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Everyone who knows us here at Bit Rebels knows that we love to celebrate geeks, promote geeks and write about everything that has to do with being a geek. We often joke that someday geeks will inherit the earth, and if you’re a geek, you know you are always welcome here. Gone are the days when geeks were looked upon as clueless social outcasts. Modern day geeks are smart, creative, witty and pretty darn cute. Out of all of the geeky websites we’ve written about in the past, there is one that stands out from the rest. They have been big supporters of Bit Rebels, and we are constantly blown away by their subtly savvy way of doing business.

You may have heard of  X-Treme Geek, and you may have even purchased something on their website before. Since we are so inspired by them and the huge progress they’ve made over the past few years, it only made sense that I reach out to them for for an interview. I really wanted to find out what exactly makes them tick, what inspires them to keep pushing forward each day in such a competitive climate, and most of all, what we can all learn from them. I wanted to get some little nuggets of gold that we could all take back to our own websites to help us grow and reach our goals.

I’m happy to say that Tim and Greg at X-Treme Geek were true to their name, and they were x-tremely kind and generous when I approached them. Needless to say, I got exactly what I wanted. There is a lot of insight, a lot of humor, but most importantly, a lot of knowledge for how an online retailer becomes successful in today’s world. Thank you X-Treme Geek! We at Bit Rebels just love you to pieces, and we really appreciate your taking the time to answer these questions.  

1. I know the goal of X-Treme Geek is to provide hi-tech geeky gadgets and just plain fun geek stuff to people everywhere, but how long has the company been around? Why was it started, and what were the original ideas behind it? After all, it’s only been cool to be a geek for a few years now.

I consider Tim Burns, our current Director of Internet Intrigue, to be the ‘founding father’ of X-Treme Geek, version 2.0. Tim is the brand manager of Edmund Scientifics, a company dedicated to helping people inspire themselves and their children to explore the world of science. It was his dream to reach out beyond the realm of real science, and to take part in the ongoing worldwide geek liberation.

Two years ago, Time seized the opportunity to acquire a new brand that would compliment his existing business. X-Treme Geek was a California based subsidiary of a successful computer component company, and Tim helped to successfully negotiate its purchase. I was brought on shortly after the transition. Although X-Treme Geek was relocated to upstate New York, we retain a congenial business relationship with the former owners, and we still feature a few of their exceptional products in our catalog. Yes, it’s a true ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement. The new X-Treme Geek proudly retains its computer geeky roots while branching out to actively embrace a much wider spectrum of total geekdom.

2. It’s obvious when looking at the site that a lot of time and energy is put into selecting each product. How exactly do you go about choosing what X-Treme Geek will offer? What is the criteria each product must meet?

As the X-Treme Geek category manager, I personally select every new item that hits our website and catalog. My criteria is simple. To compel me to act, a product must immediately produce a visceral reaction within me. Winning products will make me gasp for air, laugh out loud, or involuntarily raise my eyebrow. If they don’t do that, emails get deleted, sales sheets get recycled, and samples get donated. When a co-worker sees me grab a new product, clasp it to my chest, grit my teeth, and grunt forth the word ‘mine!’ they know I’ve discovered a new ‘home run’ gadget for our customers. The element of surprise for me isn’t a mere novelty; it simply the only ticket that will allow a vendor to do new business with us.

3. I know I’ve talked to you all on the phone several times, but since I’ve never actually seen your office, can you give us a little insight into where you work? Where is it located? How many people work there? Does everyone go to lunch together? What are your hours?

X-Treme Geek’s main offices are divided between Buffalo and Rochester, New York. X-Treme Geek and Edmund Scientifics are the consumer branches of VWR Education. Our sister brands include Science Kit and Wards Natural Science which supply science materials and supplies to thousands of schools throughout North America. These offices house ‘state of the art’ distribution units, fully functional lab facilities, and a customer service center. Collectively, these buildings employ hundreds of highly educated specialists, many of them former teachers and professors. In any building one can run into physics experts, paleontologists, lab technicians, chemists and even bone-assemblers (that is NOT a typo).

It is truly a privilege to be a part of such an impressive operation. Now to answer your last question, it would be impossible for all of us to take our lunches together since many of the dollar bill changers in our vending machines require that you insert a dollar bill up to 5 (count ‘em) 5 freakin’ times before the machine will actually take it. For that reason and that reason alone, we find it best to simply eat when we are hungry.

4. Some people think it would be easier to maintain an online business than an actual physical retail store. I’ve done both, and I have an opinion about this, but I’m curious to know what you think about it. Which do you think is easier and why?

I, too, have managed in both ‘brick and mortar’ retail operations as well as our current multi-channel X-Treme Geek web and catalog businesses. To me, they are more similar than they are different. Both are customer centric businesses that live or die on your ability to meet and exceed client expectations. Both exist in cut-throat climates where only the innovative and proactive survive and thrive. Online is a true threat to the viability of most store based retailers, and only those who are competing aggressively with their own websites will see business into the next decade.

The big difference, then, in my opinion, is that online retailers have the distinct advantage over ‘brick and mortar’ stores because they do not have to provide any restrooms for the general public. In an office setting, no matter how large, I find people on the whole conduct themselves with a degree of dignity. If you yourself have ever operated a retail store, you know this is definitely not the case when it comes to the unspeakable chaos that occurs in public ‘johns.’

5. The online buzz these days seems to be surrounding social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. How much does social media play a part in your success and what you’ve been able to accomplish at X-Treme Geek?

Social media gives our customers the power to connect directly to X-Treme Geek. If they have a question, problem, concern, idea, you name it, they know they can reach out via Facebook and Twitter to get satisfaction. Being in a niche market requires that we monitor what is raising the pulse of our customer base so we can best respond to their needs, wants and desires. We’re not selling milk and eggs here. We’re about impulse. We’re about delivering instant gratification. Only social media gives us the power to interact one on one with our core customer. We don’t have any ‘brick and mortar’ stores. Social media gives us that valued face time.

We recently launched another email survey to better gauge what our customers want from our social media. One size does not fit all. What works for one company’s customers won’t necessarily connect with another’s. Our customers are demanding. They have changing expectations and demand results. We aim to meet and exceed those ever changing needs. It’s an active, ongoing, organic process.

Plus, social media also gives us an opportunity to connect directly back to the customer through a mind-control device that out legal team and our government deny even exists. Smartphone tracking devices? Give me a break!

6. What other businesses or companies would you consider to be your role models and why? Is there anyone in particular whom you look up to from a business standpoint?

Certainly the list of people and businesses that inspire us is endless, from Steve Jobs to Richard Branson. From a personal standpoint; however, I’ve always regarded Feld Entertainment with the highest regard. Almost everyone I have ever met, whether they are first graders or great grandparents, have had a positive experience with their product. The company lineage impressively stretches back to 1872. Not only are they ever evolving, more importantly perhaps, they have never once strayed their brand away from the core of their ‘DNA,’ which is probably why they have been so successful. They know who they are and why they exist.

This company consistently surrounds itself with the most talented individuals available, creating a collective like no other. Feld reinvents itself year after year, pushing itself to maintain not only market dominance, but customer loyalty. Customers are brand loyal because regardless of the economic climate, Feld never allows their product to suffer. They never dip below their own standard, and in doing so, they in fact set the industry standard. Most folks would know Feld better by their public name Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Long term, I aspire to thrive at that level. Maybe it’s because I myself have always dreamed of running away with the circus.      

7. Where do you see X-Treme Geek in five years from now? What do you hope to accomplish and what are the long-term goals?

When you ask me about the future, you’re really striking a chord. When I was a boy, the future was said to be in the year 2000. As we approached the millennium, Conan O’Brien started doing those hilarious “In the Year 2000′ sketches. When we finally made it past the horror that was Y2K, no new date for the future was designated. We just don’t talk about what life will be like in the year 3000. Why? Because the future is now. This is it. And this is what X-Treme Geek really is all about. We’re about having what you never dreamed possible right here, right now, at a click of a mouse.

Want to live just like Han Solo, Neo or Marty McFly? Just ‘Add to Cart,’ and we’ve got you covered.

Regarding our five year plan and mission statement, although still in our adolescence, we’re pooling all of our collective energy and talent to create a voice that will connect in some way with all the geeks in the universe. We are branching out by experimenting with product offerings never before seen on any other non x-treme geek site. You will see us tackle Halloween with a product selection you won’t find at any local spook shop or national party supply store, all with a geek edge. CES this year in Vegas was incredible, and while our competitors were drooling over the miracle that is 3D TV, I was hammering it out in the bowels of the convention center with inventors and other up-and-coming entrepreneurs in an effort to bring you the newest gadgets that exit only on the fringe. Just wait and see. I promise, you’ll love what you see here!

As far as the five year plan goes, our x-treme plan is to charge ahead at ramming speed right up to 12 noon on 12/12/2012. After that, as all my paranoid Mayan buddies know, all bets are off.

8. Who are your closest competitors and what makes X-Treme Geek better than those companies?

Our competitors are the big machines Think Geek and Hammacher Schlemmer. To give you a sense of scale, these two are like Bumblebee and Optimus Prime while we currently exist as one of Shia LeBeouf’s many uncredited stunt doubles. What makes X-Treme Geek better than them? The element of surprise.

We’re quick and we’ve beaten both to the punch before with new products, and we will do it again and again and again. We’re more diverse in selection, more affordable in overall price, and not so damned mainstream. Plus, we can tap into the incredible resources of Edmond Scientifics and Wards Natural Science to potentially offer products none of these category killing monsters can touch. If you really want to find something unique, check us out first. You’ll be glad you did.

9. What is your favorite product that X-Treme Geek offers and why? What is the most popular product?

My ABSOLUTE favorite product is ‘Become a Scottish Laird.’ For $34.95 you too can be declared an actual Scottish Laird (pronounced ‘Lord’). By virtue of purchasing one square inch of land at Dunas Castle, you legally get to add the title of Laird to your name plus all the privileges bequeathed to a man of your title. Now I personally don’t demand that all who speak to me in the office actually use my new title (that would be obtuse). However, should one get within an arm’s length of me, I actually would be in my rights to demand proper tribute (‘Yes, your Lairdship’ would do nicely) anything less and one risks getting a taste of my Shillelagh…

Our most popular product is The Wizard’s Wand. This is a button-less universal remote that allows you to take command of your electronics by waving The Wand a la Harry Potter. You actually have to train your remote like a true wizard and The Wand will give you feedback when you’ve gotten the motion right. You can program up to 13 different commands on as many different electronic devices. It’s really pretty awesome.

