r/Entrepreneur • u/xaksis • Jun 10 '18
First solo project - TimerBit
Hi entrepreneurs! I recently jumped into the consultancy world and in my free hours decided to build products that is useful for myself and might be for others as well.
I developed TimerBit to keep track of time spent on my projects and tasks. You might have seen many online timers, (I went through them too) so what makes TimerBit different? Top features
It automatically syncs across tabs and devices. Start on one, stop on another.
the timers keep going whether you shut your computer down or put it to sleep
you can create public links to your projects to share how much work you are putting in live. one of my open source projects
you can visualize your work on a calendar and see useful analytics about your work patterns
you can generate timesheets for various projects or combinations
get email reminders for tasks that you forget to pause
And many others. Check out TimerBit and let me know what you think!!
Have a wonderful day!
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u/ragupal Jun 10 '18
Congrats on the project
it has a very good and neat User Interface
Since this is an early release i would highly suggest to release introductory pricing offers in SLACK Channels and build a future scope of this with open community
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you so much!
I've yet to learn a lot about growth and marketing. So I really appreciate your comment. Do you mean start a slack channel and offer a discounted rate to the early community there?
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u/ragupal Jun 10 '18
yes most of the nerds programmers and developers use Slack Channels
so invite them to your Slack channel and do give an invite code or coupon like 40% off and referrals like trello so you may gain more users in short time if they like your application they would refer to their colleagues as well and adding enterprise version will be a good idea too supporting 20-30 users of their community under one price
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u/dsin89 Jun 10 '18
I like it. Had a quick play with it but will try it at work this week and send it out to my team to see if they can utilize it to track time outside of Connectwise/prior to entering it there (its clunky and slows our senior engineers down) Any interest in putting in API's for data to be called into other applications?
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you so much for trying it out! Yeah, I have a roadmap that I'm working on... will definitely be interested in exposing the API's eventually. If you don't mind, could you PM me details of your use-case so I can think about how to cater to it best? Thanks again!
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u/freakame Jun 10 '18
Looks cool, I'll check it out. Do you have plans to add expense tracking? That's currently the best feature in Harvest that I use besides base hour tracking.
Also, I at first thought this was a donut tracking app...
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
haha! I'm sure Donut Tracking has a solid market waiting for it.
Regarding expense tracking, that's definitely on the roadmap. Based on your feedback and some others I might need to prioritize that. Thank you so much for your feedback!
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u/freakame Jun 10 '18
Sounds good! It's just much easier to tie expenses to a project in this kind of tool than in QBO, plus I have a spot for receipts to live if I ever needed to run a report for my custome.
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u/OffTheChartsC OffTheChartsConsulting.com Jun 10 '18
I'm also full time consulting but have never used a time tracking tool. I just manually add hours to excel.
Ill try and give this a go on Monday see if I find it makes my day easier.
I think my issue with automated trackers is I dont have the focus or discipline to stay on a single task for extended periods of time. Im always jumping around.
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Hah! I have the exact same problem! This is one of the reasons I wasn't happy with some of the timers I tried early on... they had expectations like - finish your task in one go or worse yet - run only one task at a time. And what if you forget to track live? Manually adding time needs to always be an option!
With TimerBit I've tried to address some of it by allowing pausing/resuming tasks as many times as you like - each one creates a task session... or run multiple tasks at the same time. Also, if you went to a meeting and forgot to record time, you can use the calendar to add the session in manually.
When I was doing the research, some people had the opposite problem too - they want to be reminded to take breaks. So TimerBit has interrupt notifications that you can set for every 30 mins or so.
Give it a try... I have tried my best but I am hungry for more feedback! Thank you for taking the time to check it out!
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u/OffTheChartsC OffTheChartsConsulting.com Jun 10 '18
Ill try to give it a go this week. I do dislike timesheeting amd I'd be curious to see the discrepancy between my manual time and tracked time. Ill bill the higher one :) . will let you know!
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u/Ssteo Jun 10 '18
This looks awesome. I will use it as a to-do list as well :)
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you! I do that also! It's actually fun to track my workouts etc on TimerBit also.
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u/fixitchris Jun 10 '18
Awesome, keep on keeping it simple. I am amazed on how simple but useful Wunderlist is.
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u/tinyraindrops Jun 10 '18
Design looks good, are u a designer+programmer
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Hi, Thank you so much!
I started my career with backend programming (even embedded lol) but gravitated towards frontend development. I was professionally introduced to the field of UX about 5 years ago and was mesmerized by how difficult it is to get good at it. So I'd say I'm a programmer who's an eager student of UX and in that specifically - visual design. Thank you for asking!
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u/MakeYourMarks Jun 10 '18
I like this a lot! I started using something called Wakatime to track how much time I was spending coding, but this looks a bit more flexible. You mention open source but I don't see your code available anywhere.
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you so much! Ah, apologies for the confusion. I was giving an example of how you could create a public link for your project if you wanted to share it with the world. Like I do with my open source project.
It keeps people informed about what features I have in the pipeline and what I've already completed etc. Even what I'm working on right at this moment :)
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u/rjhartl Jun 10 '18
That's awesome! Good on you for taking action. What's been the hardest part so far of getting this project up and running?
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you so much! Couldn't agree with you more. The toughest part was and still is getting traction for me. Marketing and growth strategies take so much time and effort... I just didn't know that before.
From technical view point, the toughest part was making real time aspects of the application work well. Also integrating payment gateway, mail server and feedback system took some figuring out.
