This website exists for two reasons: 1) to raise our visibility and accessibility within the community as a developer, 2) to create deal-flow that can be sourced wherever we please. With regards to #2, we happen to be developers, and so the defaults are always going to be ourselves, but we're not greedy and we're very interested in the wellfare of clients and partner companies, and as such we will work with partners to make sure that everyone gets what's absolutely best for them.
Embargoes
With regards to embargoes (more specifically non-competes, and NDAs), it is our express intent to honor these embargoes at least inasmuch as required by letter of contract. If you have a non-compete with us, you can expect us to honor it, and you should take no content on this website to mean that we do not intend to fully honor the contracts. It is further our intent that embargoeing companies are to be considered primary partners who will benefit most directly from the dealflow generated by this website during the life of these contracts. Separately, but just as important, if we've signed an NDA with you, you can be sure we are taking it very seriously indeed.
Website Structure
More for our benefit than yours, here we lay out our plans for how this website is to operate, both as a lead-generation channel, as a storefront, and as a warehouse of useful knowledge.
- Hanging Shingles - Simple pages of highly segmented content for the purpose of expressing the ability to do a specific kind of work (ex: Ruby Development), much the same as a barber hangs out a shingle to suggest they are open to business. These are not intended to be magnum opuses of great content, but just to act as an open-for-business sign.
A shingle should be treated as tiny individual businesses with their own messaging, and should come with supporting information about each tiny business, including:
- Addressing the specific problem head-on without beating around the bush
- Familiar messaging to the topic at hand
- A listing of our process (how we see the problem, how we solve the problem)
- Price Guide - A separate page showing cost (doubles as a landing page for long-tail keyterms)
- Social Proof - Listing of anyone who can say nice things about us
- Email Form - For nice visitors to sign up for our highly valuable periodicals
- Invitation to call or meet
- Authority Pieces - Evergreen(ish) content pages speaking to a topic of interest on which we have some level of authority. The purpose is twofold: 1) to occasionally write things which are linkable, and 2) write things which establish knowledge and authority, which we have. These kinds of pages will typically include:
- Great writeup of a worthy topic
- Newsletter form
- Invitation to call or meet
- Resources - Lists of resources interesting to people in the industry. The purpose is the same twofold purpose from above: 1) to occasionally write things which are linkable, and 2) write things which establish knowledge and authority, which we have. These kinds of pages will typically include:
- List of resources, by topic or by month/year
- Newsletter form
- Invitation to call or meet
- Special Event Registration - Pages allowing the visitors to register for upcomming seminars (still in the works)
- Basic seminar information
- Class newsletter form (likely different from the main newsletter)
- Invitation to call or meet
Further Plans
For the same reasons-for-existence as expressed in the first paragraph, this website will also serve as a conduit into which we will funnel interested parties to seminars and meetings. The seminars will be a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge where we teach valuable topics for free (or nearly free) and in exchange hope for some good measure of business to come at a later time. Also, it is our interest to eventually put some nice teaching videos up on the site to help people navigate the world of online marketing, leading people to trust our opinions and knowledge on matters (which we find to be good and valuable).
Metrics for Measuring Success
While we consider this the most satisfying of hobbies to build traffic via SEO (being a highly competitive endeavor and being a bit of a competitive-natured person), it should be noted that SERPs, impressions, and clicks are only vanity metrics. However, if this website leads to many sit-down meetings and at least a single extra closed deal in a year's time, then it will have exceeded our hopes.
