The aim for most people building websites or webapps is to create a source of revenue aka to become rich. This is a shallow goal, but definitely the most important in any business. It starts by building a prototype and getting paid for it. Most people seek to monetize their efforts by selling ads, but this is slippery slope because they’ll have to compete double.

Compete double is? the concept of competing in two completely different fields. By selling ads you’ll have to compete against Google, Facebook and many more for the advertisers; moreover, you’ll have to compete against other apps in your space. For example: If I was building an app to handle project collaboration, I’ll have to compete against Basecamp, Activecollab, Zoho and many more. On top of that, I’ll have to compete against many more for the advertisers money.

Be careful becuase monetizing is a slippery slope specially is your model is based on selling ads. It has worked great for Facebook or Google, but it may be a dead sentence for many because they’ll have to compete double and create the infrastructure to sell those ads.

What do I mean by creating the infrastructure to sell ads? It starts by having the proper technology in place to count, rotate and display the ads. There are many open source software that can be use for this purpose, but this is just deviating attention from the core product. People are needed to sell the ads or build that system to support it. It just adds a tremendous burden to the entire organization. Let’s assume the technology stack is already in place to support selling ads. I believe it is equally or more difficult to get somebody to pay for an ad that is to make people pay for your product or the vision of it.

Since I became aware of this technique of developing the right attitude and believing in the right things (the right way), it is something crucial for me.

The mind is something incredibly powerful and when you learn how to put it to work, amazing things happen. What do I mean by this? Believing in what you are and what you can do.

Treat it as your own. When working for a client, you need to believe you are part of the team, you work with them not for them. It is always in your best interest that the outcome of a project is something of value so you have to push for that.

Security. You need to believe you are awesomely good at what you do (don’t get me wrong, there is always room to improve our skills). Basically you portray what you believe and your client will see that. Either you do portray it or not.

Structure. You are treated how you’d like to be treated. When working with a client, you need to set your parameters of how you work. Everybody has their own method. The structure or set of methods you build are the ones that work best for you and that is why you have chosen them.

No intimidation by titles. What do I mean by this? In corporations you will usually find titles such as ‘Art Director’, ‘Senior Designer’, ‘Junior Designer’, ‘Intern’, ‘Head of Technology’, ‘Information Architect’ (which by the way never understood what that means?). Titles are used only to intimidate people. YOU ARE PART OF A TEAM. I have a meeting with the Head of Technology, The Marketing VP, Production, and my Art Director… whooooaaa those are a lot of titles or important people right there. Wouldn’t it be easier just to say: I have a meeting with Jason, Alice, Nate, or whoever, they are humans! Anyhow, when you have one of those meetings, talk like you usually do, speak your mind, disagree when you have to, give your opinion, ask questions. Treat them like your team mates (which is what they are!). Everybody has something to learn.

We had the pleasure of hosting Corey Haines for a week last month. It really was a eye opening experience into the practices of a Software Craftsmanship (more on that later). This time is for a video we did about starting up a company, dealing with clients and the whole designers/developers worlds.

Conversation with Ivan Acosta-Rubio and Bellatrix Martinez from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

We just found this great article about how to think strategically when designing online business. Let’s face it, Web Design is not Art. The strategy ought to be designed to fulfill your business goals witch generally involve filling out a web-form - you better make them short a pretty!.

Playing is a big part of any living organism life. To let go of yourself, of your mind and just interact how your body wants to. We see animals all the time playing, and it does not matter how old they are they love to play.

Human beings are the ‘most intelligent’ creatures on earth, yet we are the ones that have forgotten about playing. We were all once kids, remember that feeling? of just not wanting to do anything else but play. This is a very healthy feeling, it is a feeling of happiness, freedom.

So, the question now is, do you play with your process? You being a designer or developer, should be able to have fun with what you do. For the creative minds the process is a bit harder, why? because you need to let go, most professions do not let you or want you to let go, but hey! we have the advantage, the great advantage that ours encourages us to let go!

Tips to play with your process:

? Start your project by brainstorming, but do not do a formal aligned to the parallel? brainstorm. Get yourself a big piece of paper, board anything big! some markers and start to scramble thoughts, the messier the better!

? Mess around with your project. Once you are prepared for doing something in the computer, do it your way, present innovative ideas, ideas of your own. Now, off course there are always sticky clients with big ego trips, that want things done their way, hey! save different versions or use a great tool called github. That way you can have both versions, the one your client will approve just because it is done the way he/she wanted. And the other version which let you play.

? Have projects of your own. This is the best way to really play. You are your own decision maker and you have total freedom of what to do and what direction to take.

Conclusion: Get yourself out of any type of routine, and play!

Dealing only with smart people is a concept that I have always known but just realized its importance.

Companies usually treat their customers as if they do not know, or as if they were idiots, and sometimes people even refer to a customer that way.

That should not be the case, our customers should be the smartest people alive, or at least we should think that way, why? because they chose to work with you. You customers should be able to tell apart crappy and tacky products from the real quality ones. This distinction MUST EXIST.

Be aware of red flags. When a customer starts giving you signals that he or she is not smart, that is it! You should immediately plan an exit strategy, why? why lose time caught up with people that will not let you move forward in the pieces you create and your career as an overall. I know the economy is tight and bla bla bla the same story we hear everyday, which to be honest I think that this same story is something that people are creating to condition themselves, I do not have enough work because of the economy, I do not have enough money because of the economy, I am not happy because of the economy, and that has to stop! Yes, the economy is bad, and this is the time to plan what you are going to do about that, you might consider trying other markets, other economies, creating a product, etc. However, this is not a reason why you should put up with not smart clients.

Choose your projects wisely. Always choose the projects you will be working with, this is time you will be putting into something to develop, and it should be something exciting. Also you need to look up to your clients, know that you can learn a lot from them too, it might be in a different industry, but still learn new things.

Smart, smart and more smartness. Not only your clients should be smart people, off course your team should be smart too, the people you surround yourself with, should all be very smart people.

Have any experiences dealing with smart or not smart enough clients? Have any exit strategies to share?

Don’t know how many of you out there know about our new application we are developing called Yonopelo.

Yonopelo is an innovative job board, which ultimate goal is to get you a job in what you enjoy doing and what you are best at doing. How is that possible? We believe by personal experience that if you do what you are passionate for, the you will be great at it! Why? Because you are happy

Concept? What does Yonopelo mean? In our language and culture when someone is ‘pelando’ menas they do not have money at the moment…so basically the saying means I’m not not going to have money = I will have money!

Ok, our vision was to put a name behing this system…a character per say. His name is Sr. Yonopelo Ramirez. Ramirez is a very common last name, which refers to he could be anyone…you? me? him? her? anyone you know.

We decided to go with a very clean and fresh branding and teaser site. Our goal in the branding process was to get people identified, fresh and innovative people to be interested in the product by supporting the branding/concept.

Our goal with the teaser site = to build momentum. We want to encourage people to register and we will be releasing news on this project soon.

The whole project will be up and running very soon…

With this being said, keep in touch with Sr.Yonopelo Ramirez.

www.yonopelo.com

Client who saves $5,000 buying cut-rate non-semantic HTML will later spend $25,000 on SEO consultant to compensate. - jeffrey zeldman

While? SEO consultants will put in place a group of techniques to rank you at the top of Google and charge you some thousands there is a far more effective and inexpensive technique. FOCUS ON CONTENT. If you have juicy content that your target audience finds attractive, update your site regularly and get some people to talk about you, they will come and bite. Remember the 4 C’s for online success.

Resources:

Top 10 SEO Techniques @ Freelance Folder

SEO Tools at SEO MOZ