As far as new products go, I am currently searching for a gadget that will permanently erase the words ‘fail,’ ‘epic,’ and ‘amazing’ from the American vocabulary. If you’ve invented such a device, please contact me directly.

10. Last but not least, can you tell us something juicy from behind the scenes at X-Treme Geek? Tell us something that we would never know unless we read this interview. I can’t wait for this answer.

Something juicy from behind the scenes at X-Treme Geek? We have amongst us a group that refers to themselves as ‘Hashers.’ The more I learn about this secretive, Tom Cruise-y in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’-like cult of long distance runners, the more tightly I hold onto my own children… You can check out their freaky show here on Wikipedia.

We’ve put together a special coupon code for the readers at Bit Rebels to use on their orders:

Enter the coupon code “bitrebels” in the checkout and you’ll receive free shipping on all orders over $30.

Geek Credentials Of Our Team Specialists:

1. Mike, the head of our creative department, is said to have brought his own Etherwave-Theramin to his job interview and played an original composition for the human resource team. He was hired on the spot.

2. Katie, known as our Amazon Queen, is not a geek herself, but she openly admits to having dated geeks in the past. She claims all of them turned out to be ‘dorks.’

3. Tim, our current Director of Internet Intrigue, has developed the uncanny mental ability to fluidly transition between our world and the Marvel Comic Universe with disturbing ease.

4. Johnny in customer service believes he is an actual Jedi Master and once spent a month’s rent on an actual lightsaber replica to prove it.

5. Den in wholesale writes ‘historical noir’ fiction featuring Franciscan Friars who pack heat beneath their robes. I believe he is recognized as a master of the genre, since he is the only one who actually writes in this genre.

6. Greg proudly owns his own complete suit of 15th century museum quality replica armor. He likes to wear it on Halloween and while lounging around the house. It weighs 104 lbs.

EVERYTHING X-TREME GEEK

X-Treme Geek | Facebook | Twitter | Contact

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Everyone that knows me knows that I am a t-shirt fanatic in every sense. I literally have a whole closet full of them. It’s just the way I roll I guess. I simply enjoy the multitude of choices they give you as far as motifs and cuts. You can make a statement or you can be incognito. You can use a lot of accessories or just go with the tee. It’s just the perfect way to dress in my humble opinion. I guess I am not alone either. A lot of people are looking for new and cool t-shirts each and every day to further pimp out their already royal collection. I happen to one of them.

I pushed myself out on the internet wave and started looking for some new designs that I might be interested in. I found what i consider a mecca for cool and wearable designs (I’m not such a huge fan of those pure text t-shirts). I looked around and I found three or four tees that I wanted to buy immediately when I saw them. I just had to know how this company came up with their designs, so I decided to have a chat with them.

Matthew Johnson, the founder and owner of the company he named “Seventh.Ink,” immediately replied. I quickly understood that I had to ask him a lot of questions since this opportunity was too good to just let it slip away. We agreed on making an extensive interview instead, an interview that would cover every aspect of the past, present and future. Mr. Johnson’s answers are inspiring and also packed with useful information about how the whole trip from idea to tee guru played out. It’s with excitement that I here reveal the holy grail of t-shirt manufacturing and management.

1. Being a t-shirt maniac myself I know how addicting they can be. What lead you to start Seventh.Ink and what was the initial goal of your venture? Also, describe the process of setting it up and what you had to go through before the online store was a reality.

I started up Seventh.Ink for exactly the same reason—I’m a t-shirt maniac! It came to a point where I decided that I wanted to start designing my own shirts to wear so I started putting together some designs and had them printed up. I began to sell them at local art shows and they were so popular that I decided to put together a website to sell them online. That started to take off as well so as time goes on I began putting more and more time into publishing new designs. When I released Night of the Living Bread last October, everything started to explode and the design sold out in no time. That was when I started incorporating more humor into my designs, and it’s really been a building block for where I want to take my brand because people love funny and ironic shirts.

2. The motifs on your shirts are off the hook, and I can sense a slight resemblance to the art we’re used to seeing in Tim Burton’s movies. You are using the same vibrant pallets and storytelling as he usually does. Are you influenced by him or is it just a coincidence?

Thanks, I really appreciate that! Tim Burton has definitely made an impact on my work and art interests over the years. I really dig the way all of his work is super stylized. When you watch a Tim Burton movie you really get drawn into the world he’s created and that’s what I’m trying to do with my designs, bring out a certain feeling or aesthetic for fans of the brand. With each new release I think it’s becoming more and more apparent that I’m developing a certain style, so hopefully there will come a point in time when people will recognize Seventh.Ink shirts on folks they pass by on the street.

3. Can you describe (and possibly show through a series of images) how you start a design and what the process is to finish it?

The process for me really varies, but no matter what, I always start with a concept. Having a title like “Tyrannosaurus Rockstar” in my head before I even start the design really helps me push the design to the full extent of what it can be.

I have two main directions that I take while working on designs, the illustration is either hand drawn or done digitally using a Wacom tablet. Once the line work is done, I bring it in to Photoshop or Illustrator and proceed to bring the design to life with color and graphics. Most of my recent designs have been colored in Illustrator because I really like having a solid control over creating sharp lines and I also like how clean vector art is to work with. I always print out a full size preview for myself before sending the artwork off to the printer because I need to test out the size and make sure it’s got the right vibe for the piece. I’ll cut out the design and hold it up in front of myself in the mirror to see if the proportions are feeling right. I’m sure it looks pretty funny, but it works! Once that’s done, I send out the artwork and wait for the newest batch of Seventh.Ink tees to arrive.

4. One of the hardest things when designing for apparel is to find a good and quality oriented manufacturer of t-shirts that helps press them. Who are you using and what do you think one should look for in a good manufacturer before starting to use them?

It’s definitely hard to find the right people for the job, and I’ve gone through countless printers over the years trying to narrow down the exact company I want for the job. Lately I’ve been rotating between a few printers depending on the shirt design because certain printers can do certain things.

The best thing to do with a new potential printer is to get them on the phone and ask them questions about their process and what you can expect from them as a customer. How long is their turnaround time? When your shirts arrive will they be neatly folded or just thrown in the box? If there’s a printing error what will they do to fix it?

A lot of it is trial and error, but the main thing to look for in a printer is good communication.

5. The thing that strikes me the most is how low your prices are. Designing a new t-shirt is hard work and can probably take a couple of days to finish up. How can you sustain such low prices and most importantly why when your quality and style is so high?

I’ve always strived to keep my prices low because I want Seventh.Ink to appeal to all age groups. I want that high school or college student to be able to afford my shirts, and to do that I try to keep things as low as possible. Doing the artwork is such a breath of fresh air for me, so a lot of times I end up doing it in my spare time as an extra hobby, and because of that I approach the pricing mostly from a standpoint of the cost of printing.

I want to get Seventh.Ink shirts out there and make them fairly available to everyone, that’s one of the things that I’m proud my brand can offer to its fans.

6. I say you, and that’s because I am blown away by the fact that you are doing this all by yourself. It must be a truly heavy schedule you’re running each week in order to pull all this off. How do you manage to optimize time so well that you are able to pull the weight of a business like this?

I’ll be honest, life has been crazier than ever since Seventh.Ink came around! It’s also been much better because as I said above, this is something that I love to do. Finding time to work on new designs while at the same time shipping out orders and maintaining the site is sometimes a challenge, but luckily I have a loving wife who doesn’t mind me staying up late most nights to get things done. Being a night owl definitely has its advantages.

I also run Seventhfury Studios, my graphic design business, so because of that I have two completely different companies that I run in tandem. I’ve managed to find a good balance for now, and as both brands grow I’ll just need that many more cups of coffee each day!

7. I know that you have a background in art and graphics but what tools are you using when you go from thought to finished design prior to the pressing of the t-shirt?

My main tools are my Wacom tablet, Photoshop and Illustrator running on my Mac, pencils, inking pens, and a pad of paper. With all of the digital products nowadays there are a lot of illustrators moving to full on digital work with the use of a pen tablet, but I find a sense of freedom in a pencil and a pad of paper. There’s something that I love about physically illustrating a piece, and you can never have enough thumbnail illustrations.

8. Through the lifetime of your company, what seems to be the best working designs and why do you think that is? Did you know right off the top of your head that a particular design was going to be a successful one?

The top designs right now are Night of the Living Bread, Tyrannosaurus Rockstar, and Greedy Shark. I think all of these are so popular because they incorporate things that people love. Everyone loves sharks, dinosaurs, and especially zombies! After the success of Night of the Living Bread, I almost contemplated a full line of zombie clothing, but I think that could get a bit repetitive for me.

As I was working on the concepts and designs for all of these I had a strong gut feeling that each one would be a hit, so I definitely try and follow that instinct more and more as I put together new designs. When people can relate to something, they’ll be that much more attracted to it.

9. Your site is a bundle of pure inspiration. Are you a secret designer/developer as well or did you hire someone to setup your brand online? In either case, what do you think one should think about when setting it up to be successful?

Thanks for that comment! I designed and built the whole layout from scratch and am using LemonStand as my shopping cart engine. As I said, I run Seventhfury Studios, where I design and develop web sites, corporate identities, and all sorts of print related products. Having that background really comes in handy when it comes to working on the Seventh.Ink site!

No matter what, when you have a website, it needs to communicate your brand to people. I think the Seventh.Ink site does a good job of showing off the shirt designs while at the same time having a sharp look about it. If you were going to buy your own product, what would you look for in a website?

10. When you started Seventh.Ink what goals did you set and how many of those have been realized? Also, where do you see Seventh.Ink heading next? Have any secret ideas you might want to announce or share with the readers of Bit Rebels?

My goals for Seventh.Ink have been simple: Design fun and exciting shirts and get them out there on people around the world. I’ve begun to really start to reach that goal, and I’m excited with each new release because I get more and more orders from new people who live all around the world.

I’ve put together a special coupon code for the readers at Bit Rebels to use on their next order:

Enter the coupon code “bitrebels” in the checkout and you’ll save 15% off of your order!

This coupon will be good until the end of June and can even be used on sale items.

We’re also having a Photo Contest with an awesome Grand Prize — $100 worth of Seventh.Ink gear and a $50 iTunes gift card! Anyone can enter; all you need is a Seventh.Ink shirt and a camera.

Very soon Seventh.Ink will be branching out into more apparel than just t-shirts, so I’m really looking forward to that. There will be lots of good things to come, so follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or via our newsletter, and stay tuned!

