DEV Community: Waken Software Solutions Inc.

The Best Frameworks to Build a Minimum Viable Product

John Au-Yeung — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 02:24:13 +0000

If you're working on a startup, you're probably don't have lots of money or time. You have to release a prototype as quickly as possible and show your prospects what you got.

We'll look at the best frameworks to build your minimum viable product currently.

Front End Frameworks

You can build a minimum viable product with a decent interactive front end with some frameworks and libraries.

React

React is very popular as a front end library because we can build a lot with it in a short time. It lets us build a rich UI with the libraries that are available for it.

It's often used with React Router for routing and Redux as its state management solution.

There're also lots of UI libraries made for it. Bootstrap, Material design, etc., are all available for React without creating them from scratch.

With those issues out of the way, we can build the UI in no time.

Vue

Vue is up-and-coming and provides a more complete solution for building front ends. It comes with Vuex for state management and Vue Router for routing as options.

We can use it to build a UI quickly with all the libraries that are available.

Back End Frameworks

To make your app useful, you have to make it store data. We have to do this on the back end.

To make building back ends easy, we can use frameworks to do this.

Rails

Rails are the back end framework that many other back-end frameworks take their inspiration from.

You can use it to create an app that makes a database and save data to it with a few commands.

Debugging is also quick and easy with the Rails console. It's a great way to add data and test it without doing the same thing from the front end.

Also, it has lots of libraries made for it to do things like file upload. Sending emails is a feature that's built-in.

It has a big community so you can get help fast.

Express

Expres is a back end microframework for Node.js. It lets us build simple apps without much effort. It also has lots of libraries to extend its functionality to do what we want.

You have to add your own database manipulation solution and it doesn't come with any way to debug things easily on its own, so it's good for simple apps, which a minimum viable product should be.

Conclusion

To create a minimum viable product, we've to use frameworks to build a prototype fast. It's good to stick with the popular frameworks that let us build things fast.

For front end, this would be React and Vue, for back end Rails and Express does the job.

How to Start a Successful Software as a Service Business

John Au-Yeung — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 02:07:39 +0000

Launching a software as a service business is as hard as any other business. However, since the initial investment is much lower, you're taking fewer risks by trying to build web or mobile apps that people may want to use.

Here are the steps to start a software business that has a bigger chance of being successful.

Build an Minimal Viable Product

The first step is to just build a prototype that prospects can use to get feedback and then to improve the app. Also, we need it to see if people actually need your software as a service.

Just build this as quickly as possible. If it's successful, then you can clean it up, write tests, etc.

Without this, everything else is probably a waste of time. Because the feedback will let you gauge the market and see if they need your app to solve their problems.

Build an Online Presence

Most people that'll be using your software are probably going to be someone on the Internet. This is why it's important to get feedback from them. To find these people, you have to have your own online presence. Your online presence is going to be on social media like Facebook, Twitter, this site, your own blog, or other niche sites.

This is the most crucial step. This is just as important as building the prototype. You need to show your prototype to people you built online to other people online.

You may also want to sell ads to get more traffic to your social media presence.

Have a Free Beta

A free beta will attract more people to try your stuff to see if it's useful. It also eliminates the need to collect payment by integrating your app with payment providers from the start. This means the minimal viable product is shipped faster.

Set up a Feedback Mechanism

Again, this is where your social media and online presence comes in handy. You can collect feedback from social media to improve your product. Just have one place to collect all your feedback, act on them, and then get more people to try out your prototype.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is useful because you can send them surveys and other information about your app. You shouldn't do too much selling. Just set up links to your email subscribe form everywhere and also display an email list subscribe form on your blog. The best way is to add a popup to do that. Even though it may be annoying to some, it works.

Conclusion

The most important step to creating your own software as a service is to do marketing and getting feedback. Coding isn't very important since you don't even know if people want your product yet. Therefore, the first step is to communicate rather than doing engineering.

