outsourcing Archives - Page 2 of 2

10 steps to web start up

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

It’s never been cheaper to start a business in the history of man. Especially on line. Startup guru Guy Kawasaki proved it with his $12,000 example for www.trumours.com – But startup blog says you can do it for pretty close to zero. In the spirit of sharing here’s the startup blog list of the 10 things you need to get started, and resources to help perform these necessary tasks.

Idea generating – Ideas these days are free and omnipresent. Steal ideas from www.springwise.com or www.idea-a-day.com – Just take one that suits you and do it. Maybe bring their idea to your geography, or just copy something already successful and do it. There is no currency in ideas. They are free. Take them. Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that is the easiest part of any venture. And they are right.
Name Generating – Actually your business name has nothing to do with success. There’s only two things to consider. Firstly that it’s available (.com?) and secondly that people can say it. Check out www.nameboy.com to help you generate some.
Idea testing – I loved the idea from Timothy Ferriss who tested the idea for the best book name (4 hour work week won it) by using Google Adwords for the various options and seeing which one got the most clicks with certain key words. Inspired stuff. Steal his idea and use adwords to test your business proposition before investing heavily.
Project Managment – Keep your project stuff all in one digital location. The crew over at 37 Signals provide some awesome tools for free in doing so. We’ve used it extensively for rentoid.com
Communication – Get skype set up for all your international dealings phone calls and chats required in managing your project and team. I work with with people all over the world on rentoid and have never paid for a phone call yet. You can even get it on your iphone to make free calls from – Giddy up.
Design – Don’t get stooged paying a zillion dollars for an agency to design your stuff. Leave the agency work for big companies with big budgets, you’re a bootstrapper and need to get it done cheap. But lucky for us these days cheap doesn’t have to mean crap. Check out 99 designs to get your site designed. If you need digital icons or related visuals check out istock photo for great up to date design. For pictures use Flickr creative commons.
CSS (Cascading Style Cheets) – Check out slice and dice it to get your shiny new designs ready for coding.
Coding / Programming – Yep, that tricky stuff which makes it all work under the website. Easy, go straight to Elance or ODesk to find coders for HTML, PHP, Rails, AJAX – anything. They’re all there waiting for your brief. (this should be the only biggish expense for your web startup – which means a few hundred dollars with a currency advantage)
Payment gateway – Use paypal – free set up and the cheapest, most trusted way to accept credit cards and multiple payment forms on the internet.
Promotion tools – OK this is the stuff you’re all familiar with and using daily. So turn these fun parks into business tools by using them properly. But just choose a couple of them and use them well. My favourites are youtube, twitter, blogging (recommend wordpress).

So there you have it – web start up in 10 easy steps. Feel free to add any other cool tools and ideas in the comments.

What are you waiting for? Get started.

Steve.

The Apple, the Orange & Weaknesses

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Apple: A crispy, crunchy yet sweet fruit, which can be eaten as is, with the peel still on the fruit. Can’t be broken into segments by hand – you need a knife to do this. Can even be used in cooking, on salads and also even great for making pie. Gives the teeth a little clean at the same time and freshens the breath while providing many valuable and healthy nutrients. Very difficult to make juice by hand with, but easy to pick the good from the bad as it’s bruises show clearly on the skin.

Orange: Needs to be peeled to be eaten, but can also be broken into nice little segments so you can share with a friend. No knife required. Not as crunchy as the apple, but juicier and more thirst quenching. Provides it’s own unique set of healthy nutrients. Easy to make fruit juice from by hand. Not so good for making pie with. Hides it’s quality under the skin and could be a bad watery orange, and you just won’t know until you eat it.

These are some of the clear difference in the two fruits above. I’m sure you can add more.

But none of us would want a combined Apple and Orange into one type of fruit. An ‘Appage’ or an ‘Orpple’ anyone?

Comparing apples to oranges

We wouldn’t want this because we understand the unique benefits of each, and they both have their value as part of our diet. In fact we feel like, and need both apples and oranges at different times. To add the benefits of one of these fruits to the other fruit, would by definition diminish the original benefits. So why is it that we are constantly told to work on our weaknesses as if they are the holy grail of success in life? As entrepreneurs we are far better off focusing on our strengths the same way fruit does.

Should we try and improve? No doubt. But to obsess over a weakness is to ignore your given talents. What they don’t tell you is that anyone who has ever achieved anything, did it via leveraging strengths. And it isn’t without irony that the apple and the orange happen to go very well together.

Startup blog says: Outsource weaknesses, focus on strengths.

Top 10 reasons for outsourcing digital work

Posted on December 13, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s startup blogs top 10 reasons for outsourcing digital work offshore. Which we do for some work at rentoid with great success. I’m hoping the naysayers, will see by the end of this post as to why it is ethical as well.

It’s an efficient resource allocation
It increases the wealth of the service provider (the person overseas)
It increases the wealth of the offshore country
it facilitates cross cultural interchange and understanding
Makes it possible for ‘non techies’ to start a ‘tech based’ business
Can be the difference which makes a startup idea financially viable
It stimulates greater innovation in the tech sector by creating a greater intellectual resource pool
It invents ‘time’ so people can bootstrap a business while continuing other employment
The outsourced work is not dangerous – we are not sending kids down a mine or employing child labour.
Add your reason in the comments!

Get out there and outsource, make conections, make stuff happen and make new global friends to boot!

Outsourcing – Visuals vs Backend

Posted on August 27, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

As webpreneurs we all now employ offshore coders to develop sites using super cool resources like Odesk and Elance. The process is a simple one. But just like all things good, there are some catches. Here’s some advice from someone whose done, does it and occasionally avoids it.

The main thing you need is patience and very considered briefs. When there is a language barrier, ideas and words can be taken very literally.

Our experience is that some (not all) offshore IT practioners are indifferent with ‘visual’ requirements. Maybe it’s a cultural implication. And there are many things we’ve had done much better offshore, like finding creative solutions to technical problems. We’ve worked with some great creative bootstrappers. But it’s clear that more developed markets put a much higher value on ‘aesthetics‘. So we get all our rentoid visuals done locally, while we outsource alot of our backend work. It’s akin to a convenience store you might see in India, there just not quite as pretty as those in Australia and the USA. See below.

Western Convenience Store

Convenience Store India