Odd Facts

1. 2 cups of coffee minimum to get the gears going! 4 cups usually entails a genius design idea.

2. The number 7 – our logo and printed on the sleeves of our shirts.

3. 3am – Closing time for some of the best days at Seventh.Ink.

4. 5 – the average number of stickers, buttons, candy, and goodies found in every Seventh.Ink order.

5. 24/7 – the availability of our online store for your round-the-clock shopping needs!

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As a freelance designer, I know the importance of accurately and continuously tracking time to know exactly how much I am going to charge the client when the project is done. It is also important for the client to be able to see exactly where I am in the process so that they know that everything is going according to plan. There is nothing more annoying for a client than when things drag out. The only thing you can do in that situation is to push through to get it all done. Of course, the most important thing of all is to keep the deadline and tracking your time is a great way to do that.

Looking around for an effective and easy-to-use time tracker isn’t exactly easy cause there are a ton of them out there. However, when I stumbled upon Paymo, a software launched back in 2007, I was quite excited. It’s one of those moments when you say, “I just have to check this one out cause it’s an online solution and that’s what really matters.”

The solution has had plenty of time to develop into a really strong and professional platform, and it does exactly what you want it to which is track time. There is no beating around the bush with a lot of fancy unnecessary inputs or buttons. It simply does one job and it does it well, it tracks the time you spend on each project you’re supervising.

I quickly initiated an interview with the crew behind it all, and they turned out to be the kind of people and company that fit in perfectly here on Bit Rebels. They’re driven geeks who really want to make your life easier and more enjoyable. If it’s ever a good time to express ourselves like Apple, it’s now… and this service helps you to just DO.

1. While checking out the online service it is clear that a lot of time has been put into creating this truly great solution for freelance designers, as well as companies in general, to track time spent on projects. How did it all start and how did you come up with the name “Paymo?”

The idea for Paymo came out of an internal necessity back in 2007. At that point, our main business was an agency called Light Design Works. We did all sorts of projects (design, websites, coding) for various clients worldwide. As everyone else in this field of work, we were charging on an hourly basis. It quickly became apparent that we hated the tools we were using to track our time. We tried quite a few options over the years. The whole act of time tracking became a pain, it was hard to manage and simply took too much time and effort to get the results we wanted. Our ideal app would have to fulfill the following needs:

• It had to web based.
• We needed a desktop app so employees could work easily with it, without having a browser window open all the time.
• It had to work on PCs and Macs since we had PCs and Apple stuff in our office.
• Reporting had to be a breeze.
• It had to show us who was underperforming.

After finding that there’s no app out there that could handle these tasks, we took matters into our own hands and decided to build an online intranet app that would fit our needs perfectly. The only problem was that we had to juggle this project along with ongoing work for our clients, so it took quite a long time to develop the initial version.

After it was built, and we saw how good it was, we decided to make it public. We tried to build a business around it. The way to go was the freemium model. We made it available for free to all freelancers and charged a small fee to companies that were in need of a solid time tracking tool.

We came up with Paymo because we wanted our customers to get PAID MORE by using our system. While running the agency business, we constantly ran into the problem that we were getting paid less than we were actually working. This was due to two facts:

• Our quotes were unrealistic because we didn’t have solid time tracking data. We always approximated the amount of time needed to finish certain tasks and in practice, these quotes were always lower than what we ended up doing.
• Certain clients had trouble understanding why tasks took longer than quoted and were not willing to pay for the extra work. Without detailed data that a time tracking app can provide we had a tough time presenting documented proof of what actually happened during development.

2. I bet a lot of people are wondering how you guys started developing Paymo? Was it because you had a need for such a product yourself or was it purely to start a business?

We initially developed it for our own use and than we saw an opportunity to start a business.

3. How many people are involved in developing Paymo and where do you all come from professionally? Are your roots in web design, development or something entirely different?

Our roots are in web design and desktop development. As you can see in Paymo, we did our best to merge the power of the cloud with the versatility of the desktop app. We strongly believe in the future of SaaS/Cloud/Web apps (whatever buzzword makes you “buzz”) because the advantages offered by these types of apps outweigh the disadvantages.

4. How long did it take you guys to finalize a working version of Paymo and did you go through a Beta testing phase or did you go for the public release straight away?

The initial development took almost one year, but there was no constant work being done at that time. We were working on Paymo when our schedules were permitting it. We fit it in between client work and other internal projects we had at that time.

5. I am struck by the high quality and the easy to follow user interface of Paymo. What was the motivation and inspiration behind the sleek design, and was it an instant decision or did it evolve through time?

The interface evolved over time. When we initially released Paymo, we had quite a different user interface. We were quite proud of it because we felt it was quite “original”. Over time, by adding more and more features, the old interface simply couldn’t handle all the changes so it was a “back to the drawing board” moment for us.

The current interface follows a much more standardized look and feel and although it has lost some of it’s uniqueness, we feel that this is the correct direction in this day and age when web apps are becoming something standard. People need to be able to use the app without thinking too much about the UI and get the job done. As history has shown, standardization in UI design has a lot of benefits to end users. Our core “web designer” feelings are a bit hurt about this move, but we try to stand out from the crowd and keep our originality with subtle touches throughout the UI.

6. Being a freelance designer myself I am often wondering how I would ever make it without a professional time tracker. What do you think is the most important feature of a good time tracker, and how do you think it can be further improved?

The most important feature I believe is the ability to add your time with as few clicks as possible without going through ugly looking forms. We just hated all the tools we used in the past where you had these huge forms with tens of input boxes to fill in and that was the ONLY way to add your time. That method can be useful in certain scenarios, however, when doing work you should not be distracted for more than a couple of seconds to add your time.

7. Usually I see a lot of desktop based solutions, but yours is an online solution. What made you decide to put it online and how do you think that decision affects the usage and result for the user?

If you work as a freelancer, a desktop solution might be viable, however you need to worry about backup, viruses corrupting your data and data loss in general. Then there’s the problem of switching computers (most users nowadays have more than one machine), software upgrades and data portability. These tasks all take time and we believe you should not waste it on stuff like this. Having a web app solves most of these problems, and best of all, you can access your data from any computer or mobile device.

If you work in a team, a desktop only solution can become a tedious thing to setup and manage. You need to get a client/server intranet app which can centralize all the data. Reporting in these types of apps is usually weak, and you’ll end up spending time on maintaining yet another system that is not core to your business. Again, a web app solves most of these issues and it’s perfect for distributed teams in various geographical locations. For example, your employees could work from home without using VPN to connect to the company server… a web app is simply more efficient and cost effective in most of the cases.

8. To get a clear view on what’s going on behind the scenes, what does the main part of your day entail? Is it the development of new features or are you guys constantly dedicating time to support, etc..?

We definitely spend most of our time on support and development. Everyone involved in development is also very active in support. We feel this gets the team involved in the community since they are faced directly with user issues.

I’m sure every single computer user in the world was at least once faced with horrible tech support. We’re committed to providing good support to every Paymo user (free and premium). We answer every email!

9. Usually when releasing a new software or service, your target is on a certain group of people or professions. What was your main target group, and has it changed over time or are you still trying to please that specific target group?

We’re targeting all kinds of groups, pretty much any profession that bills hourly is in our target. Paymo is very popular among web developers, designers, consulting firms, virtual assistants and lawyers.

10. Finally, where do you see Paymo in the future? Are there any features you are still working on that you think will revolutionize the way we track time on a project, and if so, what are they?

Paymo is constantly evolving. We’re improving the system based on the feedback from our customers and our own ideas. In the future we’ll be offering more project management tools that will transform Paymo into a set of tools that will help you manage your projects around the concept of time tracking and will make billing and getting paid a very simple process.

Very soon we’ll be rolling out our iPhone and BlackBerry mobile apps.

Odd Facts

1. In the past month, the people in our office have been struck by various forms of the flu. We’re starting to question all the gift baskets we’ve received from our competition.

2. Contrary to popular belief, the name Paymo was not inspired by a rap slang.

3. Time Tracking Secret no #85: For very quick jobs, don’t send your reports to your clients (unless you love ‘em) – you’ll end up doing it for free.

4. When we refunded our loyal clients on April Fool’s Day, most of them thought it was a joke… but we just have a strange bonus policy.

5. Everyone in our office needs headphones if he wants to listen to music because one of our guys is a noise freak. It’s so silent that you can hear the ticking of our virtual timers sometimes… but then again, that is how great code gets created!

EVERYTHING PAYMO.BIZ

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We all know there’s a fair share of WordPress theme shops out the that feed our everyday need for excellence when it comes to blogging and design. Every day there is a new theme released that is supposedly way better than anything out there prior to its existence. Possibly so, but there aren’t that many that pack the same punch that the themes from the MOJO Themes marketplace do. Just the name itself speaks (in a true Britain accent) of a promise that there will be some kind of fancy Austin Powers awesomeness on the slate once you upload your new theme or disco mojo from the 70′s, striking a pose worthy of the legendary John Travolta. Well, wherever you feel like you want your mojo to come, MOJO Themes is the place to spot it.

I had the pleasure to connect with the guys behind it and their MOJO is surely the main ingredient running their empire from a very humble, yet inspiring office fitted with a lounge and all. What can we expect from these guys? Will there be a revolution on the horizon where these guys play the lead role? That remains to be seen, but their motivation is spot on and they don’t shy away from sharing their success recipe, quite the contrary. They would rather take you behind the scenes and make you a part of it. Actually, they want you to use them and their service to help build the next theme empire of tomorrow, complete with mojo and all.

I took up their time with 10 questions and got away with some pretty useful information that I think could speak to all designers and theme creators that are searching for that inspiration that will motivate them to put the pedal to the metal until the finish line appears in front of them. Here’s where you will get your mojo.

1. “MOJO Themes” is a rad name on a kickass service. When and how did you come up with it and what started the idea of creating a marketplace for themes of various publishing platforms?

First off, we just wanted to say thanks for interviewing us on your site. It’s extremely humbling.

The name “Mojo” comes from a site/company that was started back in 2008. I think everyone has their own Mojo. It’s your brand. It’s what makes you unique. We love the idea of it.

Plus add on the fat, furry and cuddly monsters that surround our site and to us it just seems to click.

In all seriousness though, Mojo themes was suppose to originally be a marketplace strictly for WordPress selling GPL themes. That was also back in 2008. I actually owned the domain WordPressThemeMarketplace.com but the idea never came to life and fell flat.

With some new found motivation, we decided rather than worrying so much about having the perfect product, let’s just get this thing launched and make changes from the feedback we receive.