Steps to Becoming a Successful Freelancer

John Au-Yeung — Sat, 22 Feb 2020 03:04:24 +0000

Freelancing frees us from the 9 to 5, but it definitely has lots of challenges that'll bring us stress. We have to find clients, do marketing, collect payment and much more. If you're big enough to hire a team, then you also have to manage the team.

We'll look at the steps to becoming a successful freelancer.

Getting Clients

This is the first priority for any freelancer. Freelancers need clients to survive. To get clients, you can either use freelance job sites or tap into your personal network.

Freelance sites like Tychoo, Upwork, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, etc. all offer paying jobs from very low pay to high pay. Fiverr specifically has lots of people offering small, low-priced jobs.

The competition is fierce on these sites and there's no way for beginners to stand out in the sea of people with 5-star reviews and lots of completed jobs.

Sites like Tychoo is untapped since it's newer and has more people looking for jobs. There's less competition since it's not an established site that everyone finds.

To avoid competition, it's also a good idea to tap into your personal network to see if anyone needs help with anything that you can help do.

It doesn't have to be friends and family. Social media is a good bet to find lots of people that may need help with something that you're good at.

Create a Brand

A brand is very important for any business. It distinguishes you from the sea of competition that's out there. Again, social media is a great way to build a brand. Also, a website is a must to distinguish yourself from others. It's your presence online.

The design of your website doesn't have to be the best, but it has to distinctive and provides a good user experience for the user.

Build a Track Record

To build a track record at the beginning, building a portfolio of work is a must. Also, getting testimonials from people that you worked with is also very important. Otherwise, it's hard for people to trust you to do anything.

Over-Deliver

Once you get your first clients, you must over-deliver what you promised them. This way, they won't be disappointed and stop hiring you. Instead, they'll be happy and hire you again for more jobs.

They'll also refer you to more clients, so it's a very good idea to keep them happy by over-delivering.

Paperwork

Invoices are needed for collecting payment. It's also useful for recording transactions for tax purposes. Also, contracts need to be looked at so that you'll get the best deal out there.

You can put all their invoicing stuff into some invoicing software to make something easy. Accounting software like FreshBooks also has these features.

Conclusion

Freelancers have to a jack-of-all-trades. If you're a freelancer, you have to be good at marketing, sales, and bookkeeping. There's no way around it. While you can work anywhere at any time, there're still deadlines and you have to collect payments and report taxes yourself.

Developers, Learn these frameworks to make yourself big bucks

John Au-Yeung — Wed, 19 Feb 2020 03:05:29 +0000

With apps becoming more and more complex, frameworks are becoming commonplace as a foundation for apps. Frameworks will be more popular as users have increasing expectations about the products they use.

These are the frameworks to learn in 2020 to make yourself big bucks from job and gigs.

Best Backend Frameworks

Back end frameworks are the foundation of REST APIs. Almost all backend frameworks are MVC frameworks. The popular ones are definitely all MVC. In 2020, these are the ones to learn.

Express

Express is the most popular backend framework for Node.js. It's fast, minimal, and unopinionated. It has a large ecosystem of middlewares and other add-ons to help us do common tasks like file upload, authentication, and more.

It's very easy to learn, but since it's unopinionated, everybody tends to structure Express projects their own way.

Django

Django is a full-featured Python web framework for developing back end apps. It uses the convention over configuration paradigm made popular with Ruby on Rails. It has a built-in ORM for manipulating data and also lots of addons like the Django REST Framework for building REST APIs without hassle.

Common security features like XSS and CSRF prevention are also built into Django so we have more time to write code.

Rails

Rails are the framework that many modern MVC frameworks are modeled after. It's used by many big companies like Airbnb, Github, and Hulu. It's beginner-friendly as it does a lot for you by running a few commands.

The Ruby ecosystem has lots of libraries, which are called Gems, that are made for Rails. The only disadvantage if that customizing Rails app is hard because of the convention over configuration paradigm. It expects you to follow their convention or you'll have problems with customization.

Frontend Javascript Frameworks

With user interfaces becoming more and more complex, front end frameworks are also catching steam in the developer ecosystem. Here are the most popular ones you should learn if you want to make top dollar.

