In this context (local phone book ads) that response is a honest one, as almost anyone who has been in the tech consulting business on a “small shop” scale for a while will probably agree. The cost-benefit just isn’t there until your company is a certain size AND when/if you have a service that a lot of people locally need and/or want. And personally, I’m not all that interested in running a large company just yet. (I’d rather enjoy my time with my children, thus staying a “small business” is the easiest way to do that.)

When we first started out we ran ads in a few places around town to get our name out in front of thousands of people. After two years of that without a single nibble, we have ditched that almost entirely and have focused on what has consistently brought people “in the door”. Word of Mouth (WoM) referrals (referrals from clients, references on blogs and websites, etc.), our website (via search engines), our open source WordPress plugins and of course happy, repeat clients.

The business that we’re in, and our specialty in particular, is still a pretty niche market overall. Thus the vast majority of our clients are out-of-state or out-of-country, which makes perfect sense given that most of what we do is focused on the “online community” and not a geographic community.

So, yes, we honestly don’t need traditional advertising and any local traditional advertising that we may do will serve some other purpose as well. That way, at the very least it helps others’ in the community (like supporting the arts or childrens’ sports leagues).

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Chief technology officer
Pay range: $128,017 to $212,100.

Project manager
Pay range: $77,265 to $112,615.

Help desk support
Pay range: $79,033 to $109,838.

Database manager
Pay range: $59,843 to $83,325.

Web developer
Pay range: $57,823 to $87,113.

These numbers had to be pulled out of the air or via a very bad source. There is no way that this is an average range here in Indianapolis.

Just last year I applied for a web developer job at the Indy Star and I am almost certain that their salary would have been nowhere near that salary range, even for someone who has done this sort of thing for over a decade. Most places in Indy might offer $40k if you’re lucky, and I actually had a few tell me that $30k was as high as they could go. AND these were companies that listed their jobs in Career Builder. How hard is it to check your figures when the data should be right in front of you?

Kids, don’t let these numbers fool you into selecting the IT field. Trust me, they are in no way average and outside of Indiana you need to consider the cost of living differences. There are plenty of jobs out there that make better money if that’s all you’re after.

And if you really want to go into the IT field, I suggest paying your dues for a few years to get a feel for the corporate world, and if you’re the entrepreneurial type, start a consulting business on the side that you can groom into a full-time job. I know that’s not for everyone, but I am extremely happy that I am doing what I’m doing. It is a little nerve-wracking at times, but at least you have some say over what you do and how much you make.

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The purchases this year were pretty simple, as I wasn’t after any “big ticket” items or even toys for that matter…

Office Max…I picked up a memory card, some CD-R’s, some pens and most importantly, Norton Internet Security 2008. Savings…well over $100. And they started the online sales on Thursday, which as a bonus.

Circuit City…DVD’s, DVD’s and more DVD’s. They had an amazing sale on DVD’s and all I can say is that maybe the huge discounts are related to the fact the HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs are starting to roll out pretty heavily. But DVD quality beats VHS by far and I don’t own a HDTV, so I’m a happy shopper. I am a little surprised that they offered so many online, but man was that much easier than hunting them down in the store. Savings…I can’t give a good estimate, but it was a lot.

Target…two DVD’s at $3.98 each. I actually had my brother-in-law pick these up. Savings…probably $18-20 or so based on retail prices.

So I’m happy how this worked out and will probably try to do my shopping online for what little shopping I have left to do. I did that one year and it is truly amazing and so much easier. Order, pay, check the mail, wrap, give away. But I still like to buy clothes in person as I can’t get a good grasp on what I’m buying online. Plus, doesn’t the feel of the fabric make a huge impact on the buy or don’t buy decision?

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Here’s the list (and it’ll be updated as other sites pop up)…

• Black Friday 2007 – [RSS Feed]
• BlackFriday.info – [RSS Feed]
• Black-Friday.net
• Black Friday Ads – [Mobile Version | RSS Feed]
• Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com – [Mobile Version | RSS Feed]
• DaddyODeals
• DealsPl.us – [RSS Feed]
• DealTaker Official Black Friday 2007 Ads
• TheBlackFriday.com

If you know of any sites that I don’t have listed, please let me know.

Related, Wal-Mart has already started the “deal wars”, so it’s likely that you’ll be able to snag some good sales before the “official” Christmas shopping season.

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I’m currently undecided about how useful/helpful something like this is (wikis in general, not just this one), but I do see the potential (as long as it is policed AND people still buy pages after it goes beyond $1). And for a one time $1 payment I guess there’s not really a whole lot to lose. If you get any site traffic from it, it’s well worth the investment, right?

So, I went ahead and purchased a few pages to help promote Watershed Studio and Surge Bucket Media. (So far I’ve only had a chance to add content for the weird news page which promotes Squirrel Dish, Utter Oddcast and Utter Oddness…with a nod to Gene & Bryan over at Hometown Tales.)

