Save $4

The book is also available for purchase from the tutsplus marketplace. If you make a pre-paid deposit to your account, you can save $4 off the price and pick it up for $15. That offer is only good until November 19th, 2010. Here’s a little more info on the book from the publisher:

“If you’ve ever thought about developing an iPhone app (or even if you already have), this book will be a fascinating read. It will provide you with all the knowledge and technique you need to spot a great opportunity, get the most from the App Store, make smart decisions about development, craft a stunning interface, and promote your app successfully.

Drawing from the insights and experiences of 16 top-notch app developers, plus survey responses from over 1000 iPhone users, this book provides you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a successful iPhone App Entrepreneur!”

Download from marketplace.tutsplus.com | $15 Buy Now

SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Identifying these characteristics in your product can be critical in a successful launch. To break this down, let’s use the iPhone as an example.

iPhone Strengths
It’s an revolutionary product that’s extremely fun to use. Their core customer is extremely loyal to the brand.

iPhone Weaknesses
The recent antenna problems with the iPhone4 was a pretty big blunder by Apple. Not to mention their spotty network access through AT&T in the USA.

iPhone Opportunities
To comeback with an improved iPhone4 version 2.0 that fixes the hardware problems and returns their phone to the top of the class. Another opportunity could be to attract older markets into using their phone due to the cool factor and ease of use of their touch interface.

iPhone Threats
The Android OS and related hardware devices are starting to pick up some market share on the iPhone. If they don’t fix their hardware and network issues, it could cause problems in the future.

Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what a basic SWOT analysis covers. To learn more, check out this post on thenetsetter.com

Key points

If you don’t have time to watch the video, here’s the key points:

• Get some key stats about your blog together, like daily impressions
• Use Google to find smaller companies that might advertise on your blog
• Call them up and ask them about purchasing ad space on your blog
• If they are hesitant, perhaps you can setup an affiliate program
• Your blog might only have a few hundred followers, but they are core fans of a particular niche

The rules for each province are slightly different, so from this point forward, I’m only going to refer to the BC tax (that’s where I live).

Taxes up until now

Up until July 1, 2010, web designers have been required to charge 5% GST on their web work, but not 7% PST. Why no PST? Because we are not providing a tangible product to our clients. An example of a tangible product would be business cards – not the design for the business cards, the actual printed cards. Therefore, on all your jobs, you should be charging 5% GST and remitting it to Revenue Canada when you do your taxes each year. To learn more about registering for a GST/HST number, please visit GST/HST Registry.

The $30,000 rule

There is a loop hole to avoid charging GST, which will carry over to the HST. If you’re company makes less than $30,000 a year, you are classified as a small supplier, and you do not have to collect GST/HST. However, the catch is, you’re not allowed to write off any GST/HST you have paid on any business expenses (ie: a laptop). Therefore, this has it’s advantages and disadvantages.

The unfortunate reality of HST

I prefer to think of the HST as the GST turning into the HST. All the same rules apply. Basically, you now have to charge your clients 12% tax instead of 5%. This definitely sucks and has the potential to make your estimates less competitive with designers who live out of province or country.

A small convenience of the change over is, apparently if you have a GST number, you don’t need to apply for an HST number. It will simply transfer over. However, you might want to look a little deeper into that subject as I’m only going off what I have heard from other designers. Our fabulous provincial government has done an amazing job of not informing us of any of the details. Everything I’ve learned has been mostly through research on the internet. There’s a discussion over at redflagdeals.com worth checking out for more info.

Summary

In the end, this pretty much sucks for all parties involved (designer & client), as we have to start charging an additional 7% tax. However, even if you are making under $30,000 a year, I’d suggest registering, as the tax write-off benefits are generally worth it. If you have any questions on this subject, please feel free to post them in the comments, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Disclaimer: I am a web designer not an accountant. All of the above info is a result of research I have done on the internet. Each business is potentially a special case. Therefore, you should talk to an accountant about your specific situation.

Swiss Inspired Minimal 404 Pages

The idea here was to create a series of swiss inspired 404 pages. I went with the traditional white, red and black color schemes that our common in that genre. The line Seite Nicht Gefunden is german for Page Not Found. There are 12 options in total, each is a fully layered in Photoshop CS4 format. Each 404 page is optimized for 1024×768 resolution, but they are easily editable for any size you’d like to use. The font used for all is Helvetica – if you’re on a PC, I guess you could also use Arial if you really had too. Check out the screenshot below. The cost for the whole set is $5, head over to graphicriver.net to download now.

Swiss Inspired 404 Page Templates $5 | Buy Now

Swiss Inspired 404 Page Templates $5 | Buy Now