Most popular front-end frameworks use the component-based architecture.

Angular

Angular is a front-end framework that's made by Google. It's used in their own products and are also popular with enterprises. It uses TypeScript, which is a natural extension to JavaScript that let us add types to our apps to prevent errors.

In addition to Google, Paypal and Microsoft also use it.

React

React is a popular front-end library used by Facebook. Its adoption is widespread for building rich UIs. It makes building them a breeze with its JSX syntax. It can be used on both server-side and client-side and has a large ecosystem of developers and libraries that can help us build user interfaces even faster.

Vue

Vue is becoming more and more popular. It's the up-and-coming web framework that is gaining support by developers because of its ease of use. Many people find it easier to get started than React and Angular.

Also, its ecosystem of libraries is big. Its ecosystem is as big as Angular and React. Another advantage is that it can be added with a script tag, and libraries made for it can be done the same. This makes it a natural choice for enhancing legacy apps with new functionality. The Vue CLI supports TypeScript, testing, and other goodies out of the box, and it's an easy way to scaffold a project.

Like Angular and React, it uses the component architecture.

Conclusion

These frameworks are enjoyable to develop with and you can earn big bucks using them. Therefore, if you haven't learn them already, it's time to get proficient with them so you'll get hired to produce web apps in an enjoyable way.

Online Business Ideas You Can Start Today

John Au-Yeung — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 22:57:25 +0000

Blogging

Blogging about your favorite topic is a low cost, low-risk way to produce something that is valuable to people. When you create value for people then you'll receive money. Money is made through selling products, books, consulting services, affiliate marketing and more.

With 10000+ visits a month, you can make money without much trouble. Ads are also a great way to monetize your traffic if you have this much traffic.

Once you find a web host to host your blog, you can make money fast.

Become An Affiliate Marketer

Once again, a blog is a way to promote affiliate products. Companies also provide affiliate links for people to click to buy their products. If your blog has traffic, then you can promote your affiliate links with your blog.

Sell Your Own Images and Designs

You can sell your own designs and photos online on many websites. If you have a talent for creating designs or photography, you can get people to buy them if you promote them to enough people.

Also, you can put your images of T-shirts, bags, hats, greeting cards, calendars and more and make more money.

Build Apps

If you know how to program, then building apps is a great way to make money online. There're still lots of problems that need solving by people with apps. You just have to find out what people have problems with and then solve those problems accordingly.

Apps can be custom solutions for business and also mass-market solutions for a large audience.

Buy and Sell Domains

A lot of domains are available for sales and many are popular because of their name. We can get ideas from domain auction sites to see what people like, and then we can buy the ones that are popular and then flip them for a profit.

Conclusion

These are a few ways to make money online with varying amounts of upfront costs. We can make money off these ideas by experimenting with which ones of these take off for you. It takes time and perseverance to succeed, so you've to prepare not to give up even when times are tough.

Learn from these Websites to Launch Your Remote Job Career

John Au-Yeung — Sun, 16 Feb 2020 21:31:59 +0000

With the ubiquity of the Internet for global communication, it's easier than ever to earn money from anywhere. We just have to learn skills for work that can be done online.

There're many kinds of these skills. Examples of things that can be done online include writing, web development, graphics or web design, and much more.

We'll look at some websites that'll help learn the skill you need to get a remote job or gig and start your remote work career.

Udacity

Udacity has many courses that can be completed online. Many of the courses are for programming and other technology-related skills. Each course is completed online through tutorials and videos. It costs several hundred dollars per course. Non-programming technology courses include cloud computing, data science, and artificial intelligence. Other courses including business administration courses like marketing.

Courses are grouped into certificate programs call nanodegrees. Each nanodegree consists of a few courses.

The most common kind of job that can get remote jobs or gigs is probably software development courses, so take those and you're set. Cloud computing can also be done online. These mostly come as DevOps roles. DevOps requires programming and system administration skills, so they both have to be learned, and both are available through Udacity.

