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Be Smart, Make a Ton of Money Doing Stupid Stuff
Several weeks ago, someone pointed me to an article on a blog I’d never read before. It was very profound it its simplicity. It was called Smart People should do Stupid Stuff. The basic concept of this blog post was that there are millions of dollars to be made doing things on the internet that…
Read MoreDemote Your Product Manager, Release Better Software
When it comes to software, my second biggest pet peeve is software that doesn’t work. By that I mean software that blatantly doesn’t do things that it should fundamentally be able to do. For example, things like… I don’t know… like maybe changing the administrator password of the application to something other than “admin” without…
Read MoreThe Day the MicroISV Movement Died
In September of 2004, Eric Sink, Founder and CEO of SourceGear coined the word “MicroISV”. He set out on a quest to explore the world of MicroISV’s and learn for himself what they were all about. In the process, he built a fan-base and following of MicroISV’s who wanted to follow in his footsteps. Just 16 months later, with a keyboard and a blog entry, he effectively killed the entire MicroISV movement.
Read MoreHow to Make Developer Certifications That Matter
In general, I’ve found that the number of certifications a developer has is usually inversely proportional to their actual skill. Most people I talk to would agree. But why is this? There’s one simple answer.
The certification system for developers is fundamentally broken.
Read MoreRe-branding Products, Services and Companies
The past several weeks I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the work associated with and the consequences of rebranding something. In part, I’m talking about my Blog but also some of the products that I have developed and some of my services offerings through my consulting company. The process made me sit down, think about re-branding in general, and do some research. Here’s what I learned.
Read MoreHow to Sell Enterprise Software
One of the biggest differences between selling software to small businesses versus selling into the Enterprise space is the price. Most people think that it has to do with how well the software scales and it’s ability to do its job on an “Enterprise” level, whatever that it supposed to mean. Others will say it has to do with the feature sets and whether you bought the Micro-ISV edition or the Enterprise Edition. Simply not true.
The one and only difference is the total price on the bottom of the bill. And it is this total price that dictates whether or not you need sales reps to sell your software.
Read MoreA lesson in economics for the CFO of Microsoft
Chris Liddle, the CFO of Microsoft is hoping/expecting that the next corporate hardware refresh is just around the corner. Microsoft is pinning their hopes on the next hardware refresh to turn around their stock price and boost profits. It’s probably going to happen, but next time it won’t. Here’s why.
Read MoreOutsourcing for Entrepreneurs
If you’re an entrepreneur, you should try to outsource as much as you can possibly get away with.
In the tech industry, ‘outsourcing’ is a dirty word. Outsourcing. The very word invokes thoughts of high technology jobs being sent overseas from the US to be fulfilled by people in India or China. This is seen to be unfortunate for tech workers in the US. It’s a widely accepted misconception that if you don’t speak English well, then you’re somehow less intelligent. If you don’t speak English at all, you’re somehow better off than if you spoke it poorly. No English means you never learned and it’s not your fault. Poor English translates to idiocy. This is obviously wrong, but I digress.
What many people don’t realize is that outsourcing is an entrepreneur’s best friend. Now, before you track me down and smash my car headlights with a baseball bat, let me explain what I mean.
Read MoreTips on negotiating a great consulting rate
One of the more difficult parts of being a consultant is determining and negotiating your rate with a customer. Consulting is a lot different than product based sales because you can generally charge whatever you think you can get away with. The first few months of my consulting career, I was charging $67.50/hour. It took several iterations for me to find out what my time and expertise was worth, but eventually I did. My rate increased to $70 for my second client, $90 for the third, $120 for the fourth, and eventually peaked at $275/hour.
The key to making good money as a consultant is to know how to negotiate your rates. This is not a skill you generally learn in college. It takes time, practice, and even if you’re good at it, you don’t always get what you want. This article contains six and a half tips for negotiating a good consulting rate.
Read MoreOptimize Your Code!!!
Last December, Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror wrote that Hardware is cheap, Programmers are expensive. While I certainly agree with the spirit of his premise and eventual conclusion, it is only applicable if you are running Software as a Service. But he doesn’t say this and I wonder if it was an oversight, or if he forgets what it’s like to ship software to other people. There is clearly a case to be made for telling developers to optimize their code in shipping products.
The problem lies in the very first step where there are some major underlying assumptions which you can infer from the list.
1. This is your budget we’re talking about.
2. You have the budget and means to upgrade the hardware.
3. The software isn’t a dog out of the box.
The final assumption is worth taking note of and is the real reason for this post, so let me give you an example. Or “the” example, rather.
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