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TweetingMachine, InboxCleaner (and others) Year in Review 2011

Published by Tom on 30/12/2011

This is my first annual review, and what a year it’s been! A doubling of revenues, several new apps launched… but sadly still nowhere near being able to work full-time on them. That’s my target for 2012; turn these from paying the rent to paying a full-time salary instead. So without further ado, here are the details: Continue reading TweetingMachine, InboxCleaner (and others) Year in Review 2011

Creating and marketing a new web app: trying to do it right

Published by Tom on 23/11/2011

I’ve previously written about creating new web apps, and the simple fact that without some form of marketing effort, if you build it, they will not come. But what is the solution?

With my latest app – Interactwive, a tool for running contests on Twitter – I attempted to start marketing WAY before I’d even begun to scratch out the first few lines of code. Here’s how I’ve been getting on so far.

Continue reading Creating and marketing a new web app: trying to do it right

Using Message Queues Will Improve Your Life

Published by Tom on 17/10/2011

When you’re first frantically trying to get version 1.0 of your project out of the door, it’s easy to avoid reading about concepts that are new to you: “Naaah… it’ll be quicker for me to do it my way! is an all-too-common thought that often runs through my head.

By way of example, this is how I felt whenever I was coding a feature that involved executing a task in the future, such as scheduling a status update to be sent to Twitter. Simple enough: create a table in the database for generic tasks, and a cron job to run them at regular intervals.

And then I read this fantastic blog post about why doing the above with a database is not a good again. As has happened many times, “You’re a fool” began running around in my head instead.

Continue reading Using Message Queues Will Improve Your Life

The Benefits Of Spammers Abusing Your Service

Published by Tom on 29/09/2011

If there is a way to make money online by abusing a service, you can guarantee spammers will give it a try. They have so little regard for the service, the spammers will club it to death without a second thought, all to increase their chances of making a fast buck.

Somewhat ironically, spammers do have their benefits: at some point you will be forced to harden your systems, both against spammers and against Things That Can Go Wrong. Let me tell you how this worked out for one of my apps, TweetingMachine.

Continue reading The Benefits Of Spammers Abusing Your Service

Hiring a designer is a premature optimization

Published by Tom on 07/09/2011

UPDATE: When I wrote this post, I was writing about design in the sense of pretty little boxes – and NOT how the user interface comes together and so on. I’m now aware that the terms “design” and “designer” cover an awful lot of ground :-)

Design is one of the biggest challenges for pure programmers who want to build web apps. When bootstrapping your startup, I’ve read that some people seem to be very keen to hire a designer. I can’t think of a bigger mistake. Continue reading Hiring a designer is a premature optimization