I’ve often wondered what it would be like growing up before computers. For me, it would have been quite boring. The digital age has been a great experience for me in expressing my creative binary side.
I am one of those web geeks who loves to create and build anything possible. What is interesting though is that I am not a web developer or designer. Instead, I am a web manager. I have worked with developers and designers all over the world to build many, many websites.
I can talk code geek, and even dabble with it a little, but anything in depth and I’m lost. In college I took several programming classes, and barely passed. What I gained from those courses though, was an understanding how everything came together, and I am able to articulate that to those whom I work with.
So, below is my 2010 expense table for my web projects. Many of them (okay, all of them) didn’t make much money. However, it was a good exercise on exactly how much I spend on the web (almost $6,500 ouch!). Hopefully, 2011 will be a lot more kind to my wallet!
| Company | Review | Total Amount Spent |
|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy.com | Oh Godaddy, how I love to hate you. Not only do you like to inch your domain prices up all the time on me, but you also like to sell me everything including your grandmother. If it wasn't for your amazing customer service Moniker would be my main registrar! | $405.72 |
| eLance.com | Occasionally I teach a community class on building your web business. I tell all my students they need to utilize elance for programming. It isn't the best place to find a designer, but when you need some good cheap code this is a great place. | $250 |
| Brainware | This is my best kept secret when building a website. Brainware is a web development company out of India who is talented and amazingly inexpensive. They can design and program a wordpress site for $140--not too bad. Their low prices are what makes it possible for me to create websites for family and friends without going broke. | $723 |
| Milven | Milven is another great secret of mine. He is a digital artist out of the Philippines. He created the banner for piggers.com ($25). He has drawn cartoon and mascots for me as low as $35, and he is far better (and less costly) than any American logo company I have worked with. Don't bother asking me how to contact him. There is noooooooo way I am sharing this guy! He is all mine bwahahaha!!!! | $427 |
| Rahul | Rahul is a logo artist out of India (though, he will tell you Singapore, since he thinks people are biased to India). Rahul does decent logos but he doesn't take direction very well. If you don't like his first attempt he will argue about why you should like it. However, he is skilled so sometimes it doesn't matter. He also does a great job touching up photos (and yes you are welcome to request his info). | $61 |
| Instinct Entertainment | There is no way I can endorse any product developed by Instinct Entertainment. They are the creator of a widely popular wordpress ecommerce plugin called WP e-Commerce. However, it is HORRIBLE!!!! Don't every update the plugin because it will ALWAYS mess up your web store. I have found that if you want to go with a shopping cart that you best try a different CMS than wordpress, because unfortunately WP e-Commerce is really the only big contender out there! | $40 |
| Verio | Years ago while living in Boca Raton, Florida I worked at Verio as a server technician. Unfortunately, they gave us discounts on domains and I literally bought hundreds of them. I have since either let them lapse or moved them to GoDaddy. I still have a few remaining and some day I will them all over to GoDaddy. Personally, I don't care for Verio as a domain registrar. They have not changed anything since I worked there in the early 2000's. Come on guys, it has been 10 years and you might want to check out Java Script. | $26.85 |
| Verango | Verango used to be my dad's ecommerce solution. They were okay, but we didn't like paying the monthly fee. When I created my dad a wordpress shopping cart they downloaded all the contacts in the cart for a fee. I appreciated it, since most companies would have made me jump through the hoops to get the information since I wasn't using their product anymore. After the nightmare building a ecommerce wordpress site I would change back to veracart if they didn't have a monthly fee. I just want to pay once and forget about my shopping cart! | $20 |
| Paul Adiyanto | One thing I love to add into all my designs is a mascot (as you can see from the pig in piggers). I do crowd sourcing for my design and I always give runner-up prizes to the designers who created a great design but didn't win the contest. Paul is logo artist and was a runner-up for one of my projects. I liked his work, but the winner of the contest created exactly what I was looking for (you can contact Paul for design at coroflot.com/paulwaterfall) | $10 |
| Ushamah | Like Paul Adiyanto, Ushamah was another runner-up to my design contest. If anyone is a runner-up in my contest than their work was really good, but the winner was better suited for what I was looking for. Ushamah was no different than from the rest. | $10.05 |
| Text Broker | Ah, Text Broker, how you make my life easier and complicated all at the same time. Text Broker is a great website to find people to write for your blogs. Obviously, you pay the writer, but it all goes through Text Broker. It would be so much easier to break free from the TB system and just pay the writer, but obviously TB wouldn't make their money. So, when ever I need an authoritative article written I go to TB. Their writers can be good (and I usually request the same writer anyway), but keep in mind if you go cheap you are most likely going to get a cheap writer. | $94.85 |
| Shandie Kusuma | Okay, I absolutely LOVE Shandie's work. Shandie is a graphic artist who has some mad skills in drawing. I paid him to create avatars for everyone involved in my master's thesis as a thank you for their help. He charged $50 a person and there were 13 people involved. The quality of work was worth much more, he truly is an amazing artist. | $651.75 |
| Worldcitiesdatabase.com | For my masters I need to create a web app that allowed the user to not only put in their city and country, but also their longitude and latitude. I hunted for a free database but in the end went with WorldCitiesDatabase.com. Their database did the trick and my professor loved the web app. | $79 |
| Ramakrishna | Ram is another runner-up in my crowd sourcing design contest. I enjoy his work immensely and have awarded him as a winner in past design contests. | $10 |
| Winks Design | Okay, with hesitation Winks Design is the best design firm out there. Seriously, I have worked with web design companies all over the world and Winks Design beats them hands down. The only downside is that they are an American firm, which means American prices. However, sometimes you just have to pony up and pay what is needed to get the job done. I contracted Winks Design to polish up my final project with masters. Both my professor and I were quite impressed with their final product! | $3000 |
| Moniker | Out of all the domain registrars I prefer Moniker. Their prices are one of the best on the web. However, their web interface is confusing and their customer service is horrible. IF you can find their customer service email don't plan on hearing back from them for a while. Unfortunately, for this reason I almost always buy my domains from GoDaddy. | $16.68 |
| Milan | If there is anyone who is my go to sort of guy for coding it is Milan. I have worked with Milan over the many years and I consider him a great friend. He lives in India and I have never met him, but if I need a quick php fix he is the best guy for the job! | $164 |
| Sonic Boom Labs | I am a bit biased here, but the owner of SBL's is a good friend of mine. He is a whiz kid with Internet marketing and I love having his company handle all the dirty work for SEO. I honestly can say he is amazing at his work, and one of the last few marketers who just does the work without the hype! | $134 |
| iStock | I seriously hate iStock. Not only are they extremely overpriced I feel their scheme of only giving you a year for credits is a joke. Currently I have two credits that are going to expire, but I can't buy anything of quality for two credits, so I have to buy more in order to use my two credits. Did I mention I hate these guys!!! I now use 123rf.com they are a lot cheaper and don't try to rip you off! | $18.25 |
| Dan Rubin | Ahhhh, Mr. Rubin, my domain seller who sends me a daily email of his current domains. The $99 is actually what I paid to acquire piggers.com. I have bought several domains in the past from him and I highly recommend him to anyone and everyone. | $99 |
| Cristopher Ocaña | Cris's email signature says, "Code is Poetry." He quickly fixed a wordpress theme I had, which was proof of his poetic coding skills Ü. | $15 |
| Amiee | I've worked on several programming projects over the years with Amiee, and she is the only American I actually do any coding work with. She is accurate and quick with her work. This project was a simple psd to html job, which did rather well. | $21.44 |
| Grand Total | Sad but true! | $6,277.59 |