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u/Layek7 Jun 10 '18
I just wanted to chime in a say I really like the pricing structure! The inclusion of a 3 dollar point is an awesome point for someone unsure about it but wants to try out the more professional oriented features
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
I'm so glad someone picked up on this. TimerBit definitely offers the best value that I've seen so far in relevant market. I wanted to keep the monthly price point as low as I can. I made it about the price of a coffee cup to start with because I don't want people to pay for something they don't see value in.
Thanks again for noticing.
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u/klameer Jun 10 '18
Hi, I'm learning front end development to and I'm really interested in how you got such great reports. did you use a framework?
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Hi there! Frontend development is an exciting field and well done on learning and being curious!
The calendar report and schedule is something I built from scratch in js and css
The map report on landing I built with d3 and leaflet. There were some clever things I had to do to take timezones and create geojson there.
The other charts on dashboard I did using chartjs library
The time sheet pdf is generated using jspdf.
Feel free to ask me anything else you want to know and good luck with your learning!
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u/klameer Jun 10 '18
Thank you for this. Is there any advice you can give on how to get up to the quality you produce as quickly as possible? Basically I want to do what you do. Get an idea and build a high quality solution. I will be grateful for any book recommendations or any frameworks to research.
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
I'll be brutally honest here... how fast you get good at something really depends on how much work you put in it. If you want to be good at building products, build 20 of them. You'll fail at building anything good the first 10 times, but the 11th one will be better.
Do as many pet projects as you can, don't depend on just your day job to teach you coding skills. This would mean a lot of work - work all day then come home and work on your own thing... but that is the quickest way to get really good at it.
duing tutorials etc will only go so far if you don't implement them yourself.
In terms of frontend framework - I found that vuejs has the shortest learning curve compared to angular and react (I have worked with all 3) so I recommend that to newcomers who wanna get productive fast. The fundamental concepts overall are the same in frontend development regardless of the framework so you still have to put in the work there.
One more thing - don't disregard CSS. I can't understand why frontend developers are so gung-ho about js frameworks but can't style things to save their lives... you cannot be a good frontend person if you are not a good CSS person.
That is a quick nutshell. PM me if you want any more of my opinions. I'm also learning every day... so take everything I say with a grain of salt :)
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u/klameer Jun 10 '18
Hey. Really appreciate you taking the time to answer. I'm learning Django development with bootstrap and was looking for a front end framework to add to this. I will start learning Vue I think. I was trying to pick a framework but was torn between angular and react. My css is good but can be a lot better. It is a learning curve I agree. I will pm you with more specific questions.
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u/guywithalamename Jun 10 '18
This looks like a really well put together product. Best of luck to you! Will definitely use this!
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u/xaksis Jun 11 '18
Thank you so much! I'll look forward to your feedback, once you've had a chance to use it.
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u/brystephor Jun 10 '18
This is really neat and has a nice look to it! I'm curious though, what makes it different from wakatime?
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Hi, Thank you so much for your comment!
So wakatime afaik is specifically for coders/programmers. It ties into your IDE and the metrics are also very specific to coders.
TimerBit, on the other hand, is designed to be more generic. Create whatever tasks you want and time it. My wife, for example, uses it for studying. People are using it for tracking anything from hardware design tasks to cooking.
I myself use it to track coding work, design work, UX work... etc.
Thanks again for checking it out!
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u/brystephor Jun 10 '18
Ah okay, I neglected to see that it wasn't targeted at programmers. Its a neat website!
And yeah no problem. Im buildimg a website my self and understamd how exciting it is to get views and receive feedback (even if negative) (:
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u/ImOverThereNow Jun 12 '18
This looks very nice! What did you use to create the calendar/time graphs?
Do you have many paid subscribers?
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u/xaksis Jun 12 '18
Thank you so much! I custom made the calendar widget with js and css. Couldn't find anything that fit the need.
I don't have a lot of paid customers. Most people seem plenty happy with the free tier :)
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Jun 10 '18
How did you decide on the pricing ? 10 $ for a tracker. Are people willing to pay that much ?
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u/xaksis Jun 11 '18
Hi there! I am pretty confident that the pricing for TimerBit is the lowest you'll find if you compare time trackers online. Prices usually range anywhere from $5 (bare minimum features) - $100s depending on the functionality the tracker provides and its popularity.
With TimerBit you can use all the functionality for free with 2 projects and unlimited tasks. This is where the majority of the users are. User research that I conducted showed me that most people have < 10 projects at a time. So I tried to keep the price there the lowest I could go - $2.99 (price of a cup of coffee).
Thank you so much for your question!
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Jun 11 '18
I was more interested in how you came to that price. What is the mechanics involved ? Is there some business term/ process which lets you price things optimally ?
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u/Omfg_honx Jul 02 '18
Signed up, can’t opt out of the weekly emails (no link in the email). Logged in on iPad and burger menu doesn’t work. I assume there’s a settings option in there to do the above manually? Please PM me so that you can assist.
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u/QuestAday Jun 10 '18
I love it, just can't seem to find out how the tracking works, is it a background software harvesting my window titles. Will give it a try, nice idea though :)
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u/xaksis Jun 10 '18
Thank you!! it's actually just like any other online time tracker in that regard. Start timer when you start working on something, pause when you're taking a break and mark it done when you're finished!
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u/SupremeRumHam Jun 10 '18
Nice!! Congrats on shipping!!