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I have a product I'm developing on my own, with no other investors or partners. Via another project I'm developing, I have an IP Waiver and NDA that I can use for the project, I'm using my personal computer and resources to build the application.

The product is a web-based application for a particular market, which can be very niche, or grown, as I have the time and resources available to build it. That is, the fundamental components of the application are NOT niche, but the way it's presented IS niche. When I have time/resources to add additional presentation methods, the niche market can grow.

My question is this: I have a very small budget to spend money on for the project - $1000. I have the personal technical expertise to develop the architecture of this application, but I am not a web designer or a graphic designer. I have one user of the application already lined up, with a potential second. I have three companies who's clients would want to use this application who have agreed to do some beta testing for me, free of charge, prior to the public launch, and, if they like what I've done, to promote it to their clients. Both beta testers are technical in nature, and will be somewhat forgiving of a simple UI in the first version.

What would you say would be the best use of my money? I already have the domain for the site registered, and have earmarked $75 for hosting for one year (yes, I priced it out, and the only reason I would have to increase that would be if I had enough revenue to justify the increase).

So, $925 to spend to design/build/test/launch/market/support the application. What do I spend the money on?

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It's not clear to me, is this product B2B or B2C ? Those companies who will suggest the product to end customers, what is their benefit in this? Do your potential customers strongly communicate with and reference other customers inside this niche, i.e. is this niche tight and sharing experiences at identifiable venues (trade shows, blogs, universities, etc) or the opposite? – Jesper Mortensen♦ Dec 8 '09 at 1:44
It's a B2B2C product. The 3 companies referring the product are doing this as a favor for forwarding business in their direction. There will be no cost to do this. It's possible for some portions of the market they work collaboratively, but for the most part, it's each customer for himself. – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 4:34
@Elie: OK, so business partnerships / affiliate marketing doesn't sound like a obvious fit then, sadly. – Jesper Mortensen♦ Dec 8 '09 at 23:12
@Jesper Mortensen sadly not. It's a matter of getting to the people in the industry and convincing them to use the product, or to their clients to ask them why they aren't (I designed the product such that my users' clients will want them to be using this product over other alternatives). – Elie Dec 9 '09 at 3:42

8 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

This is a tough one, but instead of focusing on the thing you don't have (money), focus on the thing you do have (time and talent).

Getting early customers is always, always hard. My advice would be to kick off a blog (that's a long term play, but still necessary). Second, start locating bloggers that are in your industry and forging the relationship. Read what they write, contribute to their conversations. Start poking around in twitter and LinkedIn answers. The idea is to find people that are not just potential customers (which would be great), but also find potential influences and well-wishers.

But, as soon as possible, you should be working to find real customers for the application, not just free beta testers. People willing to support you in the early days is great, but it still doesn't help you answer the question as to whether people will pay for it.

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Thanks for the answer! As I mentioned, I have two customers lined up, one of whom has already agreed to pay for it, and the other is in the works. The beta testers are the same people doing the marketing (lucky break). I have a blog already, where I'll be posting info about the product. I'm active on various social networks including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. Reaching out - need to start doing that :-). – Elie Dec 7 '09 at 16:55
up vote 2 down vote

Web design.

Make sure anything the users' experience is as good as possible. All the rest can wait.

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Where can I get that kind of work for the budget I have? – Elie Dec 7 '09 at 16:44
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It's hard to find a good/great designer for that kind of money -- and very easy to burn through available cash trying to figure that out. I agree on the importance of design, but I think it's better to find someone as a committed business partner that knows design and can help ongoing, than trying to hire one on a very limited budget. – dharmesh Dec 7 '09 at 16:49
Well, I have a couple partners from other ventures that are ongoing, and one is a web designer. I'll have to think about that carefully, though, as giving up equity is something you can rarely get back. – Elie Dec 7 '09 at 16:57
@dharmesh: True, I did not think adding a partner was one of the possibilities. Definitely that would be the best route, if possible. – Gabriel Magana Dec 7 '09 at 17:25
@gmagana Adding a partner wasn't mentioned. It's a [theoretical] option because it assumes I can find someone to work with who would agree to such an arrangement and balance the equity according to work done/ideas generated. – Elie Dec 7 '09 at 18:32
up vote 3 down vote

  1. +1 for a web site. Hiring a good web site designer is expensive (beyond your current budget) and means you still have to come up with all of the content for them. Then you have to pay them to keep it current. If you use a Mac, you can build great web site yourself with a very short learning curve with RapidWeaver for under a $100. If you don't have a Mac, Buy a Mini for about $500. You can use it for all your web site work and to make sure customers using Macs have a good experience with your app and web site.

  2. Buy some design time for a company & product logo to make you look polished and professional.

  3. Get a toll free number. Put it prominently on your web site. Make it as easy as you can to talk with prospects and customers.

  4. Set aside a press release budget of a few hundred dollars. Send out at least a pre announcement, release announcement, and a press release for each upgrade of your app in the first year. Spend a few extra dollars the first couple of times to have the press release firm help you write your release.

