Ask HN: where to go from here with my app?
I am about to launch Afford-It, an app for Android built with jQueryMobile and PhoneGap. Its function is to figure out for the user what part of their balance they can actually spend, and what part they need to reserve for recurring bills later in the month (like rent, power, cable, insurance).
My business model is to ask something like $3 in the Android market for the app. There are existing budget apps going for that price (after a free trial) and those are terrible apps that ask you to enter every single expense and income.
Perhaps a bank, or Mint, will come along and hire me to pimp up their online banking with my app's functionality. But that would be bonus, not baseline.
My USP is that with my app, you don't need to enter all your pastexpenses: after a one-time setup it only needs your current balance to give you meaningful advice, plus a list of upcoming bills.
There are admob ads in a few of the pages of the app, but I don't expect much income from them.
There are some basic things that will need to wait for v2: - entering incidental future incomes/expenses - patterns other than monthly (i.e. biweekly pay, saturday shopping trip, etc)
My current roadmap is to add these functionalities to my (cross-platform) code, meanwhile get it on iPhone and iPad, and maybe do a Dutch translation (I'm living in the Netherlands, so it might be worthwhile to push a Dutch version where I have better in-person access opportunities)
My questions are these: - Where should the product go from here? - How does the business model sound to you?
The online demo is at: www.afford-it.me/demo. You can log in with username hackernews and password reviewers.
8 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 23.4 ms ] threadSidebar: UX need to be tightened up and polished - take a look at http://mobile-patterns.com/ for inspiration.
Thanks for the mobile patterns site. I'm aware that buttons and lists are not quite consistent in shape and function across the app, haven't really pinpointed a problem though.
The demo stopped working for me in the browser after it asked for the initial balance ("next"-button did nothing).
Either way it sounds like I'd have to constantly update your app with my purchases and expenses and income? Why would I want to do that?
As for constantly updating: no! The whole point of this app is that you only need to enter your current balance. From your balance and your recurring bills (one-time setup), it calculates when your next income is due, which bills need to be paid before that, and that leaves as a remainder your free-to-spend amount.
So I tack in my income, my recurring expenses, and then it tells me my disposable income per month (a static figure)?
What is the advantage over just tapping those figures into a calculator or an excel sheet (which is probably easier to update later)?