Month: July 2017

How To Get Funds For Your Mobile App Development Project

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One major reason why some people cannot turn their great ideas into reality in the app industry is the lack of funds. Hiring a mobile app developer, testing iterations, and deploying a mobile app is very expensive and so many mobile app developers, especially start-ups, find it difficult to raise the required funds. As a result, many ideas that would have been turned into apps to better our lives never become reality.

Is it possible to raise funds for your mobile app development project like you can for most business ventures? Are there platforms that can provide funds for app developers?

If these are the exact same questions on your mind, you need to keep reading.

As a developer, keep in mind that apps under the following categories typically have access to more funds:

a. Apps for social networking or communities

b. Big budget games

c. Apps that are unique and original.

As to how to fund an app, here are some of the things you can do:

Bootstrapping

Bootstrapping means raising money through your present job, savings, investments or an alternate business. It is the most dependable source of funds for your app development project because you do not need to convince investors with proposals and presentations for them to fund you. Also, you do you need to relinquish any control of your business.

App Contests

Are you certain that you have a unique app that can change the world positively? If you are, participate in mobile app contests.

Many investors in the industry, including universities and technology companies, organize app contests where the winning idea gets funded. Though the contests are highly competitive and will require you to make a presentation of your idea before trained judges (who are mostly investors), it offers you the opportunity to ‘sell’ your idea to investors.

Friends and Family

One easy way to get funds for your idea is through friends and family. Before you approach investors or take a loan, meet your family members and your friends who believe in your idea. Orient them about your well thought-out business plan and offer them a stake in your profits, if possible. Funds from family and friends could act as equity when you want to take loans.

Loans

business investment loans

Taking out a loan is another option open to app developers for raising funds. With a great idea backed up by a promising business plan, banks can fund your idea.

Unfortunately, banks will not just give you money as easily as your friends and family would. You will have to prove to them that your product is unique and there is a ready market for it. Do not forget that you’ll have to repay those loans with interest.

See Also: 5 Ways Business Investment Loans Can Help Your Start-Up

Angel Investors

Angel investors are wealthy individuals and organizations who invest in ideas they believe in. They can easily give you seed funding to start your app development project. These individuals can fund your entire project if your app idea is achievable and your plan is detailed.

Before funding your idea, they may want to know the total amount of money you will need, your monthly expenses, your go-to market strategy, promotion plan, your technical and business capabilities among other things. Every year, angel investors invest $20 billion.

Venture Capital

Just like angel investors, venture capitalists can help you fund your app idea. It is strongly advised that you don’t approach venture capitalists at the early stages of your app development. As a matter of fact, you should wait until you require more than $1 million before seeking venture capital. Venture capitalists can offer you the capital you require in exchange for control of the business and ownership equity debt in the future.

Your Colleagues

asking colleagues

Asking your colleagues (who may have experience in the industry) to fund your idea in return for a share of the project is a great way to get money for your mobile app. It is a win-win situation for all parties as your colleagues, being shareholders in your business will be compelled to assist you, especially in marketing the app.

Your colleagues can also act as co-founders for the app. This, of course, will make them more committed to the growth and development of the business.

Partnership

Another way to fund your mobile app project is via partnership. You would need to find people who are interested in your idea so much that they are willing to fund it. After drawing up a partnership agreement, your partner will provide the financial support required for the execution of the project.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a new and effective means of accessing funds for your business. It involves making a request to targeted members of the public to invest in your project. You will be required to pay a service fee to the platform and a transaction fee to the payment processor.

Even though crowd funding is a good source of funds for your app, the disadvantage is that your idea could be stolen, since it involves sharing it with the public.

Sponsors

There are a few organizations that can fund your mobile app project in exchange for ads. You’ll agree to advertise their brand on your app project and receive funds in return. Sponsors will not have control over your app and their activities will not disturb the user experience.

Find a Major Customer

Some customers will be willing to bankroll your mobile app to be able to buy your product before the rest of the world does. They control the development stage to ensure it meets their requirements and also offer dedicated support for your app.

Raise Funds on your Website

If you have a popular blog with a loyal following, this is another option for you. On your website, describe your proposed app to your readers, ask them to make donations towards the app and, perhaps, offer them a gift. It can include the pre-order of the app or some monetary reward when the app is developed and launched.

Grants

You can get grants for your app development from government, local authorities, business links and others. To access these funds, you must, however, meet the eligibility criteria.

Build a Prototype

Another important way to raise funds for your app is to build a prototype or a first version of the app. Using funds from savings and family and friends’ contribution to build and launch your app will show investors that you are serious about the business. It is always easier to get funds to expand your business than to get funds for your ‘startup’.