Udemy

Udemy has courses created by experienced professionals in many kinds of topics. Most courses are much more affordable as they're in the $10 to $20 range usually. You can search for the courses you want and then sign up.

The courses are available as videos so they're more passive. You have to practice the things you watched to gain proficiency.

There're more varieties of courses than Udacity as the courses can be made by anyone. Therefore, you should check the reviews to see if they're good before ordering.

SkillShare

SkillShare is a community with over 20000 classes in design, business, technology and more. It's a subscription-based site that offers free and premium plans. There're over 1500 free classes, so there's a lot to start with without paying a cent.

Lynda

It's another site with online video courses that lets us learn about various things like technology and the like. Once again, we have to subscribe to this platform to gain access to the courses.

Coursera

Coursera has both university courses and organization courses. You can earn a degree online or just take a few courses. You have to pay to submit the exercises and get a certificate but you can audit them for free.

The courses are taught by top instructors all over the world so there's a lot of benefits to taking courses from this platform.

Conclusion

There're many courses you can take online to get an online job. If the courses and exercises can be done online then the skills can often be used with an online job. Just try some courses until you find one that you're good at and use that skill to start your remote work career.

How to Hire People to Build an Online Business

John Au-Yeung — Sat, 15 Feb 2020 03:08:16 +0000

Building a business requires lots of work. One person can only do so much to build their business. Therefore, it's important that we hire people that can help us build an online business so that we can take a break while making money.

Ask for Referrals

The best way to find someone that may be able to help you is through word of mouth. Other people that worked the person can tell you if he or she is good. Communicating to others that your business is looking for people also gives us more reach in finding the right candidate.

Through word of mouth, you can know what kind of results the person produced for others so you can be sure that it's likely or not that he or she may be the right person for you.

Hire from a Marketplace

Marketplaces like Tychoo and Upwork has lots of people that can help you out for an affordable price. This is important in the early stages since you don't have much revenue.

People that work for a low price don't necessarily mean that they're low quality. However, you do have to be careful by looking at their ratings in their profile before you choose someone. Also, interviewing and testing people is also important before you hire them.

Ultimately, you have to judge for yourself with the profile rating, interviews, and tests. The price is also important of course. It should be within your budget.

Meeting online should be the same as meeting face to face.

Communicate

We have to communicate every step of the way to make your requirements clear. This way, we won't have any misunderstanding of what you want.

Feedback should be given frequently so that your project stays on track.

Conclusion

There's no better time to build an online business by hiring people. Now that we don't have to rely on local help, we can build an online business without the huge cost that was needed before the Internet.

We just have to be careful in who to hire. Therefore, we should vet people thoroughly before hiring anyone.

Best Collaboration Tools for Remote Workers

John Au-Yeung — Fri, 14 Feb 2020 02:52:22 +0000

Since remote workers don't see each other face to face, the need for tools to let them communicate as if they're face to face is important. With the advent of the Internet, this is possible.

Here's a list of the best communication tools for remote workers.

Slack

Slack is one of the most business communication software made in recent years. Ut's cross-platform and has a web version. People can chat, hold teleconferences, and add emojis to their messages.

They can also chat in groups via different channels or create chats with several people. Data can be shared via file upload and links which can be previewed inside Slack.

Zoom

Zoom is a teleconferencing platform that lets people join audio and video chats. It also has a text chat box as a supplementary feature. It also supports chatting via the phone.

The user base of Zoom is growing rapidly, with 30000 users in 2014 to 200000 in 2017.

The satisfaction of Zoom is higher than the other competitors like Google Meet or Skype.

InVision

InVision is great for sharing graphic designs in a team, which is useful for many industries like software development, publishing, etc. It lets us inspect the designs in detail like displaying the CSS styles of each part of the design, which is handy for software developers.

Other features including getting colors and rapid prototyping by creating designs that simulate what the finished product would do.

It also has a whiteboard called InVision Freehand that lets us add wireframes, plan, and design presentations.

