Tag Archives: change

Web design is still a growing part of computer industry.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, , , ,

Believe it or not, most business STILL do not have a real web page.  The market really fell out for the computer hardware business but we still are seeing a large demand for web design. The good thing about web design is that it has become easier and much cheaper to do but the perceived value has not gone down.  There are many companies out there selling sites for $5,000 or so that outsource it and pay less than $200 to get the site made, pocketing the rest.  I figure I can find a way to make a better site and charge much less.

When it has come to web design our company has usually passed it off.  It was not our core business, it was something that no one at our company knew how to do.  A few times we hired people to help us do web design for clients but every time it has failed, the designer was not as good as they thought they were and the client demand more than they originally wanted.

So now that our core business is down I decided that I would personally learn more about it.  Yea I know HTML, I know tables and forms, and I have built many pages over the years but to do the really good ones you need much more.  You need to know CSS to make it look good and have the same format.  You need to know PHP so that it is easy to change, dynamic and more functional.  So I set out last week to learn these two things.  CSS was easy, it is a simple concept that took only a few hours to learn.  PHP was much more complex because it is much more powerful, but after a few long days I feel I am good at PHP also.

The next step was to test out my ideas by making a simple website for one of my customers, I just happened to have one who needed a web page, so I built one for them.  You can check it out here. During the process of building this site I also have found a ton of really good resources

If you have been a reader for a long time you will know that I am all about delegating things.  My general rule is that if you can find someone who can do what you are doing for less, and is at least 80% as good you should have them do it.  The problem is that for me I have not found this, everyone wants to charge way too much and I have not found anyone who can even do the whole job at 80% the level that I now can.  I have found people who can do parts better or worse.  This is why I am not delegating.  If I start getting larger I may start to delegate more.  But in reality if you are building up a libary of tools it makes it much faster and easier.

The world is changing forever. It is getting flat, feel the pressure yet?

concepts, Entrepreneurship, Money, The World, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The world is changing forever.  Well this has been a true statement for as long as history has been recorded.  The pace of this change is much faster now than it has ever been.  The problem is that many people are stuck in their way of thinking.  The learn things one way and most people, at some point stop keeping up with the changes and start to fall behind, way behind.

So how is the world changing right now?  Well we are in the middle of a few major changes.  The key to most of these changes it the spread of technology.  Because the United States was first in most everything we had to go slow, create standards and design from scratch.   Other nations have had the gift of just being able to copy our progress.  Think about advances in computers, medicine or cars.  The high tech developed nations have designed the improvements but everyone; even those in the poorest nations get the benefit.

Now having the same, standardized protocols methods for doing things all over the world, along with an instant, worldwide communication system things REALLY have changed.  Now people from anywhere can communicate instantly, they can chat, they can talk.  And now it is everywhere and so cheap that people with almost nothing can still go to a public computer lab and join the global work force.  With just a small investment an office can be opened anywhere to do most things.  This allows the work to be done in the location where the labor is the cheapest.  This premise is called the Flattening of the World.

When I was in Asia for much of last year I still had an Arizona phone number, I was able to control computers in Arizona just as if I was sitting at the keyboard.  I was able to send email, create web pages, move money from account to account, write checks online, order parts and have them shipped to our production area, as well as sell products to customers.  I could do 90% of what was required to manage a company.  For the other 10% I delegated it, and was available on the phone to help the person out.  This is happening all over the world.

No longer do the super smart people from all over the world want to move to the US or western Europe so that they could be apart of the global high tech work force, they now can do it from home, in their native country.

This change is HUGE, and it will never be reversed.  It will FOREVER deeply impact the way the world works.  Most jobs are now at risk and the jobs will be given to the person who will do the best job for the best price.  If you keep your job the price pressure of the rest of the world will make the wages you are paid go down.  This is great for the people who see it coming and create a system to take advantage of this new shift.  It will be the worst thing for those that don’t keep up, and those that expect things not to change.

People who are in lesser developed nations will also gain, they will be the target of huge amounts of education, and capital.

There will be a new definition of the middle class, the definition will be MUCH lower than what is currently considered the middle class now, maybe a family income of $15,000 per year.  world is flatBasically what we see as the middle class in the United States will be much smaller than it currently is.  And millions of people all over the developing world will be moved out of poverty and into their definition of a middle class.

If you want to learn much more about this there is a really smart guy named Thomas L Friedman, he invented the term and latterly wrote the book on this subject.  This book is one of the most important books of our current time, and those that understand it will be much more successful in life.

No matter what happens it is huge and will affect you.  So it if your choice get educated about it and take advantage of the change, or just wait and be sideswiped by it.