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Should You Start a Business or Remain Independent?

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As a programmer, you’re likely used to working either as an employee or an independent contractor (which is basically an employee on temporary hire). However, there’s another option that gives you the same flexibility as an independent contractor, with even more benefits: starting your own business, possibly with more employees working under you.

But what would the process of starting a programming business look like, and is it worth the effort?

Steps to Starting a Business

The process of starting a business isn’t as intensive as you might think, and if you’re already well versed in the art of programming, it should be highly approachable.

Get your personal finances in order. Before you can start a business, you’ll need to get your personal finances in order. If you’re going to get a small business loan or fund the business yourself, you’ll need to be in good credit standing, with plenty of savings to cover your needs. Since your revenue may be inconsistent at first, good personal finances are necessary to stabilize your income. If you have debt, it may be a good idea to consolidate those debts and lower your monthly payments. Otherwise, work on building your emergency savings and make sure you have a budget in place.

Sketch out a business plan. Next, you’ll want to sketch out a business plan. You’ll likely be doing much of the same work you’re doing now, but you need to formalize your plan for building the business. Declare a niche for yourself, and research your demographics so you can claim the most appropriate target market. Then, research your competition and find an angle that will differentiate your business from those of your competitors. You’ll also want to create a financial model for the first few years of your operation; what will your monthly expenses be? How much revenue do you anticipate collecting?

Register your business name and build a website. Once you have your business plan in place, you’ll need to decide how to structure the business (LLCs are a popular option if you plan to hire multiple employees but keep the business relatively small), and register your business’s name in the state you plan on doing business. Once your name is registered, buy an appropriate domain name and build a website where your prospective customers can find you and get answers to their most common questions.

Invest in infrastructure. With your website in place, you can start to make the ideas you made in your business plan a reality. Rely on your personal capital, capital you’ve raised from friends and family, or money from small business loans to invest in your infrastructure. Depending on your goals and your vision, that might include investing in office space, buying new furniture and machines, or even investing in advertising to start an inbound flow of leads.

Start hiring. After that, you can start hiring talent. You may be tempted to recruit people to round out your team as quickly as possible, but it’s better to hire one at a time as your needs grow. Since you’re a startup, you likely won’t be able to afford the best talent in the industry, but you can make up for your lack of cash offerings with perks, such as the culture of your business. Make sure you have at least one financial expert on your team, and someone dedicated to attracting clients through sales, marketing, or both.

Advantages of Business Ownership

Why would you want to start a business rather than doing things on your own or a part of someone else’s?

Revenue potential. With an entire business under your control, you’ll have bigger potential revenue streams. In the early stages of your business, you’ll likely make less, but there’s no limit to how big your business can grow.
Decision making power. As a business leader, you’ll have more control over how your business develops. You can pick and choose which clients you keep, who you hire, and what projects you tackle or delegate.

Access to more talent and capabilities. Having a round staff means you’ll have access to a bigger pool of talent and capabilities. That gives you access to more potential projects, and therefore, more paying clients.

Less volatility. Though the early days will be highly volatile, eventually your business will stabilize. You’ll be able to draw a steady paycheck, and you’ll have systems in place to protect against sudden changes in demand or availability.

Starting a business isn’t for everybody, but to the entrepreneurial spirits out there, the process of building and running a business is its own reward. After reading this article, you should have a good feel for whether it’s in your best interest to start a business or not—and you’ll know the steps to get there if it is.

4 Reasons to Schedule Your 9-5 Staff Members

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Creating a schedule for your staff members that work a set Monday through Friday schedule might sound redundant, but it’s actually one of the best ways to increase productivity and deliver your projects on time.

Although set schedules seem predictable, people often have regular appointments, leave early, and sometimes work remotely. [Read more…]

5 Reasons To Reconsider Hiring A Web Designer

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Most businesses need a website at some point in their evolution. To the average person with no technical background, the process of building a website can seem nebulous. Even people with a background in technology can become daunted by the task of developing a website. The amount of planning involved is extensive and requires thinking ahead.

