Internet Business Blog

There were many great conversations on the forums this week, unfortunately I was way too busy to really delve into most of them. I was able to save four however, and I’ve left my responses below each set of block quotes. If you have anything to add, don’t be shy!

1. Outsourcing PHP Scripting

Have just fired my fourth PHP programming firm. In all I have lost six figures due to programmer incompetence over the past few years. I’ve tried searching for a UK/US/CA firm and just can’t find one. How on earth do you find a good programming firm? Any help would be appreciated, I’m really losing money by the second at the moment!

My Take: I think that the original poster of this thread is finding his “talent” incorrectly. If he has hired and fired four programmers and losing six figures in the process he hasn’t been doing his homework. Take time, don’t rush into things, and don’t hire someone on the cheap. Good programmers are hard to find, mainly because (in my experience) they are all working! You probably won’t find what you’re looking for on forums, elance, or the like.

2. Value of a Commerce Site Face Lift?

I have worked in ecom for 8 years. Face lifts, are worth 1% additional sales at the best.

Minnapple’s quote above is solid gold. Thought I’d give it its own thread.

What results have you seen from commerce site Botox, cosmetic surgery? I’m referring purely to prettying-up a site.

My Take: My top performing Ecommerce site looked nice, but it wasn’t anything spectacular. As with all Ecommerce sites, your number one priority with design should navigation and usability. Your site can be pretty as hell, but if people can’t figure out how to add products to their cart, check out, create wish lists, and navigate around you’re not going to convert well. Many ugly commerce sites have functionality in mind - and that is why you hire a developer with real Ecommerce experience and not an “artist”.

3. Anyone Rent An Office To Be More Productive?

I am considering renting a small office in a building somewhere to get out of my house. My home office is great, but i find that I am becoming less productive gradually. When I actually drove to an office, i was extremely focused without any distractions.

It will be an unwarranted expense, but I am sure that my production and profits will increase quite a bit.

The added structure will be nice also…

Anyone?

My Take: I’ve thought about renting an office in the past, but found that the funding to do so would be spent more wisely in other areas (such as growing my businesses!). I have a medium sized home office now, but will have a large one on Sunday when we move into our new home. That is all the motivation in the world to progress right there. As long as you can work in a home environment, I say - why not?

4. Getting The “Big” Clients

I’ll start with a little background.

I’ve been doing web design for about 6 years now. The last year I’ve been doing it full time.
I usually have work, even if it’s not work I particularly want to do. My clients are usually small businesses or individuals, found via sites like Scriptlance. In order to have a steady stream of food, I’ve been charging far less than I should be!

I don’t like to sound big headed, but I’ve worked really hard at learning it! I’ve kept up with new advances, and I think my work has improved a lot over the years. I’d say (and here’s where I sound very arrogant!) that I’m better than a lot of designers out there, although there are some dreadful ones!

I keep in touch with a lot of other people in the same field, as I feel it helps. I was talking to 2 people in particular last week, and got a bit jealous! They’re both average designers - both still use tables, and one slices directly from ImageReady. They’re designs aren’t dreadful, but they’re a bit… clunky and out of date. I wouldn’t usually put someone down like that, everyone’s got a learn, but in my conversation with them I found they were both doing work for huge clients - one was CNN, the other MSN!

So, I put it to Sitepoint - what is it you need to do to get those clients?

Best wishes,
Richard

My Take: Richard, It’s all about networking. Networking and referrals are the lifeline of a business such as ours. Sure you can do other things to help bring in prospective clients such as SEO, linkbaiting, PPC campaigns - but nothing brings in new clients like honest, hard work and clients who are so happy with the results that they immediately refer all of their business associates to you.

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Over the past few months I’ve really given in and sold my soul to “The Google” so to speak. At this stage in the game known as Web 2.0, that may not really be such a bad thing. Google is currently on top of the internet world, and rightfully so. But that’s neither here nor there, and a topic for another day.

What I’d like to talk about today, in my first installment in a new blog series dubbed ‘How Google Helps Control My Business’ is Google Mail. I’m going to tell you about why I use Google Mail to help streamline and run my inbox effectively on a daily basis – and why you should do the same as well.

What is Google Mail?

Good question. Let’s ask Google:

Gmail is Google’s free web mail service. It comes with built-in Google search technology and over 2,600 megabytes of storage (and growing every day). You can keep all your important messages, files and pictures forever, use search to quickly and easily find anything you’re looking for, and make sense of it all with a new way of viewing messages as part of conversations.

There are no pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail, only small text ads. Ads and related information are relevant to your messages, so instead of being obtrusive, they may even be useful for once.

Gmail also integrates instant messaging right into the email experience, so you can stay in even better touch with your friends when you’re online. Easy, efficient and maybe even fun to use. It’s a whole new way to think about email. It’s Google’s approach to email.

Why I use Google Mail
Not only does Gmail have a sleek and minimalist look that I tend to go for, it isn’t overloaded with unnecessary features that no one uses. It’s very fast and reliable as well. Google uses the best server technology in the business today and if that isn’t enough, here are a few more features that I enjoy:

It can be checked from anywhere
At first glance Google Mail may not have all of the bells and whistles that come with Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird, but it’s very advantageous in the fact that I am able to log in and check my emails from any computer as long as it has an internet connection. In the business world, this is absolutely huge and a must have.

Did I mention that it’s free?
That’s right, like most Google services, Gmail is completely free of charge. Though this isn’t exactly an uncommon practice, they do not up charge for extra services what you see is truly what you get. I respect that. They do display some small, unobtrusive advertisements in the form of text links. They can be rather hard to spot and are a non-issue.

Plenty of storage space
Last I heard they give users over 2 gigabytes of space to store their emails. Have you ever used up more than 2GB for email? If so, clean you inbox every couple of years because you have far too many unnecessary emails!

Spam protection that actually works
I’ve used virtually every major email service under the sun, from Hotmail and Outlook to Thunderbird and Squirrelmail – and nothing has protected me from spam like Google Mail has.

They don’t care what browser you use
Google Mail works just fine on Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox. Have you ever tried to use MSN Hotmail with Firefox? If so, you may remember the pains that it can cause. Google doesn’t seem to have any sort of agenda like others do.

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While I’m all in favor of everyone using Google Mail, I should note that it may not be for everyone. It is primarily aimed at personal and small business use – and for that crowd it works perfectly. If you are part of a corporation, it will not have the features that you need to effectively run and monitor the technical endeavors that you may face with employees. That being said, if you do own and operate a small business, Gmail will be right up your alley. It’s fast, simple, spam free, and can be checked from anywhere.

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I’ve owned a small, 1GB, USB Thumb Drive for nearly a year now and up until yesterday it was always completely empty. Then something dreaded happened, the power in my neighborhood went out. To my dismay I was unable to do many of the things that I typically take for granted with my business computer such as checking emails, administration panels, and all around web work because I use long winded randomly generated passwords.

Normally, I keep a password protected MS Excel file on my computer with a list of passwords for other web-based applications I use. The problem was that while the power was down I couldn’t even log in to grab that file and move to another location with a different computer.

Lesson learned. I now store the password protected spreadsheet that holds my passwords as well as other documents that I often refer back to on my little thumb drive. I just attached it to my key chain and am good to go, no matter where I am.

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