GitHub

GitHub is a platform that lets us host software code in a remote server via Git. Git is a distributed version control software that lets people pull code from remote servers into their own computer, work on it, and then push the code back onto the servers.

Then they can open pull requests to let people review their code and comment on their changes.

It cares about security. There're many options to secure private repositories via tokens and encryption keys.

Trello

Trello is a simple project management software that displays project task statuses on a board that's divided by status.

It doesn't take much effort to manage the simple board, and people can comment on tasks on the board. This lets people communicate about tasks without having too much overhead. Therefore, it's great for fast-paced companies like startups.

Conclusion

For remote workers, online collaboration tools are very important. Fortunately, many companies have hopped onto the bandwagon to come up with solutions that solve many remote teams' problems.

With these tools, remote workers can work just as productively as onsite workers, at least for office jobs.

Best Websites To Hire an Online Tutor

John Au-Yeung — Sat, 08 Feb 2020 02:53:14 +0000

Hiring a teacher to teach you or your kid stuff is hard. There're so many choices of schools and websites.

Which one do we choose?

Fortunately, we can take care of this problem easily. Here are the top websites for hiring tutors.

These sites have lots of teachers and tutors waiting to be hired. Many of them are good and they can teach a lot. They're from all over the world so the rates they charge range from affordable to expensive.

Affordable doesn't mean bad. This is because they're from affordable regions of the world. They can live with less than the developed world.

Some tutors have different time zones that you so that's definitely a consideration. Also, they may not be available all the time. This lets you get a chance to try out different tutors and teachers and see who suits your needs.

Some sites like Tychoo have lots of tutors. Also, you can get help with other things like programming, consulting, entertainment and more.

Most other sites are more limited in scope and don't have as much people in non-teaching categories waiting to be hired.

If You Want to Work From Home, Learn These Skills

John Au-Yeung — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 03:05:40 +0000

If you want to free yourself from the shackles of 9 to 5, it's time to take advantage of the Internet to work whereever you wanty.

With the following skills, you can work find work online easily.

Coding

Most apps are web apps, so they're naturally hosted on the Internet. This means that we can write code on our computer and put them online.

Teams can meet in virtual meetings via teleconference, and code are stored online so they can be retrieved anywhere.

Excel

Excel spreadsheets don't need to be manipulated in person. They can be worked on anywhere.

There're also online alternatives like Google Sheets.

Writing

Writing can be done anywhere. You just need a computer. You don't even need the Internet unless you're doing research or sharing your work with someone else.

This makes writing ideal for digital nomads that like to travel to exotic places.

Writing can be blogging, freelancing writing, booking writing, and much more. The possibilities are endless for making money with writing.

Project Management

Project management can be done anywhere now. With virtual meetings replacing mots of in-person meetings, this can now take place anywhere thanks to Internet technology.

Virtual Assistance

As its name suggests, virtual assistants are assistants that work from anywhere. All they have to do is be available online and do what's required by the employer or client.

They do work that can be done on the computer like data entry, document writing, reading, updating websites, etc.

SEA (Search Engine Advertising)

Search engines are hosted on the Internet, so this job naturally is done online. Work includes buying ads, hosting ads, etc.

Online consultants are present to help with buying ads in a cost-effectively way, which a lot of people don't know how to do.

Social Media Marketing

Social media websites are all on the Internet. And social media profiles take lots of time to manage.

It takes lots of time to engage with people and make posts.

Therefore, people are hired to do the hard work.

Web Design

Most designs are created on the computer and are shared over the Internet.

Design reviews can be done online with teleconferencing and high-resolution screens.

Therefore, this is naturally an online job like all the others.

Consulting

Consulting is all about the meetings. And most meetings are now done online to save travel time and costs.

Therefore, this is a mostly online job.

This is true regardless of what kind of consulting you're doing.

Teaching

Like consulting, this is all about meeting people and communication. Unless you're teaching something like sports, you can do a lot online.

Even if you're teaching sports, you can create videos online to show people how to do something.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the posting of affiliate links from different companies on your website. It's like ads but less intrusive.

