Web & Technology

Launch Strategy for a New Blog

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Nov 10, 2011 in Business Tips, How-To, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Web & Technology | 4 comments

Launch Strategy for a New Blog

Announcing a new blog is an exciting thing for most web-based business owners because you now have this interactive platform for your audience to engage with you from.  If you didn’t have a blog before (and if you were also lacking a social media presence), you may not have any idea who is out there enjoying your work.  Launching a blog opens the doors to get to know your online audience in a more intimate way.

Since you have two groups of people — those who know you now and those who don’t yet know you — the blog strategy needs to incorporate both of these groups.  It is important to personally invite the people who know, like and trust you into the environment but it is equally as important to set up some things that will attract in new prospects as that is the goal of your blog.

The Cost of App Development – An Interview with iWatchLife

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Oct 4, 2011 in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Web & Technology | 7 comments

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring interviews with various individuals and companies that have gone through the app development process. The focus of these interviews is specifically on the costs associated with developing and marketing an app.  You can catch the first interview here.

If you have any follow-up questions, please post them as a comment and I will let our interviewees know that they are here.

The Cost of Developing an App – Interview #2

1. Tell us a little bit about your app.

iWatchLife for Android and iOS lets you see what’s happening around your house when you are not there. iWatchLife works with any webcam or two models of Axis wireless IP cameras.

We have developed a better version of motion detection that we call smart event detection. It reduces false alerts by letting alerting you only when something important happens like your child standing up in the crib, your pet doing something it shouldn’t or when a delivery arrives at your front door.

iWatchLife also uses 5 times less bandwidth than anything else streaming full motion video so you won’t use up your bandwidth cap or data plan.

2. Can you describe the initial costs that went into the development of the app?

We’ll discuss this from the viewpoint of most apps being built and our specific experience. Generally for most apps, you can build the app fairly cheaply using the tool kit supplied for the mobile device. A simple app can be prototyped by a developer who is familiar with the tools in a few days to a couple of weeks. Testing for most startups depends on getting enough friends to load the test version of the app and provide feedback.

For mobile apps, it helps keep costs down by keeping your functionality as simple and as useful as possible and to stay with the UI as people expect it to work rather than letting you creativity run wild. Think what people are used to not what you think would be awesome. Get it out the door, working well and build off that. The cost then is the cost of those couple days to two weeks of dev. time. If you have developer skills you would do this yourself. If you aren’t you need to network into the app development community. There are several local networking meetings in any city for people focused on mobile apps, games or startups. You need to get there, talk and network to find developer resources. So you need to set aside money for finding the right resources to build your app.

The Cost of Developing an App (Interview #1)

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Sep 26, 2011 in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Web & Technology | 2 comments

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be featuring interviews with various individuals and companies that have gone through the app development process. The focus of these interviews is specifically on the costs associated with developing and marketing an app.

If you have any follow-up questions, please post them as a comment and I will let our interviewees know that they are here.

The Cost of Developing an App – Interview #1

1. Tell us a little bit about your app.

We developed sportsfangraph.com, an application that collects fan and follower data from Twitter and Facebook on professional, collegiate and international sports teams. The initial purpose of the application was to create a site that attracted Sports Marketers for Coyle Media, a sports marketing firm. Coyle Media was our client on the app and was looking to expand their footprint internationally. The application has been very successful in achieving this.

Selling Services via a Storefront Like @Shopify

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Sep 21, 2011 in Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Product Reviews, Web & Technology | 1 comment

It is not often that you see the words service and storefront come together. Most professionals sell their services on a very personally-driven platform. Client hires or retains your company, you provide service to the client and an on-going relationship is built. However, in a world that is going online more and more each day, one needs to consider the ability to combine the face-to-face feeling of a service with the ability to reach more people, in less time.

Shopify is a service that provides a shop-style service to online business owners. The service combines an e-commerce platform with a payment gateway of the client’s choice to allow the business owner to sell products and services to their customers online. Most people using Shopify are selling a tangible product but we recently tested the store’s ability to house and sell services. We were so pleased with the results that we wanted to share the tool with you and explain why setting up a storefront for your services could be a lucrative aspect of your business.

5 Free iPhone Apps for Your Online Business

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Aug 29, 2011 in Web & Technology | 5 comments

Paul Hochman, a video host at MSN’s Business on Main, recently put up a video about two free apps that are beneficial for business.  While the two he pointed out might be useful for offline businesses, I wanted to make a list of my top five favorite (and free!) apps for online business.

1. Mail App

Although this app is not one that you download from the app store, nor is it one that is fancy schmancy, I still love this app because of its ease of use.  Being able to stay connected to my e-mail seamlessly is a beautiful thing.  

Since I use Gmail, I have connected my mail app to my Gmail account in IMAP style, which means that when I respond to or look at an e-mail on my iPhone, my Gmail inbox automatically updates too!  No duplicate e-mails and no wondering what I did and didn’t reply to.

The fact that you can connect multiple accounts to it is also valuable.  Love me the free, native mail app.

A Web 2.0 Backup Plan for Your Business

Posted by Erin Blaskie on Aug 26, 2011 in Business Tips, Web & Technology | 3 comments

I was reading an article on MSN’s Business on Main website called, “Prepare for Popularity“, which discussed the steps to take to prepare your business for a quick upsurge in website traffic.  You know, the kind that happens if you get featured on Mashable or you get mentioned on Oprah’s Twitter account.  

It got me thinking about all of the different ways that we need to make sure our business is protected, especially in this web 2.0 landscape where everything is “in the cloud” so to speak.

This blog post will unearth some of the practices you can follow to make your business safe in this fast-paced, technological business atmosphere.