Andy’s Blog

I’m Always up for freebies, write a review and we’ll send you a product(anyone want me to review an xbox360 ).

the guys across at Spreadshirt are offering a free t-shirt from the marketplace if you blog about it(limited numbers if your interested ).

Browsing around the Marketplace there are certainly some interesting t-shirts available including this little Number:

Student Life

Certainly not for wearing when you having tea with you aunt dot is it.

My personal Favourite is ‘Power to Gaming’. A simple design with a lot of impact, and the mouse looks a lot like a Razer diamondback.

Spreadshirt

Power to Gaming

Whatever your taste pop over to SpreadShirtand see whats there or make your mark and design the next best t-shirt.

Outsourcing work for websites had never been something I had done, until recently.

Why? because I like to do everything myself, and to be honest I like to be in control.

In reality doing everything yourself may not always be practical or possible.

Say you had an excellent idea for a site but the main part involved a Flash application. Thats fine if you are familiar with Flash and can achieve what you need.

But if you’re not then you’ve got a lot of learning to do, theres the Graphics side of things, the action-scripting, sounds, security, testing. Thats a lot of learning and a lot of time.

Even if you have a little bit of knowledge chances are it will take quite a while to acheive the results you need.

Why bother? if its a one off project using a particular technology then Outsource it. You’ll save a lot of hair, time, and ultimately money.

While the works been done you could be setting up PPC campaigns ready, doing another site, creating content or relaxing down the pub.

Obviously outsourcing has its downfalls, your relying on someone else to get the job done, it might not be right etc.

You need to ensure that you explain fully what you need(after a non disclosure of course), the time-frame, and the budget, you then need to agree costs for extra works and possibly penalties or bonuses based on the deadlines, and if possible have any programing commented for when/if you do want to learn.

There are several sites available for hiring people for this sort of project, they all have some sort of buyer and seller protection, but the best thing in my opinion is to get recommendations from reliable sources. You all use forums, ask there, I did and found a diamond of a coder(I would mention names but i’d rather not as I don’t want him to be to busy for any future projects ).

So I am now happy to outsource some work it’s saving me time, stress and gives me time to concentrate on other projects.

I had another meeting yesterday with the same business associates about various projects, normally these projects would take up 2 hours, the entire meetings duration.

Yesterday’s meeting seemed a little rushed we had come to what I thought would be the end of the meeting in around 45 minutes, so i offered them a coffee before they went, “Before we go?, you better get some more coffee on the go we’ll be here a while!”

 At this point my mind is racing, wondering what the problem is.

“This affiliate marketing, How does it work again?”

So I explained the concept, again, then about how you need traffic and content to keep visitors coming back.

Then the inevitable question “so why aren’t you doing it?”.

Aaaaagggghhhh!!! that same bloody question, I ask myself it everyday.

Due to the way affiliate marketing works there is anything upto and beyond a 6 week lead, from making the sale to cash in the bank, and when you’ve got bills to pay and food to buy waiting that long isn’t an option. If I had the bills covered for 2 months I would go hammer and tongs at affiliate marketing, adding as many sites as I can, as much content as i can and driving as much traffic as I can. With a 2 month grace period affiliate marketing could easily become my main income(I don’t need a lot).

“Well how about if we pay you to develop some affiliate sites?”

I thought it had too be a wind up, but they are serious, they have some site ideas and want me to build and monitize them. An hourly wage and a percentage of the profits what more could I want, apart from a few more sites like that ;).

Is this a done thing in the industry? have an idea and pay someone else to make and affiliate site from it?

I suppose its no different to paying for an ecommerce site to be built and managed. But it gives me the opportunity to tune may affiliate marketing skills and get paid at the end of the week, which will hopefully allow me to develop more sites of my own.