With an emphasis on beautiful design and cool features, many business owners want to follow the latest trends, but that may not be necessary. Depending on what goals you want your website to accomplish, you might be better off creating a simple design on your own instead of paying for a $10,000 custom WordPress project. [Read more…]

Tips to Creating an SEO Friendly Website on a Drupal Platform

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Despite the occasional voice in the wilderness crying to the contrary, the popular content management system (CMS) Drupal is NOT impossible to optimize for search engines. In fact, any Internet entrepreneur with even a little bit of technical savvy and a whole lot of motivation should have no trouble turning their website into a click-sucking machine that ranks well on Google for the chosen keywords. But what exactly do you need to do in order to get the most from your Drupal hosting? We thought you’d never ask.

Keyword Placement

Before anything else, you need to figure out which keywords will bring the most amount of traffic to your website. This grunt work might take hours or even weeks but it is the foundation of your Internet business. But after you create a list, then what? The proper placement of a keyword (or keyword phrase) makes all the difference between a steady stream of traffic to your article or the cyber equivalent of a great, big, silent YAWN.

There are specific locations where you should include your article’s keyword. Make sure it is in the title, and the closer to the beginning the better. It should also be found in the first and last paragraphs. These are acknowledged locations where Google’s search engine looks to determine the topic of that particular web page. Don’t worry about stuffing the keyword into the rest of the next any certain number of times. Write naturally. The rest will take care of itself.

Schema: Using Structured Data Markup to Improve Your Site’s SEO

Don’t Neglect SEO Modules

For a website owner with Drupal hosting, don’t forget to make use of the SEO modules. A module is essentially a small program that makes it ever-so-easy to add a particular functionality to your website. When it comes to SEO, there are a handful of modules that you should not overlook. These have powerful built-in features that simplify what would otherwise be a complex task, and are available at either no cost or a nominal fee. Our recommendations:

  1. SEO Checklist: Install this one first. It includes a list of the most significant actions to take in accomplishing the necessary SEO, and recommends which Drupal modules are your best bet to get it done.
  1. Content Optimizer: Checks to make sure your content adheres to best SEO practices. Analyzes pages to let you know where modifications are needed.
  1. Pathauto: Eliminates the need to create a SEO-friendly URL from scratch every time. Set the proper format and forget about it.
  1. Google Analytics: As a website owner, the more information you collect about visitors, the better. You need to know where they came from, which pages they visited, how long they stayed and more so you can produce more of the content they like and less of what they don’t.

Backlinks Still Provide Juice

Even though Google used the occasions of recent algorithm updates Penguin and Panda to try and scare so-called “link farmers,” there’s no denying that high quality inbound links are still well worth your time. The key to successful backlink building is to make it look natural. If it is natural, then you’ll have no trouble from the search engine giant whose goal is only to nail comment spam and professional link builders.

The original point of inbound links was to confirm to visitors that they will find quality, targeted content on your website. No big deal, right? It shouldn’t be if you are doing your best to provide such content. Entire books have been written on how to generate legitimate inbound links. The thing to keep in mind is to never cut corners, and don’t get caught up in numbers. It’s been said from sources who are in a position to know that a single link back from a respected website is worth hundreds of junk links.

Web Hosting Providers for Common Backend Languages

The Content Creation Cycle

It used to be that you could publish a static page and let it sit there forever. These days, that’s a sure ticket to the bottom of the search engine rankings. Google loves fresh content. Depending upon whom you ask, new content should be posted anywhere from daily to at least three or four times weekly.

And while you’re at it, make sure your new articles conform to current best practices. For instance, tossing up a 100-word piece, even if you do it seven days a week, won’t help your Drupal site gain much traction. Vary word count from 750 to 2,000+. Shorter stuff just doesn’t cut it. Go as long as you want if the topic demands it. You don’t have to recreate the same old boring format either; post white papers, infographics, ebooks, videos in addition to blog posts.

