

Ask HN: where to go from here with my app? - wytzeschouten

I'm looking for feedback on my product as well as on the business model.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>There are admob ads in a few of the pages of the app, but I don't expect much income from them.<p>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)<p>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)<p>My questions are these:
- Where should the product go from here?
- How does the business model sound to you?<p>The online demo is at: www.afford-it.me/demo. You can log in with username hackernews and password reviewers.
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moe
_after a one-time setup it only needs your current balance [...] plus a list
of upcoming bills._

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?

~~~
wytzeschouten
Sorry, I forgot to mention: you need to open it in Chrome (or Safari), and
specifically not in Firefox. The app uses localdb which Firefox doesn't
support. (I hope this was in fact the cause of your problem).

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.

~~~
moe
Hm. I'm afraid I don't see the point.

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)?

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richf
If you are charging $3 for the app, you shouldn't have AdMob ads in it. Offer
a lite version with stripped functionality and the advertisements to
complement the full paid version.

Sidebar: UX need to be tightened up and polished - take a look at
<http://mobile-patterns.com/> for inspiration.

~~~
wytzeschouten
Thanks for your comments, Rich. It seems to me that the current version is
already pretty stripped. Any bits in mind that seem "Pro" to you?

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.

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wytzeschouten
PS: Please open the app in Chrome (or Safari), not Firefox. In Firefox it will
break due to a lack of localdb support.

~~~
moe
It didn't work in Chrome for me either (OSX, Chrome 17).

