Comments

Every chapter has comments enabled on BAWA.  Simply leave a comment and you’ll get a reply back asap.  These comments can be seen by all registered members of the community, so its great for getting general feedback – as anyone can answer.

Email

Send me an email to anthony@feint.me – if I can’t answer your question, i’ll make sure I can find someone who can.   Feel free to ask technical, design or development specific questions – My team is more than happy to answer them.

Skype

If you’d like to talk, skype me on ezyweb9.

Download the Stay Lean Checklist (Printable .pdf)

You probably have a ton of ideas but no idea where to start.  This first chapter is designed at getting you to take action and get started building.

Let’s Bust Some Myths

1. You Don’t Need a Team – you can build a web app as an individual.  You’ll learn to outsource later which will help fill any skill shortages you have.
2. You Don’t Need to be a Developer – I coded less than 10% of the current version of my app.  Its perfectly acceptable to be a founder without coding skills.
3. It doesn’t cost Millions – A couple of thousand (or less) is required to get started.  You can work full time while developing your app (I worked part time).

Let’s Put Your Head in the Right Place

Whats the worst thing that could possibly happen?

You’re going to be asking yourself this question a lot over the coming months.  By taking the leap, and starting work on a web app, what’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?

The worst I can think of is nobody using your web app and being out a couple of thousand dollars.    Thats the worst!

Just imagine all the lessons you would have picked up along the way.  You learn by making mistakes!

Figure out what the worst situation will be for you.  Can you handle that situation?  Of course you can.

Start Sketching Out Your App

Put pencil to paper and start sketching out some really basic mockups and user flows.  Use lots of arrows and notes.  The idea here is to provide a visual overview of what your app will do.

This process helps focus your ideas and gets your thoughts in order.  Remember, at this stage, everything can be very rough.

Get Feedback – If you’re brave enough to share your idea – this is a great opportunity to get some feedback.  Send through whatever you’re comfortable with and I’ll bounce back some suggestions.   And don’t worry, if you don’t want to share your idea at this early stage, there are plenty of other opportunities to get feedback later on.

There are various formats of ads you can sell on a web app, however, the most successful format has proven to be banner ads.

Will Banner Ads Damage my Apps Reputation?

This all depends on the quality of ads you choose to place on the app.    A good approach is to manually approve each ad before it goes live.  Make the decision as to whether or not you believe the ad will be of benefit to your users.  Will they find the product or service being advertised relevant and useful?

Where to Find Advertisers

A number of popular web apps have chosen to use the BuySellAds network.  Ads on this marketplace are usually targeted towards designers, developers and other freelancers.  If this type of advertising fits your app, then consider joining BuySellAds.

There are other marketplaces available.  The best place to start your search is looking at other web apps and see how there ads are served.

The idea with Freemium is to get your users to register a free account and convert them to paying customers later on down the track.

Why So Popular

The freemium model is now widely used.  Is popularity is probably due to the following:

1. The free option means the app still has viral potential and allows and app to quickly grow a userbase.
2. By offering premium features or services on top of the “free”, the startup also has a way to monetize without resorting to advertising.

Value

In order for any freemium business to succeed, it will need to offer enough “value” in its premium feature set.  This is a very hard balance to achieve.  What should I give away for free and what should I charge for?  Remember, what you find valuable may not be the case through another persons eyes.

Unfortunately there is no set formula to calculate what premium features your app should charge for.  Every app is different, in both features and target market.  Therefore, this a process you will need to figure out through beta testing.  But remember this – don’t fall into the trap of giving away too much.  Less is more!

The biggest determining factor as to whether or not a blog will write about your product is your “uniqe selling proposition

You need to find out what makes your app unique.  And its this uniqueness that you’ll pitch to the journalists.

After figuring out whats so unique about your app, construct a basic email.  Try and make it personal and straight to the point.

The Email Pitch

In the email, start by introducing yourself.  They don’t need to hear your life story, just a couple of quick sentences explaining who you are.