I think that the one thing that I really like about this site is that fact that they’re using a theme/template that looks more like a normal web page or blog post. A big thing that really turned me off about Wiki’s in the past was the default layout found in every one that I came across just didn’t light any fires for me (along with a handful of functionality issues).

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. And now the wheels are turning on how Wiki’s might be useful for a few of my own sites and I think I’m going to take a look at the software again (whenever I can manage to find some “free time”).

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This is bad news for anyone using Skype for business purposes (as I am) and makes me question my decision of using Skype for VoIP. While my call volume is fairly low since I use e-mail for most of my communication, I know that at least two clients have tried to get in touch over the past two days, and that is bad for business.

I do have a Gizmo number as well, but I wouldn’t say that is a silver bullet either as it has its own issues too. (Go figure, right?)

While my land line does cost a lot more and doesn’t offer “go anywhere” capabilities (useful when you take your “office” mobile), it is stable for the most part. But I’m not ready to switch back just yet. At least not until this is a consistent issue. I’ll ride this one out for a bit and see how everything unfolds. Skype is aware of the issue and they are working on it. Hopefully this will be resolved by Monday and we’ll be back to normal. Until then, e-mail me.

* For anyone wondering what the phrasing is all about, that’s a jab at a comment made by eBay (who owns Skype) a little over a year ago. [1] [2]

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A heartfelt THANK YOU goes out to everyone who has given Watershed Studio their business, referred business to Watershed Studio and who has just plain supported me in this endeavour. Getting a business off the ground is a much harder task that one might think (especially on less than a shoe-string budget) and earning the referrals of others does take time.

So, with that said, I am quite ecstatic to say that business has escalated over the past few months and my mind is beginning to be set at ease *a little*. While entrepreneurship is in my blood, there are days when I begin to wonder if I’m insane to pursue something that is truly volatile no matter how much control I think that I have over it. I begin to fantasize that “life in the cube” is easier and more secure than what I’m attempting to pull off, and in some cases I may be right, but then I snap back into the reality that I’ve been laid off from three (yes three) different jobs by the time I was twenty-eight years old…and that the job market around here is much worse than the government would have you believe (regardless of the field). Then I quickly remember why it is that I’m pursing this crazy dream of mine.

While I’m still applying for jobs and going on interviews as opportunities present themselves, I’m going to continue to ride down this road to see where it leads. I would just hate to arrive at old age and to regret not exploring the possibilities when I was younger.

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Anyway, we had our usual hit list of places to go just in case they had something we were interested in, and this year all four places we went had what we wanted…and that’s a first.

Stop 1 was Office Max at 5am. I picked up a memory card for my camera and a few small items. Small crowd of people, which was good since the sale item were not marked and for some reason checkout was a bit slow.

Stop 2 was Best Buy around 5:15am. As always, I have no idea why we go there, but we usually do and it is always your best bet for a crowd since the guys and the ladies love the place. We picked up a few DVDs and stood in the checkout line for about an hour, which was better than the hour and a half or so that we stood in line last year, but my guess is that a lot of people didn’t realize that they opened at 5am this year instead of the usual 6am in previous years.

Stop 3 was Target around 6:30am. A little busy, but not bad at all and they had the few things that we wanted. There were maybe three people in front of us in line. This was much better than previous years.

Stop 4 was Radio Shack around 6:50am. I picked up a headset to use with Skype
and a new pair of headphones for the podcast since my old ones shorted out on me. Pretty empty and no line at all.

We were on the road and headed home around 7am, just in time to beat the sun up.

The only usual stop that we didn’t make this year was Menards, but they didn’t have much of interest and there’s never much of a crowd there.

Now I need to get the kids down for a nap sometime this morning so I can get a short nap in myself. I’m so tired that I spaced the need of a coffee filter to brew a pot of coffee and had to clean that mess up and start over. And we’ve got a long night of Karnie Christmas II planning and writing in store, so the sleep will be much needed.

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• Black Friday @ GottaDeal.com
• Black Friday 2006 — The folks are using the Watershed Studio WordPress Email Notification Plugin
• Black Friday Ads — [PDFs]

If you want to see the PDFs I’d suggest getting them now since some stores are demanding that they be removed (like Best Buy). Ah, the joys of Christmastime are lingering in the air…

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Why are there major daily newspapers that either:

1. Only post an article for free for “x” amount of days (usually between 7 and 30)
2. Require a user account to view stories

My point is this. In continual review of server logs I’m always noticing hits via search engines to posts which are well beyond a month old. And with those hits web site traffic increases, which in turn boosts the “popularity” and could result in increased advertising revenue (if you were doing that). And both of the above practices make it difficult to quickly dig up information, which would in turn decrease traffic.

My hunch is that this decision has to be money based in some form since bandwidth and disc space are so cheap today. True, it would take some effort to organize the content and advertising, but the potential revenue would seem to justify the cost to me. But then again, I have no concept of what goes into running a website of that magnitude since the largest sites that I’ve dealt with are a few thousand pages over the course of a few years and they probably do that in an average week. So I can see that it might very well come down to a personnel issue. But regardless, it would be nice to see these practices go away. But don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be able to view them at all.

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