See Also: 7 Smart Reasons Why Small Businesses Should Develop Their Own Mobile Apps This 2017

Conclusion

There are so many ideas on how to fund an app. The challenge is in finding what will work for you and your idea.

While some are simple and without strict conditions, others have implications. The entire process can be time-consuming and energy-sapping, but the results will be worth it.

 

The post How To Get Funds For Your Mobile App Development Project appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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Hillside Home Designed by John Covert Waston Located in Lakeway

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A dramatic hillside home in Lakeway – a city in the greater Austin Area, in Texas, USA – designed by Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice John Covert Waston, takes the breath away with both its one-of-a-kind form and its views. Built in 1979, the two-story home has multiple protruding balconies and expansive windows to take maximum advantage of its sweeping views. The unique and striking construction is nestled within the thick..

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Herzog & de Meuron designed a Futuristic Building in Hamburg, Germany

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This construction is absolutely striking thanks to its completely futuristic style with spacious and open spaces in which every detail is done with a unique modernism in mind. It’s one of those designs that definitely draw a reaction from the spectator. This glass structure is built on the base of an old warehouse and rises 37 meters above ground, offering its visitors magnificent panoramic views of Hamburg, the German city..

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Seven Tips For Buying Cheap Appliances for New Homeowners

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Home ownership is on the upswing for new couples and an important consideration that comes with house ownership is appliances. Without the right ideas, purchasing appliances can easily burn holes in any couple’s wallet. According to financial expert Howard Clark, just upgrading old appliances will cost an average of $1,033.

Fortunately, there are some valuable steps a new couple can take so they can get reliable but cheap appliances to meet their needs- without breaking the bank. Listed below are six of them.

Know What Features You Need Before Buying

Today’s technology can make it easy and tempting to spend money for features you don’t even need. Do you really need a stove with a built-in computer console or an ice maker on your refrigerator that can cube ice six different ways?

You probably don’t.

The hard truth is that the functionality between very expensive and cheap appliances is the same. Most of the time, they only differ in the extra features they can offer. When buying appliances, decide which features you truly need and compare them with the ones that are only nice to have.

Take Advantage of Holiday Sales

cyber monday

Appliances are often greatly marked down during holidays, like Christmas and Labor Day. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are also great opportunities to save a lot of money.

Most new appliance upgrades are rolled out in September and October, making for great deals on older appliances. Refrigerators, however, are the exception as new models roll out in June.

Don’t be Afraid to Negotiate

Cars aren’t the only big-ticket items with negotiable price tags. Many items, including appliances, are negotiable as well.

Financial guru Howard Clark claims that only 33% of Americans are willing to haggle the price on appliances. Around 75% of them are able to save an average of $100 per appliance. For others, they get discounts when they pay cash. In some cases where discounts aren’t offered, customers can get free delivery and installation. Some even get free haul away of the old appliances

You’ll never know if you don’t ask.

Buy Pre-owned Appliances

Often, when people want to upgrade to more features, they sell their old appliances on Craig’s List and other venues at greatly reduced prices. These appliances usually have a lot of life in them and are perfectly functional. People just want to get rid of them so they can upgrade to a model with more bells and whistles.

Don’t Overlook Scratch and Dent

Dealers will sell “scratch and dent” appliances at large markdowns. This is a chance to save anywhere from 10 to 50% off of the retail price.

Don’t worry about getting damaged appliances. Those scratches and dents aren’t that noticeable unless you’re really looking for them. Plus, they don’t affect the functionality of the appliances.

Don’t Forget Security

home security system

While you’re getting new appliances, don’t forget to invest in a good home security system to protect them. Most systems come with a convenient app for your security and peace of mind.

See Also: 10 People in Urgent Need of Smart Home Security Systems

Do Your Research

This is one of the most important things you should do when looking for cheap appliances. Compare different brands, prices and features when you visit dealers and you’ll be surprised at the price differences same items have. Use the information you collected in deciding which features you really need and which are mere luxury items.

Buying cheap appliances may seem like a daunting task. Modern technology has made everything more complicated in many ways, but most appliances still have the same basic features that they have had for the past 40 years. Hopefully, this article is able to give you some ideas to get the best deals for your money.

 

The post Seven Tips For Buying Cheap Appliances for New Homeowners appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

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National Diagnosis

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Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write. If you don’t, this program, I promise you, will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade very area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until, one day . . . we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.