Instead of just WordPress, we like many others have witnessed the huge growth with Tumblr/Magento, etc. We took the same WordPress Marketplace idea and decided to combine the various publishing platforms.

2. There are a few other theme marketplaces out there making the competition quite hard. What was your initial idea on how to make Mojo Themes the top one to go to and how are you guys profiling yourselves?

I think the way we position ourselves is what’s on our minds most and we probably won’t ever stop looking for ways to differentiate ourselves.

To jump right into it… We’ve actually come up with new ideas that we’ll unveil right out of the gate and some we’re still working out the details.

These ideas are actually what we found by simply contacting designers/developers and asking them what they would like to see in a marketplace setting. I mean after all, our goal is to build a marketplace for them.

• Offering a Copyright solution on items uploaded. The seller would own a copyright of their work.
• Requesting Payouts. It’s your money, take it when you want it. We’d like to give our sellers the ability to request payouts at anytime during the month. Rather than having to wait until the 15th of every month, you could receive payment at anytime. They would have to have a minimum balance and there would be a fee associated to this.
• Partnership Program – Splitting commissions on items with designers and developers.

3. Not too long ago the business of starting to sell themes for WordPress and other publishing platforms boomed. Where lies the biggest hurdle to become successful in selling your themes and how can Mojo Themes help to level that hurdle?

Yes, it seems like everyday there are new theme shops so to say the competition is a bit watered down might even be an understatement.

On the flip side, I’ve personally been using WordPress since 2006 and I’ve seen theme companies come out of nowhere who are now the leaders today.

Ultimately, to us, it’s all about delivering a quality product, paying attention to the small things and really caring about your customers. In the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, who has brought back the ancient ninja art of actually caring about people when it comes to business, we are here for you, and we are here to “Crush It!”

4. Mojo themes online service is currently in Beta and you guys are awaiting people to come to your service and submit their work. What do you think the Beta will prove and what are the main submissions you are seeing at the moment?

Beta has proven to be an interesting phase. In just a short amount of time we’ve learned quite a bit. We also feel like we’ve found some gaps that need to be filled.

We’ve realized that people want more than a service that just “sells” items. Our most prominent feedback has been directed towards the quality of our customer service and the promotion of platforms outside of the usual WordPress. Currently, we have been open for uploads and have seen a surprising response to selling Tumblr themes.

5. There are free WordPress themes and there are premium WordPress themes for which you pay for. How come we haven’t seen any marketplaces for WordPress plugins yet and do you think there is a future in that? Would Mojo Themes be prepared to try that market out?

Absolutely. The amount of time that plugin creators put into developing plugins is amazing and the quality of some of the paid plugins make it worth the money. Having a place for them to be compensated for their hard work would be great.

Take Gravity Forms for example, they are killing it with a simple yet sophisticated solution and showing you how valuable paid plugins can be. Not saying they would sell on our plugin marketplace but they’ve created a solid path for plugin developers.

We don’t want to spill the beans too soon, but the MOJO team has been kicking this idea around for a while now. Don’t be shocked if you see a marketplace for plugins that feature all types of platforms.

6. To look deeper into what goes on behind the scenes of Mojo Themes, can you tell us if you have any in-house designers or if you simply rely on people’s submissions?

Since Mojo Themes was created initially as a site selling Premium WordPress themes from us, we have assembled a collection of our own designs. Through this we now have been able to create a marketplace highlighting our creative vision mixed with some of the top designers among the industry.

We anticipate Mojo’s designs being a leading inspiration to other designers who upload. To be direct, we rely on both.

7. Often in the community of computer software development there are some fun and sometimes inspirational competition going on between companies. Who do you feel is your closest competitor and what do you guys do to beat them at their own game so to speak?

We see where you’re going with this

First off, we have nothing but respect for our competitors but yes at the same time we’re very competitive ourselves. We’re not going to be shy to innovate and make what we offer better.

But that’s what having competition is all about. Without competition in the marketplace we would never see innovation. I would go far as to say that the evolution of WordPress from a blog to more of CMS comes from the constant innovation of all the awesome WordPress designers and developers.

8. Low fees, affiliate programs, featured themes, and designers are all old tricks to get people to pick that particular service. If you look beyond this, what can Mojo Themes bring to the table and what out of the box thinking are you guys doing?

To put it bluntly, we are not built on tricks. What you see is what you get.

Our industry is built for those who love design and we feel what we have built into our design is amazing. Through the help of innovative designers we have designed our site to not only be truly functional, but also fun to look at.

Our first “trick” if you will, is that we actually care about people. Yes, we know everyone is going to say that, but we have built a business that will last because we are here to listen to our sellers and buyers.

Second to this, is we have developed and are still developing much more than financial gain for our sellers, we will be offering security. What I mean by security is that regardless of the ever-constant pirating occurring, we have real solutions that help our designers find answers and solutions.

All of the sellers on Mojo Themes will be able to have access to their cash immediately. Despite any accounting head aches, we feel the cash is the seller’s and they deserve to have it whenever they like. In terms of selling on our marketplace, we offer our sellers even more choices. Rather than choosing to sell exclusive or non-exclusive and that’s it — you have a choice on each item you upload.

In addition, Mojo Themes will be unveiling a partnership program where designers can partner with programmers and split commissions on items sold. We feel this will offer choices to our sellers and keep them happy. Despite these we have other solutions being explored so stay tuned to see many more innovations being released.

9. Estimating success is a hard thing to do but what is the key ingredients in a successful theme and how come we don’t see many ubber successful themes? Is it because there are too many free and premium themes or is it because designers and developers rush it when they create them?

I think it’s a mix of both but I would say mostly the fact there’s actually some fantastic free themes that offer comparable design and functionality to the premium ones. This is where the argument comes in about calling paid themes “premium” rather than “commercial” themes.

Also, there are different types of themes. Some are geared towards a specific niche while other generic themes can be used in various ways. With that being said, we feel the success of a theme doesn’t come from how popular or the total number of sales but how well it serves it’s unique purpose.

10. To wrap up our interview, what do you guys do to keep focus on the competition and what do you think is the future of online publishing which will define the next generation themes?

We have our competition on our radar but I think it’s wrong to focus on your competition too much. Then you’re allowing them to dictate what you do.

In terms of what the next generation of themes are… It’s tough to say, yet we do know beyond WordPress we’re seeing great strides in other platforms like Tumblr and Magento. We plan to focus much more in those areas as well and bring what is missing in the industry.

Ultimately, we plan on stepping up with our own unique ideas. Some may fail and some may be game changers. Bottom line is, we’re not afraid to be different. After all, our site is surrounded with fat, furry monsters and called MOJO Themes

Odd Facts

1. Do MOJO monsters blog? As a matter of fact, they do.

2. A typical weekend for Mr. Mo Joe  “AKA Green Monster” would consist of the following: Putting on his favorite Tuxedo T-Shirt, sporting a colorful eye-patch, topped off with a fresh hint of manly musk to get the ladies.

Onto number 3 please…

3. MOJO Monsters love them some hot MILF Monsters. It’s true.

4. This is more of a clarification than a fact but the MOJO crew was conned into writing fact #3.

5. Mo & Joe (AKA JR & Brady) grew up together and have a long history. From math class to motorcycles, hockey and the poor college kid days, these two have had one goal through it all: Get your Mojo on.

EVERYTHING MOJO-THEMES.COM

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We’ve covered quite a few companies here on Bit Rebels and now it is time to feature Printfac3.com. This is an online printing service with an edge that I wanted to look into further. I went behind the scenes on another printing company not long ago, so I also wanted to take a close look to see what the differences are. Although Printfac3.com is amazingly supportive of Bit Rebels, that is not the coolest aspect of of the company, nope, not even close. In an attempt to work out what exactly goes on behind the doors of this highly successful printing firm, I was granted access to the inner core of operations.

Finding something to interesting to ask when interviewing the people in this very creative group is far from challenging. There’s a million and one things that could turn out to be a potential interesting question and quite frankly, I even had more questions I wanted to know the answers to. The creative process is what attracts me the most. Their flair and brutally precise use of colors is as inspiring as it is impressive. Everything seems to have that glow to it and in an instant I knew why Printfac3.com was one of the most successful printing companies of its kind.

It’s easy to get carried away when conducting an interview and to “write up” the interview subject. This is far from the case with Printfac3.com. Instead, I feel like I am making you guys miss out on the good stuff just because there isn’t room here for enough questions to be answered.

To solve this highly exclusive problem I urge you to further take a look at this interview and read between the lines. If that isn’t enough, I just know that the people at Printfac3.com would love to answer any additional questions you might have about the creative process or otherwise. Adjust the focus in your eyes and behold… it’s time to be inspired.

1. Can you tell us how the idea was born to start Printfac3 and when that was?

You could say our customers were the source of inspiration. We started out as a brick and mortar commercial printer and only began offering our service online domestically just four years ago (under a different brand). During those four years we received very positive feedback from our customers, many of whom suggested that we should take our business to the next level which quite frankly meant extending our services to the rest of the world. We also received quite a fair bit of inquiries from overseas but we were not ready at the time. So it was our customers who gave us the confidence to take our business on the road. And on July ’09, Printfac3 made its maiden voyage into worldwide web.

2. Judging from the layout of the Printfac3 website it’s apparent that you guys like busy designs. What is the most common design when clients want to get their own business cards? For example, do the majority like busy or clean designs?

Busy designs??? And here we thought it was exactly the opposite! Anyway, the appearance of our website is still a work in progress. Our designers are trying really hard to make our web store as appealing and user-friendly as possible without being overwhelming with information. However, its current  state has no influence to our customers’ design preference. Anyway, majority of our customers (made up of small business owners, freelance designers, and even soccer moms) prefer eye-catching uncluttered designs which our web store has a wide variety of to suit various types of business and occasions. However, we also provide customers the option to upload their own artwork for printing.

3. How long is the process from an initial contact from the client to the client receiving their orders and can you explain the process a little bit in detail?

Once you have selected the product that you wish to print, specified your  printing preference, and uploaded an error-free artwork to us, all you need to do is to confirm your order and make your payment to complete the transaction. All and all, it should take you under 5 minutes to do this.

Once the order is placed, it is automatically enqueued for printing. When printing is completed it is then vacuum-sealed and shipped to the customer by air. The shipping duration depends on which shipping option the customer chooses. Currently, our fastest shipping duration is 6 days. Customers may choose to save more on shipping cost by choosing a longer shipping method which is 16 days and above (depending of the products and finishing). However, we’re still looking at ways to improve the shipping duration and cost for customers.

