Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Welcome! And, it's about time!

Well, here we are finally. Gregory and I together rack up a lot of hours working with our design clients on marketing and promoting their brands and websites, and that means lots of advice about social networking and blogs. We strongly encourage people to start them, promote them, and keep them updated. We design blog headers and backgrounds, and install them. We recommend ways to get the most out of them, suggestions for what to write about, and how to build more readers. And, yes, that's right, here we are FINALLY finding the time to start our own blog.

I call it the curse of the expert - it seems that whatever field you become expert in, ironically goes somewhat untended in your own world. Back in the day, there was some sort of quaint saying about the village cobbler's kids having no shoes. More recently, I've heard something about mechanics whose own cars never start. And you would be surprised at how many professional web designers hire someone ELSE to design their own websites - or (like us), have a rather pieced-together site that they take stabs at updating when they have a few free minutes (like that ever happens, right?).

It may be due, in part, to performance anxiety. The skilled surgeon who performs art in the operating room gets nervous and cannot (maybe should not) perform on his own friends or family members. The designer with a million ideas is at a loss for how to narrow them down into a single decision. I've always been like this - bit of a renaissance person, with a million interests and hobbies - how does anyone pick just one?

But, fortunately, between us we DO have lots and lots of ideas for what to write about - thanks to YOU! We get asked so many fantastic questions every single day, from "where do I get those nice Facebook and Twitter icons?" to "how do I boost the names on my mailing list?" to "what's the most cost-effective marketing method for someone on a really tight budget?" And we have answers! Lots of them. After running several successful eCommerce businesses over more than a decade, being named as a top eBay Best In Stores for 2 years running, and successfully navigating Amazon selling, we have a ton of personal knowledge and experience in what it's REALLY like to manage an Internet business day in and day out. As professional web designers and consultants, we've worked with everyone from the smallest stay-at-home-mom-turned-entrepreneur to the multi-million-dollar-a-year companies with multiple selling venues and staffs of hundreds.

So, welcome to our blog - we hope you find it both fun and entertaining, and also extremely useful and practical. You can bring us your questions and we'll do our best to answer them - and if we don't know, we'll be learning right along with you. Hopefully, we'll also get to know each other a little better and make some new friends.

To help us kick off, please send us your most burning questions about web design, website management, software, marketing - anything that you've been wanting to know or incorporate. We'll post the top 3 questions and answers over the next few weeks, and the 3 selected respondents will receive a FREE set of customized web icons for use anywhere online (or in your email signatures) to promote your own blogs, stores, social networking pages, and more! This set is custom done and available exclusively through JennarationX, and valued at $25, so grab it while you can! Just email us with your question, or leave it in the comments section of this post, along with your name and email address, and you will be automatically entered to win.

And thanks for following - we're so excited to be here!

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