—Ronald Reagan, lobbying against Medicare

Medicare and Medicaid were signed into American law on July 30, 1965, both health care plans key components of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” vision. Given Johnson’s landslide victory in the 1964 election and Democratic control of both the Senate and House, Reagan’s warning of lost freedoms and slippery-slope socialism had no legislative impact. In fact, given that it was tied to Johnson’s civil rights agenda, Medicare greatly enhanced freedom for black Americans, because it required hospitals to desegregate their waiting rooms. As described in David Barton Smith’s The Power to Heal: Civil Rights, Medicare, and the Struggle to Transform America’s Health Care System, the decision by the Johnson administration to tie Medicare to civil rights was empowering and revolutionary:

The most common responses to racial and economic disparities in opportunities in our nation’s history have been: “it’s just the way things are” or “it just takes time.” However, for the civil rights activists involved in the implementation of the Medicare program of 1966, the response was, “Now!” In four months they transformed the nation’s hospitals from our most racially and economically segregated institutions to our most integrated. In four years they changed patterns of use of health services that had persisted for half a century.

After a half century of Medicare, argues Elizabeth Rosenthal in An American Sickness, we need a new revolution to overthrow a Big Health system so “fantastically expensive, inefficient, bewildering and inequitable” that “we are all potential victims of medical extortion”:

Imagine if you paid for an airplane ticket and then got separate and inscrutable bills from the airline, the pilot, the copilot, and the flight attendants. That’s how the healthcare market works. In no other industry do prices for a product vary by a factor of ten depending on where it is purchased, as is the case for bills I’ve seen for echocardiograms, MRI scans, and blood tests . . . The price of a Prius at a dealership in Princeton, New Jersey, is not five times higher than what you would pay for a Prius in Hackensack and a Prius in New Jersey is not twice as expensive as one in New Mexico. The price of that car at the very same dealer doesn’t depend on your employer, or if you’re self-employed or unemployed. Why does it matter for healthcare?

Rosenthal argues that “the type of healthcare we get these days is exactly what the market’s financial incentives demand,” and that Americans must force their politicians “to change the rules of the game, with different incentives and new types of regulation.” In The Patient Will See You Now, a follow-up to his earlier The Creative Destruction of Medicine, Eric Topol argues that patient empowerment is not only needed but at hand, made possible by a new revolution in health care “powered by unplugged digitization, with the smartphone as the hub”:

We are embarking on a time when each individual will have all their own medical data and the computing power to process it in the context of their own world. There will be comprehensive medical information about a person that is eminently accessible, analyzable, and transferable. This will set up a tectonic (or “tech-tonic”) power shift, putting the individual at center stage. No longer will MD stand for medical deity.

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Erik G. L’Heureux AIA Designed a Contemporary home located in Singapore

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Designed by Erik G. L’Heureux AIA, a designer working with the interior design firm Pencil Office, in the year 2015, this house covers a ground area of 233 square meters distributed in several levels. This project is located in Singapore, a city-state in Southeast Asia. Founded as a British trading colony in 1819, since its independence it has become one of the world’s most prosperous countries. It is a global..

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July 26th

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Life is just action and reaction, rationalizations are added later on

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5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness

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You’re reading 5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

In 2015, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, was declared the happiest person in the world. This was based on a study by the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience in Wisconsin, where Ricard’s scores were sometimes off the charts. Being a monk is a life calling that not many of us will pursue, and being in the “regular” world does have a different set of challenges you may argue. But surely, attaining happiness should be possible for everyone. Happiness is a state of mind so like any other state of mind, it can be adjusted. However, we get so caught up in how miserable we are, that we do not have the ability to see that being happy is as simple as – well, being happy!

Here are 5 proven ways to increase your overall happiness today:

Find your purpose and follow it

A lot of the unhappiness in our lives comes from doing what doesn’t make us happy, every single day.

This definition of insanity is very applicable here. If your work doesn’t satisfy you, if you go in there every day thinking that today will be better, then you might be an optimist. But you are also unhappy and according to Einstein, insane. Think back on what you did naturally, what you were drawn to do, when you were a young child. How did you occupy your days? Did you have a fascination with making plans and executing them? Or were you always designing something new and wonderful, or planning the next big thing that can make you money? In these juvenile past-times might lie the key to your true purpose, that one thing that you enjoy above all else. Find your purpose and follow it. It is essential to your long term emotional health.

Eliminate negativity from your life

Negativity has never harboured happiness. By listening to and participating in negative conversations, you only take on more negativity. Some people love to complain, about anything and everything. Don’t spend time with these people, they drain your energy. Surround yourself with positivity and you will also be more positive. Make it a state of mind. When a negative thought comes up, don’t entertain it. And when you catch yourself saying something negative, rephrase it to turn it around. Soon you’ll notice that the world is a much better place!

Find joy and spread it

There is joy to found everywhere around us, and often it is in the small details. Like the person who allows you cut in front of them in the traffic, or savouring that early morning coffee while everything is still quiet and calm. Learn to recognize the joy in the everyday and you will start to see it everywhere. Equally important is bringing joy to others. A small favour, or a bigger-than-accepted tip, a kind word or a compliment. The little things all add up to make life happier for yourself and for those around you.

