 9-5 workweek that ensures a steady cash-flow and routine of a corporate safety net.

For a time, people already in the workforce may be able to run their side business as a hobby but in order to fully develop an idea most people know that they need to focus as much time on it as they can.

Lately, I have gotten to this point but frankly I didn't really know what to do.

Should I just get up and leave my job, burn my bridges and jump into my new life as many authors suggest?

Should I try and sneak my company development into my current work schedule?

Should I just drop my business?

For the truly courageous entrepreneur the best move indeed may be to simply pack up and leave and burn all your bridges. This ensures that you will be as motivated as you can to make it work. Honestly, especially for those of us who have enough money to support ourselves for a year this is probably the best way to go.

At this point in my life I could not stomach the first option.

A friend recently pointed out that other startups have been successful even though they spent their first year as a side project of people who had full time jobs. 37signals is the name of the company and the advice is start small and develop a cash-flow that can be built on. Here is a link to their blog post on this.

These two approaches seem to represent extreme ends of the spectrum. I for one did not want to burn my bridges, but I do want to move things along more quickly than I could while working at my job. Also, my better half is not willing to drop out of paying bills completely...

So, what I am trying to do is to negotiate working only 50% with my current employer. They are not really happy with this, but they certainly think its a better deal than 0% time. This is my compromise and I believe it is enough for me to get my business moving over the next year.

Maybe this is something that you could try before one of the two extremes above.

To answer the question posed by this article, you know you are ready to do something drastic when you have a burning desire to start. If you are thinking about your business idea all the time and truly want it then the time is going to come when you are going to have to start pushing the boundaries of what you are comfortable with.

The key is to come up with a plan that will work for your life and then follow it through.

Apple's bait: Application developers swarm to iPhone

2008-06-17T12:07:00.002-04:00

This article was a great read for anyone interested in upcoming iPhone App Store business. Of course, a lot of it is rampant speculation but it probably represents the best of the rampant speculation that we have. Also, check out the Digg.com comments for this article - it is very telling what the attitudes among future users and current developers are.

These are exciting times to be in mobile development and I think we can expect a lot of drama in the next five years. Is it going to be making millionaires or will the App Store be a billion dollar a year business? Or is Apple simply courting developers to their platforms so the rapidly defecting Windows crowd will have shiny new desktop applications waiting for them on the Mac?

Well, That's About It for WWDC

2008-06-13T22:43:00.004-04:00

Great conference, I feel like I learned a lot but at this point my brain is over saturated with the stuff. It pretty exciting and I think that the people at this year's conference are going to be influencing what happens in iPhone development over the next few years; by extension what happens with iPhone over the next few years will be influencing the mobile market as a whole.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in July when the App Store comes online and when the NDA is lifted (so developers can talk about what they are doing). From what I can see, the developers are sniffing out an opportunity fast.

For me, I can not wait to resume serious work on my own product. But, right now this traveling has worn down my cognitive abilities (hence writing out a blog instead of coding). I'm quite happy that they will be releasing videos of the content since its rapidly leaking from my brain as I type.

At any rate, I got a real sense that a future is being created in a way that will impact us in a big way. Its pretty exciting to be a part of it.

Bare Naked Ladies @ WWDC

2008-06-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

WWDC Beer Bash

2008-06-12T22:00:00.000-04:00

Glossy Icon Hangover

2008-06-12T00:57:00.003-04:00

WWDC is an odd combination of international vague coolness. As I walk the through the conference I heard languages from rich countries like France, US, UK, Japan and Germany (or at least German speakers). It all has a surreal techno-freaky vibe to it. There is also a pinch of American Unix geeks through in. You can identify these buys by their beer bellies and full beards. There are also a lot of artists and designers thrown into this mix.

Also, there is an over abundance of glossy icons and snappy slogans everywhere at WWDC. At WWDC you get weird associations like "Debug and Conquer" or for the App Store, "Applications Accepted Here". That last one has Orwellian consequences to the developers hoping to get their creations on to the store.

