Amazingly awesome website? Check. Product designs and purpose? Check. What more could we possibly need?
Ok, a lot more. We need a lot more and its going to take time and effort – but it’s certainly a start!
Would you like to see where we are going with this?
I have wanted to start my own business for many years.
I have delayed myself repeatedly with the requirement for a steady income to support myself and family, and at some point, it became a necessity to look for additional work.
The answer was the same one I had been staring at for as long as I have been thinking about my career. It was time to utilise all that I had studied in business and software development, to make that leap from coder and hoarder of knowledge to someone with practical and valuable contributions available to be put to work for those that require such things.
So here I am ready to design, develop and deploy software. Years of training and business experience has not prepared me for the emotional experience of this entrepreneurial journey. But here we go…
The initial plan
Aim: Provide custom web and application development solutions
How: How can I do it, or more importantly – how can I demonstrate that I can do it?
What: What I can offer and feasibly achieve – Web applications and Software Solutions
Where: Online presence advertising the services available
When: Availability to be considered – starting now, available for manageable workload
Why: To support my family
It’s one thing to put up a website, advertise a service and sit and wait for people to jump at the chance to procure said service. Obviously, a naïve notion if that were the entirety of the idea.
We need to be able to get noticed, and getting noticed means some form of advertisement for this endeavour.
I remember how the importance of a developer’s blog was highlighted throughout my software development and business training, but more importantly I remember the value that other people’s developer blogs have brought to me. Not just for motivation, but the learning journey. I remember the names of developer’s I have learnt from; I remember their selfless form of wisdom sharing that was the ‘developer’s blog’ and all that it can offer. It means repeat searches, repeat readers, and ultimately: followers. People subscribing to these developer articles, following their favourite developers, or the developer’s that provided the most useful, or comprehensive steps on their development journey, or providing the perfect tutorial for those tricky development tasks.
Want to keep the Business site and developer blog with some operational separation?
This then requires 2 sites, one for the business services and one with the developer blog and tutorials and resources. Enough traffic on the developer blog, and perhaps it can be casually directing to the business services site for those that require it.
Awesome! That’s a good start…
Although, when procuring this type of business service, people want to see evidence of experience. There is a necessity for a demonstration of the style and format, and evidence of effectivity.
I know I can make a product site, I can make a web application and include inventory and database management, or payment integrations – but how do I demonstrate this?
When you are applying for a job as a developer you simply send them your resume, attend an interview, maybe take a test, or answer a few questions to demonstrate your knowledge and you’re on your way. A resume is not exactly the answer for the advertisement and procurement of business contracts. The challenge here is, before I start to offer my services, and even before I start to write developer posts and tutorials – I need to demonstrate how and why I am the one to do this.
Ok, the plan now starts to formulate:
Developer Blog – Online Store – Business Services Website
Three web sites to make before I start making web sites professionally.
Luckily, I already have a design for a web application I have started drafting that I can contribute to this. I can utilise this draft design and initial framework as a prototype for custom web applications. Though a custom web application written with C#, SQL, NodeJs and React is not quite the best format for the above 3 requirements, the prototype will serve as good inspiration for the designs.
It is time to get started!
Brent McEwan