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Are toll free numbers really an asset still? I don't know ANYONE who would be put off by a non-toll free number if they were thinking of calling. – TimJ♦ Dec 7 '09 at 17:39
I thought press releases are generally considered useless. – TimJ♦ Dec 7 '09 at 17:39
Spending half of his budget on hardware just to use rapidweaver sounds like bad advice. You are asking him to spend capital he doesn't have AND asking him to learn something new just to make a website. Why not just learn wordpress or something else? Or spend the $500 on someone to make the site? – TimJ♦ Dec 7 '09 at 17:41
I must say I agree with Tim about the Toll free number item. Considering that the application itself and the website are tightly coupled, using an application to "help build the site" is unlikely to help me in this case. Item 2 is definitely useful - I have the concept for the logo and such already designed, but it's on paper. Press releases I can handle in terms of editing, having done that before, but I forgot about the promotional budget... definitely important. – Elie Dec 7 '09 at 17:42
I don't disagree with having a phone number - I meant why get a toll free one. I should have been clearer. I agree you need easy, prominent ways to talk to customers, but these days toll free numbers are not really a big deal. – TimJ♦ Dec 7 '09 at 17:45
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up vote 1 down vote

I am in the same boat and found this web site really helpful:

http://themeforest.net

You can buy really nice templates for a reasonable price. Look at the categories/admin-skins, I think this section is the best. It has templates that are general purpose application templates with nice markup for tables, menus, and forms. If you buy a template and need some additional changes you can contact the designer and work out a deal most times. It is a lot cheaper than starting from scratch.

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Except what I'm looking for is not a website per se, but a combination of a web designer to put a UI on my application (which is a website), and other suggestions for how to spend my money. I'm not looking for web templates. – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 1:29
Well you might still want to look at the site, I am also making a very niche web app and have no design skills and it was very easy and cheap for me to take my technically sound design and just apply a template from this website to make it very appealing to my users. As developers we don't usually put much stock in how something looks (battleship gray makes me happy) but to most end users, looks are everything. I especially like the category called admin skins: themeforest.net/category/site-templates/admin-skins This section is all about skins that can be applied to web apps. – Frank Dec 8 '09 at 14:59
I'll take a look, but fortunately, I know when something looks awful (e.g. battleship gray anywhere but on a battleship), and do have an artistic side - just not using computer graphics (I prefer paper and colored pencils). – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 15:24
up vote 2 down vote

What you have is time. Code your design yourself. Learn CSS (it's not that hard). There are millions of free resources out there.

Start a blog. It's the best way to attract the attention of Google (SEO).

Once all of this is done, you'll still have $1,000. I wouldn't spend the money on anything. No formal PR. The trick is being persistent. Start your blog now, not when your product is in beta.

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The blog actually already exists (blog.optimalupgrades.ca) but isn't publicizing the product yet. Before I do so, I need to ensure my copyrights are protected, a process which I have nearly completed. I think this is the route I'll be going, though, coding myself, and what money I do spend will be for books (about $100 for a couple of books which I'll find useful in general anyhow). – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 1:32
up vote 1 down vote

One suggestion on how to proceed and where to focus your energies (and money) would be to read Getting Real - 37Signals excellent online book on how to create and run a web application company.

When looking at expenses and where to spend your money, you should put together a basic budget on what you expect the costs to run your company would be (and put some of your up-front funds in reserve) - since you mentioned it is a web application, your $75 hosting / bandwidth budget may be very low if you start to capture significant traffic.

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I've read the Web Startup Success Guide by Bob Walsh (even reviewed it on my site: blog.optimalupgrades.ca/2009/11/…). I'll take a look at Getting Real, though - thanks! The $75 earmarked for hosting is if I get only a minimal number of clients for the site - as I get more users, I'll expand the package using funds from the users (membership model). My question was precisely about costs - what kind of things will come up that I need to budget for, either pre- or post- going live? – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 15:21
up vote 3 down vote

I took a look at the root site of your blog, and I'd say improving your web design needs to be a top priority. Spec out what you need for the sales site, and find someone on eLance that can set up a CMS and theme it for you for $500. It doesn't have to be original, it just needs to look professional. You'll need to do the work to make the application itself look similar. Request a minimalist theme; it will be easier for you to reproduce its look and feel (pay attention to colors, fonts, and spacing).

Don't pay for a logo yet. Your first logo should simply be beautiful type. Try some different fonts for the product name, save them, and show screenshots of the site to friends, with different versions of the logo in each, to get some feedback on which font best matches the feel you're going for with the product.

After typography, the next best thing you can do to improve the design of your site and app is add icons. Check out http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/03/how-to-use-icons-to-support-content-in-web-design/ for a guide. There are many free icon sets available with varying licensing restrictions, but consider shelling out $50-$100 for an icon set.

As far as marketing budget goes, I couldn't say without more information about the product and market for it. It's always worth investigating the relevant keywords and seeing how much a search enginge Cost Per Click campaign would cost you.

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By root site of my blog, are you referring to www.optimalupgrades.ca? That was a quick hack off a template, and is on the list of things to replace. It's ultimately going to be completely replaced by the blog and associated content. The site itself is the application, so there's a landing page with info about the product, and then the content once you log in. Ergo, the two items are tightly coupled. Thanks for the link and feedback, very helpful! – Elie Dec 8 '09 at 19:25
+1 for the concrete, practical and detailed-enough advice. – Eternal Learner Dec 20 '11 at 18:08
up vote 2 down vote

Try Craigs List for web work - most have portfolio and you can either contract or partner. Partnership does not need to be 50/50, it could be a small equity share, especially for on going participation. Definitley get a non disclosure, non circumvention agreement in place, preferably, mutual. Lots of businesses have started on very restictive budgets. Good luck.

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