However, I can't help but wonder if M$ is able to tap into this reptile brain in the same way as Apple. I doubt it. That being said, Apple's ability to engage non-engineer types into application development could be the key to their success in the future. Technology and programming will be a fully realized technique when people who are not math majors can do it.

Resistance is ...

2008-06-11T10:49:00.000-04:00

Cocoa Heads (Real Indy)

2008-06-11T00:30:00.004-04:00

After the conference today I stopped by at a live "Cocoa Heads" meeting at the SF Apple store (Here is the link). These guys are the real deal, all but one essentially work for themselves by writing Mac software. The other guy is working on a real cool startup after escaping his other job working on the iPhone. His company is basically creating a web application that looks like a desktop presentation tool. And they created a web framework that behaves as desktop development environment to do it.

All of these guys are getting paid to do what they believe (and do rather well) directly by their customers. It was great to see them in action after hearing them on a few odd podcasts here and there.

Was there a take away message? Not sure, these are all guys who sort of fell into it or simply turned a hobby into a business because people took notice of what they were doing and pretty much demanded that the give their products to the public one way or another. But, they were mostly normal guys who just decided to go for it. So, I guess the take away message is to do what you need to do to bring your vision to the world.

Also, they all implied that you need to stay engaged with other people - customers and other people in the field. They all worked with people who were friends... Another interesting note is that many of them came from odd backgrounds - not all computer science, many had art and design backgrounds.

This makes me wonder if the Mac truly is the platform of the future. The Mac platform has developers with a truly fresh perspective. Programming frameworks are advancing to the point (at least on Mac) where talented people (who are not just engineers) can use these frameworks to create artful programs. The things that these people are doing are state of the art in technology, but also lifestyle and vision.

Finally, to the Content!

2008-06-10T11:23:00.003-04:00

Ok, now that the massive press of people has passed by after the keynote we can get on with the business of learning this stuff. My first session today is at 9 and will be an introduction to iPhone development. Of course, I have already been introduced but each time I heard the iPhone story I seem to pick up something new. What I am really looking forward to are the detailed sessions of "Views and Controllers", "Table Views", and interoperating with other iPhone systems such as contacts and the camera.

Al Gore is an Apple Developer?

2008-06-09T13:02:00.002-04:00

Wow, Al Gore is here; maybe he will announce for vice president. Hah, yeah right.

Sweet, in

2008-06-09T12:59:00.000-04:00

Turn towards the light!

2008-06-09T12:46:00.001-04:00

Let us in!

2008-06-09T12:36:00.001-04:00

Fear and Loathing at WWDC

2008-06-09T11:55:00.000-04:00

Or stairway to <Jobs> heaven?

Waiting for Keynote

2008-06-09T11:19:00.000-04:00

WWDC In the Door

2008-06-09T10:42:00.000-04:00

Don't see this at SAS conference:

Picture of Our Cat Vishy

2008-06-08T09:28:00.001-04:00

This pic captures one of Vishy's charming habits-falling asleep while
standing up.

WWDC

2008-06-06T13:44:00.003-04:00

On Sunday I am taking a trip to California and making the biggest investment into my business so far. I am going to the Apple Developer's Conference (WWDC) - a massive gathering/training session for people who write programs for the various Apple platforms. After all is said and done I will have spent about $3000 which is about what I expect to pay for 1 week "bootcamp" seminars.

What I plan on learning is all the basics about working on the platform (everything related to what they refer to as "UIKit"). Of course, I do have some knowledge already of Objective-C and Cocoa (the main development tools), but what I really want is to spend some focused time in the most cost/time effective way I can on learning this stuff.

Networking will also be a priority and I have printed up some business cards to that end. This perhaps will be a harder skill for me to acquire, but absolutely necessary.

By the end of this conference I expect to have the skills I need to finish developing my first product. Specially, I want this:
-More familiarity with Objective-C/Cocoa
-Understanding of delegation
-How to use Camera, Mail, and UI components

Why Should You Create an LLC?

2008-06-04T15:23:00.003-04:00

Here is something you should probably do if you want to go into business for yourself: create an LLC. This means "Limited Liability Corporation" and it is essentially a legal structure that separates your business concerns from your personal concerns. The LLC is your business.