4. Assuming most clients supply the logo and name, does Printfac3 have a catalog of artwork designs to choose from? In case you do, how many in-house designers do you have producing these?

We have a series of ready made design templates (over 900 designs, and steadily growing) for customers to choose from. All they need to do is upload their logo and insert it onto the ready made design of their choice, using our simple and user-friendly online design software. If they need a ready made design with a blank background, we have ready as well. Currently we have an experienced team of six designers constantly adding to the pool of designs.

5. Can you tell us a little about the average daily work and what software’s you use to finalize the designs?

The average daily work consists of answering customer emails, checking the quality of prints, prepping completed orders for shipping, checking stock inventory and system monitoring/troubleshooting. Apart from our own in-house software’s, we use popular third-party design software such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Coral Draw to finalize customers’ design. Can’t tell you more then this because it’s a trade secret!

6. What has been the most fun and most elaborate project you have worked on since Printfac3 was started and why?

That would be our International Survey Contest which was launched in November 2009. The lucky winner scored a Global Wireless Kindle eBook Reader.

7. During holiday seasons surely your clientele increases significantly. How much of your yearly revenue comes from holidays and what is it clients usually asks for during these times?

• Roughly 2/3 of the yearly revenue comes from holidays.
• The most common products customers print during holidays would be Greeting Cards, Postcards and Flyers. Business Cards remain our most popular product all year round.

8. Who are your closest competitors and what do you think sets you apart from them? Why is it people prefer using Printfac3 instead of them?

We are relatively new to the scene and as such, have too many “close” competitors to mention! Why most people prefer us? We think it is because they’re just tired of getting ripped off and paying for poor print quality. While some printing service providers commonly claim to provide quality full colour offset printing at low prices, it is usually the opposite that’s delivered.  Fortunately, some people took a chance with us and we guess they’re quite pleased with what they got back. Not only do we offer one of the lowest print prices on the web today for Business Cards, Brochures, Flyers, Greeting Cards, Paper Bags and such, our customers also enjoy the widest choice of customizing options –sizes, paper materials and finishings. This allows customers more room to express their creativity when they print with us.

To minimize errors in a customer’s uploaded artwork to us which could cause unnecessary printing and finishing delays and added expenses, we auto-preflight all artworks on our web store during the ordering process. This phase is done live and gives customer’s an immediate report of the status of their artwork thereby providing customers more control over their orders and better assurance of the print results.

9. What has been your most elaborate advertising campaign so far and are you planning on any off the wall unique campaigns in the future?

That would be participating in your Biggest Giveaway Event! We feel this is most definitely an off the wall unique event. Glad to be a part it!

10. What are you excited about for 2010?

• Right now, our Spring Promotion is on, 50% discount on all print products & specs. What’s more, we have a special Spring Bonus – print Business Cards, Greeting Cards and Postcards at only $3 each.
• Also, we are offering free print sample with no shipping cost, for those who would like to check out our products and quality
• Finally, we have a free giveaway of 250 full colour Business Cards.
  

We are most definitely looking forward to a strong 2010.

• We have been getting numerous requests to ship to the countries which we don’t at the moment. So we are happy to announce that we are expanding the number of countries we ship to, so more people can enjoy our low priced, quality print service.
• The rest that we have in store is a surprise! Just stay tuned to know what they’ll be. Shhhh…..

Odd Facts

1. Come festive seasons, everyone goes all out to do up their Division areas to win the coveted title of, “Best Pimped Division”.

2. Birthdays are a blast at Printfac3! Every month crew members’ birthdays are celebrated with a cake fight and a cream war!

3. We have about 30 men strong in the administrative division and we have around 5 high-end printing machines in production and other various machines used in the finishing and packaging process.

4. Our largest order was 20,000 sheets of flyers in a single receipt.

5. We tend to go for coffee instead of Coca Cola. We’ve got one hellava coffee addict in the office; she  drinks roughly 1,450 cups a year. Match that!

6. We have regular inter-division competitions in Table Tennis, Pool, and Darts. The latest table tennis competition that just concluded in November was won by our IT Crew.

EVERYTHING PRINTFAC3.COM

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I have always found it hard to write introductions to interviews where the main theme is to highlight the core of the business as being good or bad. But this time, it’s not difficult at all, it’s all natural and the inspiration is abundant. I have always been a sucker for visuals with an edge and as you know, I’m continuously inspired by great stories and fun working environments. These are the reasons why I became like a kid in a candy store when I stumbled across Hotcards.com. This unique company does not follow the crowd and is very different from all the rest. With some outstanding statistics and a passion for the very best, there is no mistaking that Hotcards.com is one of the top leading card manufacturers in the world.

It was evident when I interviewed the people at Hotcards.com that they are a truly awesome company made up of a tight group of people that understand that having fun is the only way to success. But then again, when you have a CEO named Columbus, there’s no failing. After all, he founded America didn’t he?

When people started to use email more than postal mail, things got turned a bit upside down. It’s no longer cool to send an email, and instead, to show our dedication and emotional attachment to someone, we use real postcards and mail – and for that, you can’t use anyone better than Hotcards.com. Simple as that!

Conducting this interview gave me both a great laugh and a nice insight into what it’s like to work at Hotcards.com and what we could expect from one of the world’s greatest card manufacturers. When you are finished reading this interview, you will not only know that using your printer to create cards is not the same thing as getting them from Hotcards.com, but also that there is great inspiration for both business and pleasure that can be found just about anywhere. You just have to take the time to look.

1. While doing research on your company, it’s quite evident that there has been a lot of time spent to perfect the edgy and outstanding look in your product. But how did it all start? When did you get the idea to begin Hotcards.com? What was the driving thought behind it?

The idea for Hotcards.com was conceived when our awesome head boss-guy, Columbus Woodruff, was a young concert promoter. Printing tons of posters, flyers, and club cards was an occupational hazard, but the high cost and low quality of print at the time made him think there had to be a better way. He figured that if he started a printing house that offered extremely low-cost, high quality full color printing, he could revolutionize the industry, and the rest is history.

2. Almost everyone remembers their first customer and what they ordered. Do you remember Hotcard.com’s first customer and what did they order?

We’re lucky enough to have an amazing collection of loyal, long-time customers. Our very first customer, however, was none other than the driving force behind Hotcards.com, Columbus Woodruff. Columbus started Hotcards.com so that he could design and print his own marketing collateral, as a promoter. To this day, we still do a lot of printing to hype events in our community, and in support of the creative outside efforts of employees.

3. Another thing that I saw when I did some research was that you guys actually have stores in 12 different locations around the U.S. What location was the very first store and is it still the headquarters of Hotcards.com?

Hotcards.com got its start in our hometown of Cleveland. There’s so much going on in the music, arts, sports, and business promotion scenes here, that print collateral is in constant demand. While we’ve branched out with storefronts all across the country, our HQ, and the base of all our designing, printing, and mailing, remains right here in Cleveland.

4. The name Hotcards.com suggests that your company started out making cards in different forms and formats. What was your first product and how did you evolve your product base throughout the lifetime of Hotcards.com?

We knew that we had to start out with a wide range of print products in order to be competitive, so we launched offering all the basics traditionally provided by offset printers. Over the years, our product line has evolved to include specialty products like stickers, banners, and vehicle wraps, as well as earth-friendly and sustainable alternatives to traditional print products.

5. Being represented in so many locations, I started to wonder how many employees Hotcards.com is housing and who is the head of the clan so to speak?

It seemed like there were only 2 people running Hotcards.com for a long time, Columbus, and his wife, Nikki. Nowadays, we hover right around the 75-employee mark, with 40 of those people working at the HQ in Cleveland. Columbus has always been the head of the clan, but these days he mostly signs paychecks and buys lunch on Fridays.

6. Here at Bit Rebels we have a list of our most successful articles, which keeps us inspired. What has been the most successful product at Hotcards.com and why do you think that is?

The most successful product at Hotcards.com has definitely been Hotcards.com and our web-to-print application. When we first launched the website, we were one of the only printing companies online offering a complete web-to-print service. We’ve been lucky enough to work with some great developers who created this technology for us from scratch, and the site has become not only a really simple, easy way for our customers to order and track their printing jobs, it’s also a resource for printing news and information, and a place where customers feel comfortable just hanging out.

7. Does Hotcards.com have in-house designers drawing up new designs and formats or are you buying stock art like some of the other printing brands do? If someone is inspired to start working for Hotcards.com is there such a chance for a dedicated designer?

We just happen to have an absolutely world-class, award-winning design team at Hotcards.com. In-house designers don’t tend to get a lot of credit for innovation, but our designers are incredibly in-demand across the country, and active within Cleveland’s sports and music communities. In fact, you can check out the team’s work on their blog, InHousePixels (http://www.inhousepixels.com).

While we’re a pretty tight group, the occasional new hire does make in through the crowds of feral interns.

8. There are always those people at a company that have their own genre so to speak. Would you consider the core of Hotcards.com to be dedicated designers and creative people, techies or some other… uh… breed?

Running a full-service printing house takes the combined efforts of many specialized, creative people. Designers are one piece of the puzzle, but we also rely on the fantastic folks working in prepress, on the printing floor, in mailing and shipping, and as our sales team and front-of-house staff. So there are a lot of efficient little teams at work around Hotcards.com, making it as great as it is.

9. What would you say gives Hotcards.com an advantage and why should people use you for their printing? Also, what do you think gives Hotcards.com its “Cool”?

Despite what your desktop printer might have you believe, printing doesn’t have to be rocket science. It can be an easy, effortless process, and it can be pretty amazingly inexpensive. And when you have a group of people who are experts in everything from print design and marketing, to finishing and direct mail, there’s really no stress on the customer’s end, which, in itself, is pretty much what gives Hotcards.com its cool.

10. To end this interview I am going to ask the question that everyone wants to know the answer to. Is there a lot of paper airplanes being thrown around at Hotcards.com from some of the waste product while finalizing the finished design?

At Hotcards.com, we’re very concerned with sustainability in our industry, so recycling waste paper is pretty central to our business philosophy. As such, we do have a large division dedicated to using waste paper to create the first full-sized, passenger-ready paper plane. We’re hoping that the “CMYK Eco-Flyer” will quickly replace traditional transport aircraft models as the passenger carrier of the future.

Odd Facts

1. We print over 3 million postcards and flyers per week.

2. Our design team is the driving force behind LeBron2010 (http://lebron2010.com), a billboard campaign dedicated to keeping LeBron James in Cleveland once his Cavs contract runs out in 2010.