It involves all the other online marketing techniques like SEO and search engine advertising.

The objective is to get people to convert by clicking on your affiliate links, which takes an expert to do.

E-Commerce

Buying stuff online is convenient, so naturally, there're sellers meeting the demand.

Once people know that your online store exists and has useful stuff, then the revenue will be coming in.

As we can see, there're tons of online jobs and gigs that lots of people can do. Just get good at one or a few of them, then the 9 to 5 life will end fast.

Top 10 Ways to Get More Traffic to Your Company's Blog

John Au-Yeung — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 02:34:23 +0000

Blogging is an affordable way to promote your business. It's much cheaper than buying ads month after month.

In this article, we'll look at ways to boost traffic to your blog.

Leave thoughtful comments on other people’s blogs.

This is expose your blog profile on other people's posts. It can easily increase your reach by letting others know of your existence.

Write shorter posts.

Shorter posts take less time to write so you can post more frequently. Also, they are easier to read because they're more concise. Each paragraph or section should also be short so that they are easy on the eyes.

Don't write useless information that's useless to your audience.

If you hire people to write it, you also pay less since many authors charge per word.

Blog consistently.

Blogs that are abandoned won't have much of an audience. Google also lowers the rank of abandoned sites since they aren't useful anymore.

Write less.

Less is more. Useful information don't always need a wall of text to express.

Be a resource.

The posts you write must be useful to other people. Otherwise, no one would read it.

Use trackbacks.

Track the traffic source of your blog and then double down on promoting on that source if it's a venue where you can promote. If it's a search engine, then work on SEO more.

If it's social media, post and engage more on there.

Organize your posts with lists and subheads.

This makes posts easy to read so readers can find the information they want quickly.

Get on Twitter. Tweet links to your posts and other useful content.

It's easy to build a following on Twitter if you follow people there and they follow back. Follow the people you want to engage and then post the stuff you want to promote and share in there. Just don't make it too much like an ad.

Followers will see your updates in their feed.

Link out to other sites (but only ones that will help people).

You can get others to link back by proposing to influence that if you link to their site, then they link back. This is a great source of backlinks.

It's also a great way to increase your reach.

Share your content on Facebook (and ask your friends to share it, too).

Like Twitter, you can gain followers through Facebook and engage with them. They also see your stuff in their feed.

With these tips, you can easily gain readers in your blog. It's work that actually pays off. It won't be an overnight success, but the small wins add up something big.

How to Hire a Freelancer

John Au-Yeung — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 02:14:58 +0000

Hiring is always hard. There're lots of risks involved. The person may not know enough to deliver. He or she may have a bad attitude and more.

In this article, we'll look at the steps to hire the person online.

Prerequisites

You have to determine the work you want to get done and the price that you're willing to pay.

Finding the right person for the right price is easy with sites like Tychoo or Fiverr since they're listed right on the freelancer's profile.

Also, you got to see what they can do before signing up for these sites and reaching out.

Milestones and deliverables must be clear so whomever you hired will do what you want them to do.

The length of the contract also needs to be determined so that you won't have to pay for extra freelancing time that you don't want to pay for.

Step 1 - Sign Up

Sign up for a freelancing like Tychoo or Fiverr to find the freelancers that you're looking for. Browse for the person with the skills you want, and then reach out.

Step 2 - Reach Out to the Person You Want Directly.

Reach out to the person that you want to hire and interview them. You can do that with chat and video conferencing.

Step 3 - Interview

Book an interview and chat with them. Also, give them some tests.

Listen to what they say, check their test answers, and see if they're a fit for you.

Step 4 - Assess Their Knowledge and Personality

Think hard comparing what you want and what they can give according to your communication between you and them.

Step 5 - Hire the Right Person

You don't have to hire right away. There're lots of freelancers on Tychoo and Fiverr. You can also turn people until you find the right person for the job.

Even after you hired someone, if he or she isn't a good fit, you can find someone else on Tychoo or Fiverr.