That being said, why do it if you have an unproven business idea? Well, the most important reason is to protect your personal assets from any liability from your business actions. IE: if something you do as a business hurts someone they can only sue you for your business assets and not personal assets such as your home and beannie baby collection.

Another reason is that you will gain credibility with your clients. People want to do business with an entity that they perceive as being established in some way. The ", LLC" at the end of your business name and product could be enough to cement the sale in some people's minds.

Finally, formally creating a company is a sign for yourself that this is serious business. The **** is on now! This calls back to the notion of "mindset" and a lot of the people I have been reading say that success simply has a lot to do with mindset.

So, on that note I have submitted paperwork to get the process started in my home state. I used the online service LegalZoom which put me back about $600. However, you can get a real lawyer for more or try to do it yourself for less (~$200). In the next few weeks I will update this blog on the success of this part of the process of setting an small business.

The iPhone Registration Has Arrived!

2008-06-03T17:47:00.003-04:00

I will not get into the gritty details (more on that after the beta period), but my Apple registration has finally come through! This is very exciting news for me since I have spent a considerable amount of time learning the Objective-C ropes. Now, I can let go of the nagging feeling at the back of my head that I am wasting my time.

It is very nice to see my own apps running on my phone and I am very excited about the apps that will soon be available from the App Store.

As a side note, I am not with a big company and even though I am a programmer I do not have any special ties to Apple or any particular certification other than applying for the program. For everyone else out there like me I have to assume your certification is in the mail as we speak. Good luck and hunting.

What this means for me is that I can focus on the iPhone internet business first. I have about three apps in mind and one in the prototype stage that I hope to have ready by the end of the summer. This is very good news for me, now I can't wait to do to next week's conference and see if I can't get some learning on!

You Gotta Network!

2008-06-02T21:28:00.002-04:00

Well, I just finished ordering some "cool" business cards for next
week's Apple Developer Conference. The entire card looks like a
mainframe computer screen and simple lists my email, blog, and
Twitter. The reason I did this is because "you gotta network" and this
will be a chance to try my "glad hand". As you can tell from the tone
it is not my favorite activity but I believe its important.

The cards will hopefully make this easier (people will not want to be
writing junk down I assume).

Yar.

Uncomfortable Truths about Getting Rich

2008-05-31T14:53:00.004-04:00

It turns out that money is important for more than just buying beer and the occasional video game. Recently, I read an eye opening book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, that puts you into the mindset of how the rich think about money. Its a great book but I have to tell you that it really is hard for me to accept some of the points that the author makes. The eye opening thing I realized is that I don't actually like or really even care about money.

This is a problem.

Here are a few things I learned recently that have made me squirm:

1.)Pay Yourself First

I always thought this meant buying myself that shiny new iPod before paying the taxes. The reality is that the book recommended that you put aside 30% of your income to invest in assets. Assets are things that make you money like rental properties. That is a lot of money and a lot of possible angry bill collectors. They call this motivation to go out and "invent money". This is also money you need to be able to risk (aka: lose).

2.) Outsource

This goes deeply against my middle class brains, but living richly means delegating. Hire a cleaning lady, a plumber, or whatever professional you need to do your work. A rich person values their time. Delegating the tasks that you are not needed for frees you up to make the money or spend your time wisely with the family.

3.) Borrow to Invest

I don't like being in debt, but the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad believes that you should use the bank's money to invest and not your own. This makes sense for real estate since essentially your tenants pay your debt off and you use the banks money to pay all your liabilities. Obviously, if you really believe that an investment will give you a 20% return then getting the bank to loan you 4 times your savings will net you a much bigger return.

Goo Throwing, Sub-Consciously Trying to Get Fired...

2008-05-30T17:11:00.005-04:00

Well, this blog post is going to be more about me me me me since this is supposed to be a microscopic look at me taking a shot at the indies. In the spirit of the guys at Internet Business Mastery who recommend to "just do it" I have started this blog in the past two weeks. My reasoning is that I since I am learning about this topic I might as well immediately start applying the principles I am learning. So, that is one of the biggest reasons that this blog exists - its a bit of goo I am throwing at the wall and hoping it will stick. At the very least, I will get myself into the habit of blogging and otherwise doing the things you need to do to be "it" on the web.

