Business Ventures

I currently have two operating businesses:

bestattendance.com
This site just launched. My goal is to have 25 customers by June. This means getting five new customers per month. If my COCA is $60 or less, I'll be doing very well. Getting to this point will mean taking a loss at first, but there will be a payoff if I can get some loyal subscribers.

highschoolwebdesign.com
I'm currently selling downloadable lesson plans from this site and am seriously considering adding AdSense. AdSense could probably add $50 per month to my bottom line; this would help offset the costs of running bestattendance.com.

I have a few others in the pipeline:

The first one I can vaguely describe as a marketplace for food.

I'd like to start a juicing blog. This will motivate me to actually make juice every day with my new juicer. This might be monetizable or perhaps sellable.

Consulting might be something else I can try.

I'd like to greatly expand bestattendance.com beyond youth ministry into other market segments.

It will be a challenge finding time for all of this stuff; having the summer off will be very beneficial.

Launching January 1

Well, I definitely made some progress today. I fixed two bugs, one of which was due to an incredibly stupid mistake with PDO, and it was difficult to track down because it was intermittent. Got it though. I do think that the app could benefit from some more testing. I’m considering spending the extra $40 or so it would cost for 8 hours of functional testing. I think it would be worth it.

I do have the dashboard done, and everything in the app is generally production ready.

Today I spent some time researching tax issues for my business. I have the estimated and self employment tax all figured out. I got a state tax ID number so that I can collect sales taxes to subscriptions delivered to Minnesota customers. I probably won’t get any; my sales tax liability is extremely low, but I have the tax ID number now just in case I do get accounts from Minnesota.

Yesterday I was approved for a merchant account. My authorize.net account is all set up, and I just have to hook it up to my Chargify service. I have a checklist of things I need to complete before I launch, but it’s getting shorter. I’ve decided to finish the checklist before I start work on any new features. I won’t start advertising or collecting orders until after the new year. Partially this is to make the tax reporting and accounting easier; partially, it’s because sales in December for software are usually quite terrible.

Programming Is My Hockey

I love watching hockey games because it’s a chance to watch experts be awesome at something they love doing. The players don’t even have to think about skating; their legs just move naturally. Forward, backward, sideways, turnarounds, instant stops – their feet just naturally carry them. They are so comfortable. When they run out on the ice, it’s like, “I’ve done this a million times before, let’s go do it again, this is nothing.” As they skate around, they make these minor adjustments to their gear, and they stretch out, and they skate around, until everything is comfortable and just right.

And they love what they’re doing. They’re having fun and they’re completely focused on the game. This is a skill that took them a lifetime to master. They’re good at it and they know it. It’s their thing.

So yeah that’s sort of what programming is like for me.

Feature Complete

I have all of the features coded that I planned for my Phase 1 release, otherwise known as my MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The feature list is about fifty lines long, but here are the highlights:
- Members can sign themselves in at the computer
- Both events and members can be tied to multiple groups
- Five different attendance report views allow users to filter by date, group, and event type
- Private and public event calendar
- Email particular members, particular groups, or all members attending a particular event.
- Print sign-in forms, membership rosters, and reports from your browser.
- Cool, slick design and highly secure

There's a ton of stuff I'd still love to add:
- Recurring events
- Track families
- Track fines and fees
- Add one more layer of grouping for members (this is needed for stage managers)
- Online event registration
- Prearranged absences
- Bulk text messaging
- Event integration with Facebook and Google Calendar
- File sharing
- Documents tied to events (ex: agendas, minutes, performance report, rehearsal report)
- Print membership directories (with addresses) and mailing labels
- Plus a host of usability enhancements

But really, the bulk of the value people will get from this program is there. I started my first usability tests a month ago and am ready to start the second round while I fix some known bugs.

Next week I'll be opening a bank account and setting up my online payment gateway.

So in other words I'm getting very close to launching!

I think I'll postpone launching until after the holidays - my marketing campaign will be more effective then - and it will give me some time to maybe bang out a few more features on the list above.