The Need for Speed

An underappreciated aspect of SEO is a fast-loading website. Believe it or not, Google punishes pages that load too slowly, operating on the theory that slow loaders make for a poor visitor experience. There are plenty of free website speed testers available online. A good one should allow you to schedule periodic tests. If your host is a perennial tortoise, consider switching or even upgrading to a VPS account.

A final suggestion. Spot check your website’s search engine rankings on a regular basis. The Google algorithm is subject to constant tweaking by the “brain trust”. What is recommended as SEO gospel one day might fall out of favor the next. Follow this three-step process to maintain that front-page ranking: educate yourself on SEO; implement current best practices; monitor your progress. Good luck out there!

5 Ways to Get Trust Through Design: A Look at Healthcare Design

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Fostering a sense of trust in a business logo is always a priority; but it’s arguably even moreso with healthcare-related logos and websites. After all, the internet isn’t as secure as it used to be. According to published statistics, 50% of all adults in the U.S. are hacked every year, and issues from credit card skimming to identity theft crop up at increasing rates. Healthy skepticism helps keep consumers safe, and reminds them to practice due diligence… but it can also make them more reserved with purchasing decisions, and reluctant to provide identifying information online.

That said, it’s far from impossible to help consumers trust your website and brand. From traditional small practices to boutique healthcare offices, there are a few common visual aids which can help produce a sense of trustworthiness.

 

  • Avoid Common Pitfalls

 

According to this article on medical logo design by Chase Design, there are a few common pitfalls with healthcare logo design to avoid! The most egregious of these is to use common stock art. This is usually a hot-ticket item which can make your website feel illegitimate and spammy. Another big problem? Going too complex. Using several different font styles or crowded icons can give users a negative takeaway: plus, it can look like you’re trying too hard. Another issue to avoid is being too generic. If your logo could be used for any kind of practice interchangeably, it probably needs to undergo a little more personalizing.

 

  • Use the Right Colors

 

There’s a reason that blue is a popular logo color in and out of the healthcare community. In fact, roughly 1 in 3 logos use blue! The why is tied up with human psychology. Most people find the color blue cool, pleasant, and calming: which is just what you want when you’re trying to impart a sense of trust. Red is more stimulating and intense, likely to create a sense of urgency, which is why it’s used often to indicate emergency medical centers and urgent care offices.

 

  • Use the Right Font

 

It might be a surprise to hear that even fonts can impart trust, but it’s true! Writer and filmmaker Errol Morris once conducted a secret test with the help of the New York Times, and found overwhelmingly that the serifed typeface Baskerville was more agreeable than compared fonts, which included Helvetica and Comic Sans. But the right font needs to do more than just be trustworthy. It must also be legible at a variety of sizes, and fit optimally within your website.

 

  • Communicate Yourself Effectively

 

Your logo should accurately and concisely communicate any healthcare brand. For example, a clinic for prenatal services and a clinic for radiology wouldn’t be expected to look the same, and a high-end luxury clinic should communicate that sense of luxury in its logo. A great way to see if your brand is communicating effectively is to remove its text, and look simply at its icon. Would a stranger seeing this for the first time have a good general idea of your services? Work on your logo until the answer is ‘yes’.

 

  • Use Associated Logos for More Credibility

 

This last tip isn’t about the logo of your firm, but about other logos which could (or should) be placed on your website. Using Better Business Bureau logos in your footer, as well as the logos for other business or medical associations, can help foster a sense of security. On an ‘About’ page, you could also feature the logos of the publications which provide media mentions of your business.

The Bottom Line

It’s true that trust is important for any website: but healthcare websites in particular rely on building trust from the first second. When someone’s health and well-being is at stake, they want to rest assured that they’re in good hands! To help convey trust, make certain that your logo uses appropriate colors, a legible and trustworthy font, and fantastic iconography. Build more trust by artfully placing other trust-building logos at the footer of the website as appropriate. And of course, avoid the common pitfalls of using stock art or getting an overcrowded design.

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