3. Hotcards.com is part of that rare breed known as the certified union printer.

4. Our interns are expected to video blog on a weekly basis, and if they don’t, they have to eat ants! (See clip below!)

5. Hotcards.com CEO Columbus Woodruff is an avid cyclist, and a rootbeer aficionado—he’s got a collection of rootbeers from all over the world!

EVERYTHING HOTCARDS.COM

Hotcards.com | Twitter | Blog | Contact

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Everyone with a serious intention of running a website has come across a hosting company once or twice in search for best bandwidth, price and customer support. Usually we have to try a few before we find one that truly delivers exactly what we are after – reliability and trustworthy features. I, for one, tried a few out before I found what was best for my purposes, but it’s always a struggle to get the attention needed once everything goes from good to better on the site and bandwidth isn’t enough to cope with the increased traffic.

But what exactly is a good hosting company and what is it that makes them so good? Well, in search for one of the truly great ones, I found InMotion Hosting, a large and successful company with what I would call perfect customer knowledge. Their philosophy is quite simple “Fast, Reliable and Affordable Hosting” and it shows in pretty much everything they do.

InMotion Hosting isn’t just your ordinary hosting company, they always go an extra mile to exceed your expectations. The acclaimed awards dating all the way back to 2003 clearly show their excellence and they aren’t stopping anytime soon. Dedicated to making 2010 yet another successful year, they are taking their business to the next level. I managed to get an interview with Sunil Saxena, one of the co-founders of InMotion Hosting, and I was allowed in, behind the scenes, right into the very core of their company. As you will learn, InMotion Hosting is sure to showcase what a good hosting company should look like.

1. InMotion Hosting was founded in 2001 and throughout its lifetime has won many prestigious awards. When you started InMotion Hosting what was your goal and how did it all start?

Essentially, the goal when the company was founded was to get customer service right. Todd and I felt that, in our experience, no hosting company had done that, so they started their own hosting company with the goals of thrilling the customer and giving them the best possible customer experience. To this day, the main goal of the company is to provide that customer experience while being on the leading edge in reliability, products, and features.

2. Handling the servers here at Bit Rebels myself I know it can be quite a feat sometimes just to make sure everything is optimized to meet the “Digg Effect”. Being just one person, it is sure a full time job sometimes. How many people work at InMotion Hosting and how are they divided?

We have 70 employees, with 55 located in Virginia Beach and 15 located in Los Angeles/Marina del Rey. Of that number, fully 39 are devoted to customer service and systems.

3. There are always milestones in a company’s life cycle that take it from good to great. What was the first real break and milestone that really threw InMotion Hosting to the masses and how many of those milestones have you had since?

As a company, the first major milestone reached was after the first year, when Todd and Sunil realized the renewal rate — customers re-signing after that first year of hosting — was well above industry standard. Seeing that rate being so far above the norm was the first indication that they were doing something right and achieving their goal of putting customer service first. To date, the rate at which we retain customers remains well above average. We’ve also grown significantly as company — in accounts, in employees, in number of domains hosted, and in number of machines. We also, in 2009, opened a second data center (located just outside Washington DC), so we could offer a physically closer data center to customers worldwide.

4. Having been around for about 9 years now you must have quite a few grand clients that you consider mega accounts. What client was your first mega account and how did you first handle the build?

Typically, our focus is on small and medium businesses — we don’t really get into the whole “enterprise” thing — but we do have quite a few larger accounts, the first major one being Avery Dennison, which is a major consumer products/technology company in the U.S.

5. We had an article here on Bit Rebels a while ago that described Google’s server park and how many servers they had to cope with all the traffic generated from their business. There are always facts about a company and its core mechanics. How big is your server park and how wide is your combined bandwidth to date?

Our bandwidth is OC 192, which gives us up to 10 gigs in capacity, while our existing server operations cover upwards of 10,000 square feet between our two locations. Including virtual machines, we operate around 4,000 servers.

6. There usually is a contest going on between technology companies and how geeky they are in comparison. The geekier the better. How would you describe the staff of InMotion Hosting? Geeks, Tech Savvies or just ordinary people knowing their stuff?

I don’t know that I’d describe any of our tech people as “geeky” so much as “incredibly, amazingly proficient at all matters tech.” One thing that’s amazed me is how passionate they are about technology, as well as with experimentation. Most of our main systems people do the exact same things at work that they do at home. They write programs, they develop software, and they solve problems by making things work better. That’s exactly what they do at work — from the most senior systems folks to the newest support hire. They know their stuff, they’re eager to learn new stuff, and they have an amazing ability to fix or improve stuff that could be better.

7. We have entered a new decade and the inspiration is high in most companies. What is your goal during this new year and decade and where are you guys going to put the energy?

Our goals for this year are pretty much the same as they’ve been all along — enhance the customer experience and grow as a company, both in accounts and in employees. We want to continue to decrease customer hold times, increase our response time, and keep our server farms as optimized and efficient as possible. We’re also expanding our product offerings; specifically, we’re launching full site services, including custom design and managed sites.

8. I am very impressed by the support you guys offer. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s quite impressive and I am sure it must take a lot of resources to keep that up and going. What is the average wait time for a support ticket and what do you think makes InMotion Hosting so much better than the rest on the market?

The average wait time for a ticket is 30-60 minutes. That’s from contact to problem solved. You can tell by the numbers of employees we devote to support and systems that we take that aspect of the business pretty seriously, and we’re always looking to improve our response times and services.

9. Each company has their routines throughout the day. How would you describe a day at InMotion Hosting?

The day-to-day routine varies pretty greatly based on which department any given employee works for. For support staff, they come in and check the tickets to see which can be put to rest immediately and which might require escalation. For management, it’s constantly moving between the departments to make things flow easier and, when collaboration between departments is required (which is pretty frequently), making it go as smoothly as possible. For systems — actually, I’m happier not knowing what they do all day. Seriously, though, they’re always on, solving problems; going to the data center to install, service, and upgrade the machines; and generally answering questions from people like me.

10. After talking about work pretty much throughout the interview it’s time to check in on the “break/past time” at InMotion Hosting. What do you guys do for relaxation? Are you playing Wii, inhouse softball or what is your edge as a competitor for the coolest company to work for in 2010?

In a lot of ways, it’s a pretty typical tech company — lots of personality and lots of time spent together in and out of the office.

We’ve got the Wii, we go out together, and we collaborate on projects both in and out of the office. We’re actively involved in company-wide service projects, as well as related endeavors such as WordCamp (local WordPress gatherings/conventions). But mostly, we spend our time in the office thinking of ways we can get better for our customers.

We understand that we host not only people’s websites, but their livelihoods as well. We take it seriously and everything we do revolves around maintaining the level of support that our customers are used to.

Odd Facts

1. Our very first server was named “Asimov,” due to our founder/president’s love of sci-fi novels and movies.

2. Asimov is still in use in our president’s office.

3. Since we have two locations (one in LA, one in Virginia Beach), we do a lot of our collaborative work in chat. One of the ways we manage our workflow is through HUDbot, which is a chat program created by one of our sysadmins, Marco. HUDbot will answer any question you ask him, but still struggles to understand this thing we humans call “love.”

4. We just passed an important milestone as a company — we recently signed up our 100,000th hosted domain.

5. Our longest active client has been with us for nearly 7 years. They’re still on a shared hosting account. Just kidding. I have no idea what kind of account they have. They don’t let me know that kind of stuff.

EVERYTHING INMOTION HOSTING

InMotion Hosting, Inc. | Twitter | Contact

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Every so often there comes a time when you, as a designer, really need a solid system to help you keep track of everything creative in a large scale project, especially if the project involves a lot of people and everyone is trying to stay updated with what’s going on and who’s doing what etc… This is usually when companies start looking for an easier solution to manage things, a way to manage their large number of creatives so to speak. That’s the time when you should take a look at PageLime.

The team behind PageLime is a couple of guys as rad and mad as most of our visitors, all in a good way. To solve a problem that is causing you to lose money is a lot harder than you sometimes think and that’s what makes these guys unique. Instead of trying to find a content management system that could potentially work for them, they instead set out on a journey to create their own. The result was so successful that they decided to make it available for everyone else as well.

Their names? Simple and short Tom and Emil. When I heard about this CMS service I just had to check it out to see what all the fuzz was about. I managed to get an interview with them which grew into a sort of “behind the scenes” article and I was thrilled about the product they had created.

Being a designer/programmer myself, I am sure that their service along with their story is going to inspire many of our readers to take a closer look at PageLime and also perhaps save a bundle of money on your own content management system needs.

1. What was the ignition that lead you to start PageLime and the service you provide today and when was it realized?

We both came from a web development freelancing background. Time and time again we would run into problems related to content management for smaller sites. These sites made up the bulk of our revenue, but also tended to have the least tech savvy operators. After installing WordPress on sites with 7 pages,  custom building CMS that took longer then the actual site design, and always having to under quote our budgets to come in with estimates that were economically feasible for the client we got fed up, and PageLime was born.

2. How long did it take you to go from idea to your first signed up user and what do you think as the most difficult segment in starting PageLime?
It took us about a year. Emil had taken a full time job and I was still freelancing so we built the system in the empty spaces that were supposed to be filled with relaxation and social lives. The most difficult segment was really narrowing down what the core functionality had to be, something a kin to a Commanders Intent message. In our case we chose to focus on simplicity and benefits to our users. So no matter what we add to the system or how it grows, initially you will always have a core product that remains extremely easy to use and effective at simple editing. Turning on all of our more complex features is up to you.

3. Can you share with us what your day to day activities are at PageLime and also how many people are working behind the scenes at PageLime?
Currently PageLime is Emil, Tom, and our intern/junior associate Adam. We start the day answering emails from our Australian and UK users that have already been hard at work hours before we even start. Then I move on to sending personal welcome messages to all of our new users that have signed up over the night. Most of the day consists of the team laughing around the office, working on PageLime upgrades and client support, breaking to watch some random TV show on our fileserver, and then crushing lemons with our bare hands in ritualistic sacrifice to our Lime overlords.

4. Reading up on PageLime it strikes me a very well balanced online tool for any developer/designer. What do you think most subscribers enjoy the most about PageLime and where do you think you could close the gap between your service and the users expectations?

I think the majority of users like the overall simplicity of using the tool when explaining it to their clients.  Clients just get it, they don’t have to fill out forms, or look at text boxes they correlate to some page on their websites. They see their webpage getting updated live in front of them, without any doubt as to what is going on.

