Month: January 2010

Next Up: Freshbooks Integration

RubenLeave a comment

A while ago I mentioned that I was going to try out per-proposal pricing to see how this affects sales.

As I started looking into it, I found that this is easier said than done. There’s a fair amount of rewriting of billing code and the proposal workflow to get this working. I’ve not received any requests for this in a while so I won’t be going through with it (for now at least).

I’ve just got bigger fish to fry.

I’m about to start working on Freshbooks integration and I’m very excited about where this is going! A couple of weeks ago I had a phone conversation with Hiten Shah of Crazy Egg and the excellent KISSmetrics. Hiten is a bright guy and was kind enough to take some time to give me his thoughts on some of the things I might want to consider doing with Bidsketch.

One of those had to do with doing things on the integration side that no one’s really doing nowadays. I won’t go into much detail right now but I’ll just say that there’s great potential to kick some serious ass here!

I’ll be running this by a few of my customers and will be following up with more details on where I’m going with this.

New Bidsketch Screencast

Ruben4 Comments

I’ve finally updated the the Bidsketch screencast. I’ve been meaning to redo the whole thing since I went live with it. The old one was too long, and my voice is just terrible for that type of stuff.

The new one is shorter and Emilie (my lovely wife) helped me out by recording the audio. It’s not perfect (my fault, the audio kicks ass) but I’m no longer embarrassed by what I have up on my website 🙂

Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozEK2l6MQ9k&feature=player_embedded

I’m Looking to Acquire Another Product

RubenLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about making another product acquisition for quite a while now. I haven’t been looking at any listings in Flippa though, I’ve just had an urge to buy another product. So now I’ve decided to start looking at listings in Flippa on a daily basis.

It might take a long time for me to find something as I’m a picky guy when it comes to buying things like this. Heck, it took me a good 6 months of looking to find SixCentral.

I don’t have a specific type of app in mind, but I’d rather not put a ton of money into it for several reasons. First, Bidsketch is my primary business and any serious cash will always go there before making its way toward any other investment. Second, I’d like to buy something small and fun, that I can experiment with. Third, I don’t have lots of cash laying around.

So from this day forward I’ll spend 30 mins a day on Flippa with the hope of finding something I like at an affordable price.

Vacation and Support

Ruben1 Comment

This March I’ll very likely be heading out of the country.

It looks like my wife and I will be flying to Switzerland for a few days, then Italy for 3 days. That would leave time for one more country. We haven’t decided which one yet, and might leave this open so we can decide while we’re over there. I’m not a big on thoroughly planning my vacations if you can’t tell.

I do have a live product with paying customers now, so I’ll need to make arrangements to ensure everything runs smoothly while I’m gone. I have a 13″ Laptop that I’ll be taking with me and plan on staying in hotels where they have WIFI available.

I haven’t worked out all of the details yet but it doesn’t seem like any of this will pose a problem. It’s nothing I’ve had to deal with before, but I’m very glad I have a successful product that I have to worry about now.