About 6 months ago I found myself hunting for an app that did just what Olive is going to, I couldn't find one so I set about developing it.

Olive is a web app that allows designers to bolt on additional maintenance services quickly and easily, thus quickly increasing your monthly income with your clients. I'm very excited about Olive, it's an easy, intuitive solution that fills a void. The chances are you possibly already offer your clients web design maintenance contracts, if you don't, Olive is the perfect excuse to start.

If you do already have maintenance clients you will be familiar with the amount of emails you get in relation to a single update, they'll first send you an email to say they need an update, you'll then send an email back asking for the files before you can quote, they will send you an email with the files, you'll send an email back with the quote for the amount of time it will take you, they will send you an email accepting and saying go ahead, then give it a day or so, and they'll be emailing you to ask when they should expect their update completed. That's a lot of inbox clogging for just one client!

'Olive' gives your client a "one click" access to your services with a custom branded app that suits your business branding. Your client will log in, type their update, attach associated files which get sent to you - you will receive a notification in your dashboard with the files and what the update is, you will then assign how many credits the update will need. Credits? I hear you say....what are these credits you speak of?

Olive works on a unique pay as you go system, you set how much a credit is worth to you ie. 1 credit = £10.00 ($ or €). Your clients can pre-pay blocks of credits to use with the services you provide, you can also set a client as "unlimited" and set your monthly charge for unlimited access accordingly. This captures both types of common client, the one who does not want to be on a rolling monthly contract for small frequent updates, and those who do. You may choose not to use the unlimited feature at all and simply use it as a "pay as you go" system. For example, the pay as you go clients may need you to fix something they have broken using their CMS system (we've all been there!) or create a new graphic for a promotion they are running, perfect - introduce them to the 'pay as you go system' and keep all their requests in one place. You can also use the credit system for client support, lost password requests or changing name servers for example, set the amount of credits that suit you.

The beauty of Olive is the simple interface client side, this gives them all the information they need about their updates at a click. Lights next to their updates mean different things, red means it's been sent to you, the designer, and is pending credit allocation, yellow means it's being worked on and green, completed. No more emails back and forth, they can log-in 24/7 and see the status of any given project at any time.

As an Olive user, you will have your own unique sub domain name, set by you at sign-up, to point your clients to, you can also upload your own logo and customise the overall look of the app to suit your business. I've realised how important this is as a designer myself. Your dashboard shows you all incoming updates and the status of those updates in one easy to view screen, you can also message the client and receive client messages on each update request. You can also add additional users for use with other designers in your office or freelancers should you wish.

Olive can literally be what you want it to be, a credit can be £40 for one designer and £1 for another - use it for web design maintenance or client support, it can be used for any service you want to provide to your clients. Your clients will love the informative interface, simplicity of updating and the feeling of having you at their fingertips. You will love the ease of having everything in one place, a clearer inbox and getting paid right away for the updates in your dashboard. Create your own custom packages and advertise them to your clients, for example; new image creation 5 credits, name server change 2 credits. Advertise in your next newsletter or send an email out to all your clients, manually add a few credits to their account as a promotion to get the ball rolling, I guarantee from my personal experience, they will love it!

To summise, Olive is a great way to increase your monthly income, using the skills you already have to sign up clients who feel a monthly maintenance package may be too expensive for them or not the right solution, for the few updates they need per month, but a quite a few clients with a few updates per month equates to many pounds in your pocket!

Olive will be available to beta testers shortly and general release in the next month.

Thank you for reading, I really appreciate the interest you've shown.

The Olive website is currently under construction aka. fiddling.