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness”.

Charles Spurgeon

Stop Talking and Start to Listen

We tend to spend our days spreading our opinion and trying to matter. And a lot of that conversation is in our heads. Stop the constant chatter, inside and out, find a quiet spot, and listen. The happiest people in the world are those that have learnt to listen – whether it is meditation, prayer, yoga or another practice. In the silence, that which what acclaimed life coach Martha Beck in her book, Finding Your Own North Star, calls wordlessness, we often find peace, answers and happiness.

Sleep well, eat well, live well

Your body is a very real extension of what is going on in your mind. Look after your body by feeding it the right nutrients, by getting enough sleep and by purposefully taking time for physical activities. Not everyone loves doing sports, but even playing with your kids or dogs or choosing to walk to the corner shop instead of driving will make all the difference in your mood.

With these simple tools to increase your overall happiness, go and seek out happiness all around you – because it is there!

“If you want to be happy, be.”

Leo Tolstoy

Photo credit: Brandi Redd

You’ve read 5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2h0TSJJ

5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness

signordalLeave a comment

You’re reading 5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

In 2015, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, was declared the happiest person in the world. This was based on a study by the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience in Wisconsin, where Ricard’s scores were sometimes off the charts. Being a monk is a life calling that not many of us will pursue, and being in the “regular” world does have a different set of challenges you may argue. But surely, attaining happiness should be possible for everyone. Happiness is a state of mind so like any other state of mind, it can be adjusted. However, we get so caught up in how miserable we are, that we do not have the ability to see that being happy is as simple as – well, being happy!

Here are 5 proven ways to increase your overall happiness today:

Find your purpose and follow it

A lot of the unhappiness in our lives comes from doing what doesn’t make us happy, every single day.

This definition of insanity is very applicable here. If your work doesn’t satisfy you, if you go in there every day thinking that today will be better, then you might be an optimist. But you are also unhappy and according to Einstein, insane. Think back on what you did naturally, what you were drawn to do, when you were a young child. How did you occupy your days? Did you have a fascination with making plans and executing them? Or were you always designing something new and wonderful, or planning the next big thing that can make you money? In these juvenile past-times might lie the key to your true purpose, that one thing that you enjoy above all else. Find your purpose and follow it. It is essential to your long term emotional health.

Eliminate negativity from your life

Negativity has never harboured happiness. By listening to and participating in negative conversations, you only take on more negativity. Some people love to complain, about anything and everything. Don’t spend time with these people, they drain your energy. Surround yourself with positivity and you will also be more positive. Make it a state of mind. When a negative thought comes up, don’t entertain it. And when you catch yourself saying something negative, rephrase it to turn it around. Soon you’ll notice that the world is a much better place!

Find joy and spread it

There is joy to found everywhere around us, and often it is in the small details. Like the person who allows you cut in front of them in the traffic, or savouring that early morning coffee while everything is still quiet and calm. Learn to recognize the joy in the everyday and you will start to see it everywhere. Equally important is bringing joy to others. A small favour, or a bigger-than-accepted tip, a kind word or a compliment. The little things all add up to make life happier for yourself and for those around you.

“It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness”.

Charles Spurgeon

Stop Talking and Start to Listen

We tend to spend our days spreading our opinion and trying to matter. And a lot of that conversation is in our heads. Stop the constant chatter, inside and out, find a quiet spot, and listen. The happiest people in the world are those that have learnt to listen – whether it is meditation, prayer, yoga or another practice. In the silence, that which what acclaimed life coach Martha Beck in her book, Finding Your Own North Star, calls wordlessness, we often find peace, answers and happiness.

Sleep well, eat well, live well

Your body is a very real extension of what is going on in your mind. Look after your body by feeding it the right nutrients, by getting enough sleep and by purposefully taking time for physical activities. Not everyone loves doing sports, but even playing with your kids or dogs or choosing to walk to the corner shop instead of driving will make all the difference in your mood.

With these simple tools to increase your overall happiness, go and seek out happiness all around you – because it is there!

“If you want to be happy, be.”

Leo Tolstoy

Photo credit: Brandi Redd

You’ve read 5 Proven Ways to Increase Your Overall Happiness, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

http://ift.tt/2h0TSJJ

Wonderful remodeling of a House Located in Bangkok, Thailand by Black Pencils Studio

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Ladprao 80 house was erected from the existing structures of two houses. One of the homes was used to double the volume in the living area, and the second to fulfill the service functions of the home, located behind the parking garage, all of this in an area of 750 square meters. The result is a magnificent house full of light and with spacious and comfortable rooms. It is located..

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