The next paragraph should contain 3-4 sentences describing your app.  If you make it longer, they won’t read it all.  Gety straight to the point and DON’T use any buzz words like “web 2.0″ or “revolutionary”.

In the third paragraph explain why your app is unique and finish with why you build the app.

Tips

• Email the junior bloggers – don’t feel you need to pitch directly to the main writers.  The junior writers get less pitches but still can give your startup just as much exposure.
• If you enjoy reading their blog, tell them!
• Make it personal – don’t pretend to be a big company.  Make sure the blogger knows you are open to questions.
• Show passion.

The Document Marketing Blueprint is your complete guide marketing a website through sharing documents.  If you’ve heard of article marketing, then this will be familiar, but far more effective.

Download The Document Marketing Blueprint

You can make customer support tricky, stripped down to the basics its very simple:

answer every single customer inquiry within 24 hours

This is great target to aim for and can be easily achieved.  Here is how to make it a reality:

Make Support Everybody’s Job

Customer support should be the responsibility of everybody in your company.  Make sure its clear, that any developers, sales or admin staff need to be part of your customers support.  For example, technical questions about your app could be forwarded to your developer.  And your sales staff should be active on Twitter, and be prepared to respond to customer questions.

Email Support

Give out your email address.  Don’t hide behind a contact form.  For our support email, we use Google Apps.  The spam filter means we don’t get any, and its free for small businesses and cheap for larger companies.

I like to use just one email address for all support.  Multiple emails (like tech support, billing, sales etc) addresses often confuses customers and makes you look like a faceless corporation.   Use just one email and if you have multiple support people, have them forwarded on.

Support Community

You may have seen the “feedback” tab displayed on the sidebar of many web apps.  This tab, will take the user to a GetSatisfaction (or competitor) support community.  These communities allow your users to post feedback and ask questions and have them answered by your team or other users of the web app.

This is a great way to run support.  Users love posting ideas about how they think your web app should run and a GetSatisfaction community provides a great spot to do this.

Another benefit of running GetSatisfaction is not having to answer the same question multiple times.  Once you’ve posted an answer, it can be seen by everyone and will help reduce your total number of support queries.

One of the most important roles of a founder will be breaking the development work down into chunks.

Start with just the core.  What are the absolute essential features required to make your web app work.  These should come first and will form your launch product.

Once this is complete, you can move onto additional features.  Don’t be tempted to jump around and work on multiple things at once.  Focus on just one feature at a time.

The 2 Week Goal

Here’s a really handy tip.  Try and aim to launch a small iteration every 2 weeks.  If its taking longer than this, you need to break things down further.  Whether its a bug fix or a small tweak – aim for something new every 2 weeks.  Don’t worry you’ll have plenty to work on.

Bigger features will arise but aim to break these down into small bits as well, starting with the core functions of each feature and expanding from there.

The 2 week goal also give you something to mail or blog about each week.  This opportunity to connect with your customers regularly will create a fresh and vibrant community and will keep that buzz alive.

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“You can’t outsource your core product development”  – Some Founder…..A load of rubbish

I hear the “outsourcing core product” line often.  Unsurprisingly, this line doesn’t come from founders who have once tried this and failed, but from those who’ve never even tried!  How do they know you can’t outsource core development?

The good news is, it’s entirely possible.  Ive done it and seen it used by many other young entrepreneurs.  If you’re skills lie in business rather than development, this means its possible for you to operate a one man shop.

“You can’t outsource to overseas developers” – Some Other Founder…..Another load of rubbish

In fact, it can be extremely beneficial to hire a dev in another timezone so that when your site goes down while your sleeping, you still someone awake.

Founders mainly have communication troubles.  I say this often – outsourcing is an art.  It takes loads of practice to commincte effectively.  Don’t be discouraged if you fail the first time.  Don’t be afraid to switch freelancers.

So in summary, you outsource your core development work and even do it to overseas freelancers in India, Europe or elsewhere. I’m not saying its easy or won’t come without hurdles…but thats half the fun.

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