In terms of managing user expectations, I think many people have an issue with using a hosted service for managing their content. I personally think it is the best way to go. First with PageLime’s architecture you aren’t tied to us for your websites stability. Instead of having 2 points of failure with a database and your host, now you only have to worry about your host. We push all the changes then walk away. Not being tied to PageLime means you can not only have less to worry about in regards to site stability, you get easy growth if a site needs to expand. Just stop using PageLime and integrate an enterprise solution. No porting, no pressure, no problems.

5. Can you give us a scenario where using PageLime could heavily increase work speed while the developers and designers still retain full control of their project and does it work using it as a developer group?

We have many users who setup the framework of their sites ahead of time. Creating what amounts to wireframes for their clients that have all the html raw code and blocking, but none of the actual graphic design, CSS UI, or scripting. They set their clients up with PageLime so they can do all of the copy editing an insertion ahead of time, taking both the responsibility for correct copy and the need for dummy copy removal at the end of the project away. For example Jessica over at sorcadesign.com does an amazing job of this, gets her projects completed faster and in turn her clients are happier.

It also works just fine within a developer group with the business account, where you can have multiple site administrators managing the sites across the board. PageLime also has versioning and content history so any destructive changes can be rolled back to the last proper publish.

6. How many active subscribers/users does PageLime have today and what do you do to further spread the word about PageLime’s most beneficial features?

We’re currently in the mid thousands as of December 14^th 2009 and growing rapidly. We do a lot of twitter marketing and love doing giveaways when we release new features. Besides that we don’t do much, we have fantastic users who spread the word and our extremely high levels of customer support keep our retention rates high.

7. Talking about features, what do you think is the strongest point and feature that PageLime has and do you have any plans on adding more features in the future and what can we expect them to be?

I think our strongest feature at the moment is repeating regions. No other so called “Light” or “Simple” CMS has the ability to do more then just edit regions. With PageLime you actually have the ability to create content based off of those regions. You can create new navigation buttons, blog style posts, event boxes with full styling and images, and news feeds. These are all kinds of content that you normally could only do with a larger CMS. We also work with page includes across most major coding languages. This allows you to do dynamic pages and content blocks that can be included across the whole site. Another feature only PageLime offers.

We have a roadmap for the future:

Client Invoicing – We’re building an invoicing feature from withing PageLime that will let you manage your PageLime clients with auto recurring invoices that link to your PageLime account. This basically allows you to setup a subscription model for you clients, and pass the cost of PageLime directly to them. OR charge them more, and make money off of PageLime!

Language Internationalization – PageLime will be available in the language of your choosing, and if not the entire systems menu and information can be edited by you so it can appear in the language of your clients.

Blog – Drop in simple PageLime managed blog.

iPhone App – Manage websites from an iPhone application. This is already designed, just need to go about building it soon.

eCommerce – Either a partnership with another team, or build one ourselves that can be dropped in, like the blog.

8. What have been the highlights at PageLime to date and what is your goal with this really powerful tool in the future?

I think the day we had our first user go PRO was pretty fantastic, because a lot of people tried to convince us that no one pays for anything on the Internet anymore.  It proved that if you develop a service that is well thought out, solves a problem, and can actually save people time and make them more money they would pay for it. Our goal in the future is to continue to meet our feature targets, and to continue to always put our users first by implementing beneficial features and continuing our extreme support. I know these all sound corny, but we sit here all day, we read every email by hand, and we just stand by all of our stuff.

9. Who are your closest competitors and what makes PageLime better than them?

I think out closest competitors are really people who go the homegrown CMS route. So many people like to really get into the code and get their hands dirty and do everything from scratch. It’s hard to convince people it would be better to save time and make more money with PageLime if they are predisposed to working harder and less effectively for their clients.

10. If you could use any other online application in collaboration with PageLime which one would be the most compatible one and why?

I would suggest using FoxyCart with PageLime. Great team over there.  They are certainly the easiest e-commerce solution to integrate. It works seamlessly with PageLime and they are developing a full API that we will most likely be integrating into PageLime for central a centralized e-commerce solution built into PageLime.

Odd Facts

1. We’re sponsored by Vitamin Water, and we consume tons of them every day as you can see from the attached picture. (We’re not kidding, we get this stuff delivered by the truck load)

2. There is a sandwich named the PageLime Panini at Visions, a restaurant around the corner from us. http://www.visionsbethesda.com.

3. We’re secretly involved in a massive revolution to have Lime come first in all products from now on. You can read the story of how all this came about at http://www.itislimetime.com/sidescroll.php.

4. Tom thinks he has a really good Emil accent (Croatian) but in fact all of his accents just sound like a horrible combination of Borat and Sylvester Stallone.

5. We have a dog in our office named Jackson. Occasionally he likes to get dressed for work, in his best Lime ties.

6. People often ask where the name of PageLime came from. It was Emil’s idea, and Tom loved it (because limes are flippin’ awesome). One day Tom realized it was just Emil spelled backwards with “Page” in front. Emil snuck this past Tom until well after the trademark was filed. Tom has come to terms with this but expect our next product to end in ‘Mot’.

EVERYTHING PAGELIME

PageLime |  Twitter | Blog | Contact

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I’m a very visual person and I get a lot of inspiration from looking at beautifully designed websites. Since I am not a designer, I often take for granted all the behind the scenes work that has to happen for a website to function properly. To me, it just works. To Pixelcrayons, it is a meticulous process of taking a designers beautiful creation and turning it into the code necessary so the website can display and operate exactly as the designer envisions. They take a lot of pride in their work, and it shows in their reputation.

We are very fortunate to have Pixelcrayons as an advertiser and supporter of this blog, and I was excited when Richard asked me to interview Manish Rawat about this whole process. Aside from the business aspect of this interview, I was most impressed with the amazing people that work at Pixelcrayons. They are truly one big family and as you’ll see in the pictures, they have a lot of fun at their office!

You can learn more about Pixelcrayons by clicking on the green rectangle to the right of this article, or by visiting http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com.

Questions

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Thank you, Manish, for taking the time for this interview today. We are excited to feature you on Bit Rebels. I’m a newbie to this process, so if you had to describe what Pixelcrayons does in one sentence, what would that be?

Manish: Thank you for interviewing us for Bit Rebels. We are excited about this. Pixelcrayons offers high quality hand coded pixel-precise markup services and implementation into skins, themes, CMS, shopping carts and more. We accept files in all common formats (PSD/AI/PNG/PDF) and even existing markup.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Can you explain in detail to me what the process is? When a designer gives you their work, what exactly do you do with it?

Manish: Sure! First one of our project managers is assigned to the project. He looks at the order and requests any additional information that might be needed. Then, a markup expert assesses the project. Now it’s time for the markup developer to get involved and he begins the actual markup process. When he is finished, the project gets passes on to our QA team who checks the work to make sure it meets all of our standards for quality, and any changes are made by the markup developer at that point. Once the QA puts their stamp of approval on the work, it is passed back to the project manager who then delivers it to the client. It’s quite a simple process really.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Wow, that is incredible. It sounds like you have the whole process streamlined. So what is your favorite aspect of it all? I bet it is gratifying to see the end product.

Manish: Conceptualization and the brainstorming session is our favorite aspect of the whole Pixelcrayons process because this is the area where we put most of our effort by being creative, distinct and authentic to serve the unique and distinct needs of our clients. It is always gratifying to see your imagination taking shape in the real world and our efforts bringing accolades for us.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): I know you’ve been in business for five years, but paint a little picture for us. How many employees do you have? How many clients?

Manish: Yes, we have been in business since 2004. We have serviced over 1,800 clients from 38 different countries! We are proud to say that we have 120 full time staff members at the moment. Our clients love us because not only do we provide the quality they are looking for, but we also offer 100% privacy (all work is done under a non-disclosure agreement) and we offer a satisfaction guarantee or money back.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Tell us a little bit about your office. Where is it located? Does everyone go to lunch together? What are the working hours?

Manish: We are located in Udhyog Nagar, New Delhi, India, our office ‘Vinove Software and Services’ is a fast growing company which behaves as a second home to all of us. This is a place where all of our employees work together with dedication. Each one of us enjoys every moment of being here and working here. The relationship between team members and their seniors is extremely friendly. The work contributed by each one of us is highly valued and appreciated by our supervisors. Yes, eating together, chatting together or getting to socialize is what we encourage for everyone. We work 24/7. The company offers an open and free work environment. We make sure that the office is like a second home to our employees, with the same warmth, comfort and care.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): What if someone needs help with the actual design process? Do you assist with that also or how do you handle that aspect?

Manish: Yes, if someone needs help with the design process, we assist with that also! We have over 350 web design clients from all around the world. If someone contacts us through our website at http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com, we will provide them with the specific information they need about this.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): What if a client wants to see samples of your work before hiring Pixelcrayons, is that possible?

Manish: Yes, of course. Anyone can view samples of our work here: http://xhtml.pixelcrayons.com/portfolio.html If they need to see something specific that is not listed on that page, they can just request it and we will provide samples to them.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): What other business or company would you consider to be your role model? When you think about the future of Pixelcrayons, who do you look up to in business and why?

Manish: When a company starts relying on the possibility of coming up with a winning formula and forming its strategy reactively to keep up with the existing competition, it starts losing its uniqueness. We like to build our own individuality and work with originality. We think that taking inspiration from someone is similar to adopting their ideas. We don’t do that. We think for ourselves and we do for ourselves. We believe in becoming a role model for other companies and are pretty happy to see the achievements of Pixelcrayons up until now.

Our expert staff at Pixelcrayons will work with more zeal and passion to serve clients even more in the future. Be ready to see and hear some major milestones achieved by Pixelcrayons very soon.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Where do you see Pixelcrayons in the next five years? Any juicy new things you can share with us all?

Manish: What we have achieved in the past five years, we aim to achieve more than double in the next five years. We see Pixelcrayons attaining new heights, setting new benchmarks and creating a threat for its competitors in addition to leading the industry. Vinove is a company where we give equal importance to recreational activities and do not miss out any chance to enjoy and experience that. There are events, and celebrations, all the time, and there is never a dull moment in our office.

Let us share with you one of the most interesting events of our company that we organized and participated in the month of September. Every member of Pixelcrayons took an active part in the celebration and had a blast. It was the occasion of our company’s foundation day celebration. We celebrated for five continuous days, with every new activity each day. Our company has its birthday on 10th of September and we started our celebration on the 8th, and we continued partying until the 12th of the September. Every member of our company was overjoyed and thrilled with the kind of fun and experience we had. That was, without a doubt, one of the best moments spent in our office to date.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): For our last question, I would like to ask you to tell us something interesting about Pixelcrayons that our readers would never know unless they read this interview. Can you share something like that with us?

