Matt Blancarte dot Com Design – Business – Two Cents

Although I am still a newbie among most web developers, I have many basic skills in designing and coding websites. Many of my skills can be attributed to the intuitiveness of the software I use. At this point, I am much stronger when I use a WYSIWYG editor than if I am writing plain css code.

Why am I even writing this article? To motivate you to make some money online, of course! I have written a few articles covering two small streams of income I generate, and a common response is “it’s not detailed enough.”

Well, I am not going to hold your hand through the developer’s learning curve, I’m sorry. I don’t know people that have progressed in their skill-sets by just reading step-by-step articles. The best I am willing to offer here are some ideas that will motivate, maybe even enlighten, you to give some of these ideas a…

I figured you all might want to see what our bootstrapped business is looking like right now. ^_^ If you walked into the room, you would see this on your left:

We are truly bootstrapping this business as of right now. When you are in this situation, cramming yourself into a room with a bunch of equipment is the best option… at least if you want the best possible margins. Pain before pleasure can sum up the idea behind this setup. Right across the room, you can see a familiar character…

We have four computers in the room, three of which (the macbook pros and macbook) run constantly. The only time I turn on my windows xp machine is when we are testing code in internet explorer… which is no fun.

Although offices aren’t too expensive around here, we see no need to add such a cost.

Aside from showing you our bootstrapped apartment…

Have you ever wondered how people come up with great ideas for new products and inventions? Are they grabbing them out of thin-air or being channeled by spirits? No, unfortunately. Great ideas are generally a product of three steps in my opinion.

Relate

Let’s say that you are a baseball player. You are up to bat in the world-series and it is bottom of the ninth inning. You are down two strikes, and you have to drive in the runner on third to keep your team in the game. You’re nervous, and it is causing you to sweat profusely.

The pitcher winds up and throws a fast-ball right down the middle of the strike zone. You are ready for this and it couldn’t be an easier pitch. You wind up and take a monstrous swing. As you come around on the ball and are inches from hitting one out of the park, the…