We all know that the world around us feels like it’s moving extremely fast. If you’re in charge of marketing for a company of any size, you’ll know exactly what I mean. As soon as you think you’ve figure out your strategy you’ll find that so much has changed that you need to start all over. The video is called “Did you know 3.0″ and was created by Karl Fisch and modified by Scott McLeod. It contains some extremely interesting statistics on technology and just how fast things are moving. It’s not just you, things really are moving fast. The question is: What are you doing to keep ahead of the curve?

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In my experience, most web developers and designers (especially those trying to begin a career) enjoy what they do. They usually start building small sites or themes as a hobby, often getting together with other like-minded people at sites such as Open Designs. They do what they do because they like it, but who can fault them for wanting to get paid for doing something they love? It’s the ultimate goal.

So what do you do? First off, you need to understand that it’s a highly saturated market, and you’re going to have to put in serious time and effort to turn this into a career. You’re going to be putting in 40 hours at work to pay the bills, and another 20-30 hours laying the foundation for your future career. If you aren’t ready to put in the time and effort, you can stop reading right now. This is not a get rich quick scheme, it’s a plan that you can follow if you’re really serious about it.

Now that you’ve agreed to put in the necessary effort, here are some steps to follow:

Step 1:
Register a domain name, and get some inexpensive hosting. You can get hosting through GoDaddy for less than $5/mo, and if you do, you can get a domain name from them for $2 for the first year. Install something like WordPress or Drupal on the site, and put up some general info. As you go, you will build this out into a portfolio, but you need to start somewhere.

Step 2:
If you haven’t already, you should join a community like Open Designs. If you are a designer, create and submit designs. You’re not looking for quantity, you’re looking for quality. Your designs need to stand out as better than all the rest. Be unique. Find out what you’re good at, and perfect it. While you are aiming for quality, quantity DOES matter. However, that won’t be a problem since you’re spending 20-30 hours per week doing this right? I’m sure you can turn out a design every week or two, so you worry about quality, and quantity will handle itself. Release your designs as public domain, but keep your absolute best design for yourself. Creative Commons is more hassle than it’s worth, and you want your designs to be used.

If you are not a designer, try to network with designers. Offer to code their designs into themes for common CMSs, etc. You probably won’t make it very far as a freelance programmer if you don’t have some designers you can use. Build relationships with the quality designers, and remember that quantity will handle itself as you put in those extra hours. Also try to post helpful tidbits in the forums and answer people’s questions when you can. Networking is important.

Step 3:
Continue to build the site you started in step one. Take your best design and add it to your site. If you are a developer, ask a quality designer if you can barter work for a custom design. Document your work on there. Not just a gallery, post some content. Walk a visitor through your design process or make a tutorial on converting a design to a theme. Make sure to set up a contact page with your info so clients can reach you.

Step 4:
Do some inexpensive work for hire. Consider finding a charity or a socially proactive business and do some work for almost nothing. Get used to working with clients and doing things up to their standards. An alternative to the charities is to try out a freelance website. The competition is massive, because the market is global, but if you’re persistent you can get work.

Step 5:
Go for clients with a vengeance. Make a form-style E-Mail that has information about you, links to your portfolio (which should look pretty good at this point), etc. Leave room at the beginning (NOT the end, this is important) for a personal note that will let the potential client know that you personally read and replied to their request. Find places where jobs are posted for work that you are especially good at. Consider finding niche places like a WordPress or Drupal job list where there may be less competition.

Don’t limit yourself to job lists. More than 80% of jobs are never posted anywhere. Find local businesses that have poor sites or no site at all, and take them a proposal (in person) with specific ways they will benefit from it. If they have a bad site, make sure to be careful what you say, it’s VERY common to hear an owner say “my {insert relative here} made that site for us” and you don’t want to be insulting. Base your argument on facts and statistics, possibly taking mockups or printouts of sites that are similar to what you are recommending.

Step 6:
Make the leap. At some point, you have to let go of your regular job and switch to this full time. I haven’t really found a rule of thumb for when this is. It’s different for every person. If you’re having a hard time deciding if you’re ready to drop the 9-5, consider getting a part-time job elsewhere and doing this full-time. Maybe the extra income will help ease the transition. Mostly remember that freelancing is still a job, it’s just one you like. And it’s not against the rules to like your job.

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Building a company is hard work, but I’ve decided to draw a line in the sand. Xavisys is going to be a great company because I stand behind it, and I’m an upstanding, honest person that you can get to know.

The term “Marketing strategy” sounds like a group of people in a back room, devising ways to fool you, the consumer, into buying whatever they offer. It gives the impression that trickery or underhanded tactics are being used. I want to blow that out of the water. There are plenty of great businesses out there that have great people standing behind them. Rackspace gives me an account representative that actually answers the phone when I call, and works to get any issue (even the minor ones) resolved as quickly as possible. Not exactly status quo with hosting companies, but it should be. My good friend James Pearson has a socially proactive business called Acholi Beads, and I would be able to guarantee it was great even if I knew nothing about it except that he stands behind it. That’s the kind of business I like to deal with, and that’s the kind of business Xavisys is, and will continue to be.

There are other places out there where you can take your web development work. There are other places that have a thorough knowledge of WordPress customization and plugin development. There are even other people out there with years of real world experience. While I have all that, and am confident that Xavisys can stand on technical merit alone, that’s not why you should use Xavisys. You should use it because I’m active in my community (online and off), and have people who will speak to my character. You should use it because it’s a family owned and operated company, and my wife Christen and I personally guarantee you will never be charged more hours than were really worked, and that corners won’t be cut that will cost you in the long run. You should use it because you know that it’s named after my son Xavier, and I want it to be an example of how he should live, not how much he should make.

That’s my commitment, not at the expense of quality work, but in addition to it. It’s a high standard, and if you ever think I’m not living up to it, let me know.

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I asked James if he might help me with work out a marketing strategy for Xavisys, and the first thing he asked for was a white board (preferably a few). I may not be creative, but I know the advantages of having space to scribble as you work out problems. Along the way however, I’ve gotten rid of the white board, in favor of my glass desk. I keep a collection of dry erase markers and Vis-A-Vis markers at my desk, and whenever I need to write something down, I grab one and write it right on my desk. Dry erase markers are for very short-term things, since moving things around on the desk can often erase what you’ve written. The Vis-A-Vis markers on the other hand stay just fine, until they get wet, which is perfect, because they can be cleaned off with a damp paper towel. Since it’s not very cool to cram a bunch of people around my desk in my office, I got out the markers, and we started marking up some windows in my house.

We started by talking about what Xavisys does, the mundane list of services rendered. Soon we were talking about what made Xavisys stand apart from other companies. Then, as we wrapped up the boring summation, things really stared to happen. James and Steve started spouting ideas at break neck speed. Nothing was thrown out or ignored, only built upon. I enjoy improv comedy and used to be part of a group that performed and I’ve even taught improv techniques. We had an exercise called “yes and” which taught players how to take ideas and run with them, rather than ignore them. Basically, you could not say no, or turn down any idea offered, instead you answered “yes and ____,” adding your own twist to the scene in progress. This was that game.

This method produces plenty of bad ideas. Among the tag lines that were later thrown out were phrases like “Enslave the Internet”, “Funk Shun” and “Make the internet your pool boy!” What amazed me, was that after a relatively short time, small nuggets of gold began to emerge from the dross, phrases like “Interface with the world” and “Take control of the internet.” All leading to the one diamond in the rough, “Control Your Internet.”

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