Of course, I do this stuff at work - but corporate do-nothingery does not really generate an audience or interest. Who can blame people, if you can read a blog about your work and like you are lucky. Where I work, we are not there - even if the actual work can be interesting at times. + SharePoint will kill all but the most interesting of topics.

Speaking of work, I've been in this mindset lately of self-destructiveness at work. Sabotaging myself. This is something I need to keep in check, but it is tough to work at my type of job without being engaged in it... As corporate as it is, I need to be innovative to keep things going and to keep myself sane. Right now, all my energy is being applied to the potential new business.

But, creating bad feelings at my current job is not fair or even a good idea for me. Things will come to a head in the next year though because I have stopped learning there (very bad sign for me). But, I am thinking that maybe it would be better for me to transition away from my current job as a consultant (prob be a better deal for them anyway). This would would give me the freedom of place (and some of time) as I try to develop a business. + it would ensure some kind of cash flow for me as well as keep there critical systems maintained (and hopefully transitioned).

Anyway, just some thoughts from a deck in Pennsylvania inspired from some incredible summer weather.

Will the iPhone Developer Registration Ever Come?

2008-05-29T15:15:00.007-04:00

Well, I have been hacking away at the iPhone SDK and while I cannot talk about it I do like playing around. But, I am getting a bit impatient - how long should I wait until I get "blessed" by Apple and will be able to actually put my apps on my phone. Got to admit that I am getting impatient - on one hand I just want to see the new shiny apps for the shear fun.

All this time invested in learning the Mac software could all be totally wasted if Apple just decides to withhold their blessing. It is a risk in this game and I could be spending this time on other business opportunities. So, this is the Fear and Uncertainity post...

Well, once this thing comes out of beta I will be expecting the registration but for now I think I will start to focus on other internet business ideas - at least until the conference on the 9th.

Ways You Can Make Money Online

2008-05-27T14:15:00.005-04:00

So, like many people out there I would like to get some independence from my job. In order to frame this better, let me describe three ways of generating cash:

Earned Income - Income from a regular job or consulting done on an hourly basis.

Passive Income - Money that simple comes in as a result of an established work process. IE: Rent from property you own or sales of a product that you have already established.

Portfolio Income - Money that is generated through your investments. IE: Stocks or real estate going up in value.

Most people depend on Earned Income they receive through their job while waiting for retirement to access their Portfolio Income. The dream for me would be to earn all of my income as Passive and Portfolio Income.

In order to do this, I believe that it would be necessary to get some freedom of place and eventually time. As a brainstorming exercise I thought it would be fun to list out the different ways to earn money online without a traditional job.

1.) Consulting - you are essentially your own boss, but you are still stuck in the trap of time = money. However, if you are efficient or savvy you can free up a lot of your time to work on your passive income (no boss over your shoulder).

2.) Online Professor - you can teach at an online university getting benefits similar to #1 if you have the right degree/experience. Your need at least a Master's degree for this option.

3.) Virtual Assistant - if you have office skills you can hire out your expertise to people online at hourly rates.

4.) E-lancing - you can actually hire yourself out for almost any type of work that can be done remotely (programming, web design, graphic art).

5.) Create a product - this is where things cross into the Passive Income realm. If you create a product you could start to create a business that will run itself (selling software, e-books)

-it is possible to outsource or automate most of the tasks required for a lot of business

6.) Investing - this requires money and knowledge (neither of which I have right now). But, if you invest your money correctly you can have it work for you. This is the best way to truly have money work for you and it can be one fully online.

(Time = Money) is a Bad Idea!

2008-05-20T06:50:00.005-04:00

Last week, I heard this really simple but counterintuitive idea from the two guys who do the Internet Business Mastery podcast. They basically said that you have to stop thinking of time as being equal to money. That is, most people think that if they work longer hours at something that they will get paid more. I know that when I think of how to earn more money I immediately think of consulting.

