If only I knew about this web app when I was flatting it would have made my life a whole lot easier. Expensure is a awesome little application that helps you (and your flatmates) keep track of all living costs and works out how much each person owes.

For a more detailed description of the websites features you can take a look at the tour page.

I caught up with Andrew, one of the founders and he told me a bit more about the idea and how he came up with it.

We were sitting around one day trying to work out who owed who money after about three months of bills and expenses had been accumulated. We had each paid for loads of shared stuff, and owed money for many different bills. In the middle of trying to work it all out for the tenth time we thought, why don’t we just make an app that does it all for you?

I also asked him about his marketing strategy and his reply was so great I’m going to post it here as I’m sure it will benefit a lot of people.

I think this is a very interesting question because you are in a tough position to start with because you don’t have the budget to engineer a mass media promotion, nor do you have the public profile to engineer some free promotion off the back of who you are (see twitter).

The trick is to use your wit and skill to create a 3rd approach that makes use of the emerging social media landscape of bloggers, the social grap(h)evine and making contact with a few niche publications who have ownership of the social/business area that your app will attempt to make its home.

I did find the following blog posts to contain some pretty good practical advice, that is relevant to anyone launching a web app or business:

* http://blog.adaptiveblue.com/?p=689

* http://www.ryanblock.com/2007/10/pr-people-youre-not-blocked-but-do-your-homework/

* http://marshallk.com/thoughts-on-product-launch-promotion

* http://mashable.com/2008/04/18/bad-pr-pitches/

Thanks for the great information Andrew! This application definitely solves a problem that I’m sure most of the readers of this blog have experienced. Go and give it some love.