Their point was really that you need to find a way to bring in cash-flow that doesn't require your constant attention. The way to do this is through automation. Let's take this example: the problem you are solving is teaching people how to do bicycle maintenance. One way to do this is to hire yourself out as a consultant; if you valued your time at $50 / hr you could probably replace the income from your present job if you worked 40 hrs/week.

This model is good, but there is a another way: if you were able to create a video or e-book that really showed people how to do this and priced that at $50 then you would be solving the same problem. Your customers would be getting a better deal because a one time cost of $50 is much less than a few hours of $50/hr consulting fees. You would be getting a better deal because your product will be making money for you while freeing you to do other things.

Essentially, this is the difference between owning a business and a business owning you. Under the second model, you will be earning income long after you have lost interesting in being a bicycle tutor.

Is $4.99 the magical price point for the iPhone AppStore programs?

2008-05-19T08:55:00.015-04:00

I have been thinking about this for some time now; I want to buy iPhone apps (Spore!) and I would like to turn my own programming projects into a business. After doing some research I found a site that sells mobile phone applications right now for Windows mobile and Blackberry. The site's name is Handango and you can buy programs on that service for as low as $7.99 to about $199 (ignoring developer packages). The existence of services like Handango proves that a market does exist even though I have a hard time contemplating spending $50, $30, or even $20 on the products I saw there.

The iPhone may well be different because the iPhone is a fun device that people just want to play with and the apps just look good. Plus, the iPhone will have its store in front of every iPhone user’s eyeballs. That is 5.7 million as of today and some people think that number will reach 14 million by the end of the year (arstechina). These numbers are compelling and developers only need to reach a small slice of this market to create a sustainable niche product.

So, I have been playing with numbers to see what a fair price would be for this type of product. The price point I think is the best bet is $4.99. Now, I am not involved in marketing so take it with a huge grain of salt; but, this price is low enough that as a consumer I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about the purchase decision.

I estimate that a developer will see about $2.49 of $4.99 after the Apple cut and taxes. So, if you can reach .5% of today’s iPhone market you would earn about $70,000 after taxes. Over the year, this amounts to about one person’s salary. In terms of units sold, you would need to sell 2,375 copies each month to be sustainable.

After considering all this, I think it is a safe bet that something will happen with the AppStore and independent developers could benefit. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months as this market develops.

Edit: Since last posting this I have found another blog post about iPhone pricing: http://www.marco.org/288. This developer things that $10-$15 is a better price range. We shall see what happens in June...

Who am I and what is this blog about anyway ???

2008-05-18T08:13:00.008-04:00

Right now I work for a medium sized company where I essentially do system analysis and programming for teams of psychological researchers. Before this, I went to school for psychology and spent some time in the mental health field. I love my work and the company I work for is a decent place. But, I don't really feel satisfied with just being an employee and lately I have been thinking of trying different things out.

The first thing I tried was to go back to school and get a master's degree. I did this, but what that really did was just give me another bullet point on my resume. New degrees don't really change things - they just open up new job titles. I also came to realize that "moving up" in the corporate world really means becoming a manager, then a director, and so on.

The thing that really changed my attitude and opened up a world of possibilities was the Apple announcement that software developers would be able to sell their applications for the iPhone through an iTunes-like "AppStore". At the time, the implications seemed to be that one developer, or small teams of developers, could make a business out of something they loved to do.

I am very excited about the AppStore, however the real implication of the announcement for me is that I have started to investigate the world of internet business. There are people who have made livings by simply writing blogs, selling their products on eBay, developing software for the Mac and so on. The interesting thing is that people have managed to simply make modest livings by focusing on their particular niche.

So, now let me bring this post back around to the question of "what is this blog about". As I have been listening to podcasts and generally educating myself I realized that this path I was going down is very risky and if I wrote about it honestly then the possibility exists for some high drama. To be honest, from my perspective this world of internet business seems a little pipe dreamy. My plan is to follow this pipe dream and this blog will document the ultimate success or failure of this adventure.