Manish: The most interesting news which I am sure will interest your readers and Twitter followers would be our remarkable client retention success for this quarter. This quarter Pixelcrayons has marked 98% client retention. In this time of uncertainty, Pixelcrayons has not only gained new clients, but also managed to keep its old clients intact. All of this has become possible because of the quality of the work that we deliver, and our attention to detail when it comes to servicing our clients, which we practice every day.

Thank you to Manish Rawat and Pixelcrayons for this wonderful interview and for all their support of Bit Rebels!

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One of the best parts of being a writer at Bit Rebels and the assistant to Richard Darell is that I get to be in the company of some very talented people. When I was asked to interview one of our site’s sponsors, veteran web designer, John O’Nolan, I had no idea what I was in for. I thought this was just going to be another interview, but wow, was I wrong. I felt inspired and enriched after interviewing him, and I learned so much. There is a lot of wisdom, inspiration and creativity in his answers.

I understand now why he is in high demand, and why he is so passionate about his work. I am confident you will feel the same way when you get to know him. After reading this article, please click on the yellow rectangle in our sponsor section to the right to learn more about him. Sit back, get comfortable and enjoy this Bit Rebels interview with John O’Nolan.

Questions

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Thank you, John, for allowing me interview you today. It is a pleasure to have you featured on Bit Rebels. Let’s just jump right into it! On your website you talk about your love of the internet almost like it’s a real relationship. I can relate to that myself. I also read that you loved art and music as a child and you grew up in a tech oriented family. How did you discover your love for the internet, and more specifically, your love for web design?

John: First of all, thank you very much for having me here on Bit Rebels – I’m always humbled when anyone wants to interview me! I grew up (as you mentioned) in a very tech oriented family; my father built up one of the world’s most extensive enterprise networks as platform for collaboration between scientists. Think of a more advanced version of Basecamp and you’re pretty much there, the only difference is that he came up with all this stuff over 10 years ago when 37Signals didn’t even exist yet!

Coming from that background, I spent most of my teenage years attempting to shun the fact that I was good with computers. I’d always loved art, and I liked business, but I didn’t want to do anything computer related just because I wanted to “make my own path”. Eventually I managed to get past that when someone asked me “how much do you charge for websites?” And I figured out that people would actually pay me real money to do something I’d been doing for free anyway!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): I see that you are very active in social media. On Twitter you have sent over 10,000 tweets and have over 5,000 followers! How would you say social media has impacted your business overall? Do you use Twitter to gain new clients or is it more of a tool to share valuable information about your craft to others?

John: Twitter is basically the core of my entire business – strange as I’m sure that sounds too many people. I rely on it so much that if someone said I had to pay $300 a month to continue using it, then I probably would. I don’t do radio advertising, or TV, or direct mail, or cold calling, or any forms of traditional marketing. All I do is talk to people who I like on Twitter, and participate actively on other web design blogs and sites. The point of all this is that my best clients have come from social media, and my worst clients have all been local businesses.

I’ll give you some examples: Ubisoft [http://www.ubi.com/] hired me based on seeing my work in Smashing Magazine, I’ve done a lot of work for the awesome guys at OnWired [http://www.onwired.com] which started out because I interviewed their MD on my blog, and right now I’m working with Virgin Atlantic Airways (who found me through twitter) to design and build the blog for their brand new travel website. [http://www.vtravelled.com]

Those are all my great clients, now on the flip side of the coin; a local clothing shop contracted me to rebuild their ecommerce site, which I spent 2 months doing, then they refused to pay and I couldn’t afford to take them court. A local stereo company took (seriously) 8 months to pay a small deposit, then they wanted to know why the site hadn’t been started yet, and then they pulled out of the contract (even though they’d already signed it). Again, I couldn’t afford to take them to court.
What I’ve learned from this is that the best clients are the ones that seek me out because they really want to work with me, and the worst clients are the ones who just approach me because I’m “local and convenient”

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): What is your number one favorite part of the whole design process?

John: The end! I love it when you get to the end of a design and it suddenly all comes together perfectly. It always surprises me a little, because it seems to “just happen” at a certain point.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Do you work in a traditional office? What does it look like? Where is it located? Is your desk messy or neat?

John: Right now all of Lyrical Media’s staff is home-based. There’s only a few of us, and we’re all in different countries across the world, so it doesn’t make sense to have a “real” office for anyone. My desk is fairly neat at the moment, but most of the time it’s pretty messy!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): I read that you are working on a web app to incorporate your love for music. That sounds very exciting! Can you elaborate more on this?

John: I can’t say much about this one; it’s quite a long way away! I have 2 major side projects that I’m working on, and this one is the 2nd of the two. In simple terms it’s an application to really help out unsigned musicians in a big way, but that’s about all I can tell you at this point! The concept has had a really warm reception when run past a couple of chart-topping artists, so I’m confident it’ll be something really cool once I find time to build it.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): On your website, it seems like you have a lot of fun and you love what you do. Can you describe what your typical day looks like?

John: Haha! I definitely love what I do, often I think to myself “I should stop screwing around and do some work” – until I realize that what I’m doing is work! That’s one of the best feelings around, which I never (ever) got that from any of my previous jobs. Right now my routine consists of waking up around 8am, dropping off my girlfriend at work, and then getting into my office for about 6 hours of non-stop work. In the evening I pick her up from work again and relax for a little while, then I usually break out the laptop and spend another 4-6 hours in the evening doing more work. It’s a lot of hours, but like I mentioned, it doesn’t feel like work. If I had $100 million in the bank and I didn’t need to work to make any money, this is still what I’d be doing!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): As a new blogger myself, I am fascinated by your successful blogging career. How do you find the time to update your blog so frequently and manage the over 600 regular readers?

John: Well the answer to this is quite simple – I don’t find nearly enough time! I’ve always found with my blog that it’s most successful when I post regularly; 2/3 times a week seems to really make a big difference. Right now I’m struggling to find the time to post once a week, which has dropped my traffic, levels down a bit. To answer your question about 600 subscribers, that one is really just a matter of time. I mean I do my best to make clear calls to action with a big “subscribe” button at the end of every post, but I’ve never really focused on trying to build that number up – it just takes time!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Like many creative artists, it appears that you are a bit of a perfectionist. How does that affect your work? Do you find that helps or hinders you?

John: I think it does both in equal measures. On the plus side it drives me to produce (what I hope are) some pretty good pieces of design work, but on the down side I sometimes work more hours than I bill for in order to get the design “just right”. Overall I think it’s probably a good thing, but it can be a real pain sometimes!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): I love this quote below of yours. Is there any other advice you would give to someone just starting out as an entrepreneur?

“Life is too short to do things you don’t enjoy. LOVE what you do and believe in yourself. If you stop loving what you’re doing for even one moment then go and do something else! I know it’s easier said than done for financial reasons, but that doesn’t matter – you can work a full time job and start doing what you love in every bit of spare time that you have, then once you’re doing well enough you can quit your full time job. Persevere!”

John: I should point out here that I’m heavily ripping off Gary Vaynerchuk, and can’t really take much credit for that message – but it is one that I completely support. My single biggest piece of advice to any entrepreneur would be to answer this question: “If I told you that your business would only ever make $20,000 dollars a year, and you’d have to work 12 hours every single day… would you still want to do it?” If the answer to that question is “no” – then get out right now, because it’ll never be successful. Once you find something where the answer to that question is “yes, definitely” – then you’re onto a winner.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Since you dropped out of school yet still became wildly successful anyway, what advice would you give to a teenager today wanting to do the same thing? Do you think that decision made it more difficult for you or did it allow your creative side to bloom much sooner?

John: This is a subject that’s very close to my heart, and while I feel very strongly about it, I think that it’s something very personal to each individual. So I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to do what I did just for the sake of it. I’ve never been great with people telling me what I can and can’t do – I genuinely believe that I (or anyone else for that matter) can do anything if I try hard enough, and I see no point at all in spending any time in this short life doing something that I don’t want to do. You can imagine how well that always went down with parents, teachers, and bosses! There’s no one in the world that could’ve prevented me from dropping out of school and finding my own way – it was something that was always going to happen, because that’s who I am. If you’re the same as me (or even if you’re not), there’s nothing I can say that will change anything. You just have to decide what you want to do, and go do that, no matter stands in your way.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): When you think about the future, where do you see yourself in 5 years, personally and professionally?

John: In 5 years time I’d like to be outside of the service industry. I love design, and I love the web, but I love both of those things most when I’m doing them for myself. I get the most enjoyment out of designing and building my own sites and blogs – so I’d love to build up a web based business that sells products rather than services. This is something that I’ve already started work on, and there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. 2010 should see the launch of at least one exciting new project along these lines.

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): Now for a fun personal question, what will your next tattoo look like?

John: Good question! I have several at the moment that aren’t finished, so I should really get those completed before I start any new ones – but knowing me I probably won’t!

I think next will be a ‘new skool’ chest-piece by one of my favorite local artists called James Robinson [http://www.nineboycesstreet.com/james/], then a geometric piece covering all of my back by either Xed Le Head [http://www.xedtattoo.com/], or Tomas Tomas [http://www.into-you.co.uk/other.php?dir=french_t&loc=lon], and eventually when I have the money and the time to fly over to the US, I want my right arm filled up by Jeff Gogue [http://www.gogueart.com/].

Tattooing has always been very close to my heart from a young age, and I worked as a tattoo artist before I was a web designer. Many of the styles and influences from that industry have crossed over directly into my design work, most notably an inexplicable love for skulls, hearts, and the number 13!

Bit Rebels (Diana Adams): You know we can’t end this interview without the “would you rather” questions. Just answer with the first thing that comes to mind.

Would you rather spend the day surfing the internet or the ocean?
This is a difficult one, I really love both of those. I’d probably have to pick surfing the ocean, just because I already surf the internet every other day!

Would you rather be a dog named Killer or a cat named Fluffy?
Dog named killer, no question.

Would you rather be forced to tell your best friend a lie or tell your parents the truth?
I think I’d always rather be forced to tell a lie rather than be forced to tell the truth – I’m not sure what that says about me!

Would you rather know it all or have it all?
Know it all, definitely. Having it all is fulfilling for a little while, but knowing it all is fulfilling forever.

John, again, this has been a real pleasure for me and for Bit Rebels. We are grateful that you are one of our sponsors and I look forward learning even more from you.

You can find John O’Nolan and Lyrical Media by visiting http://john.onolan.org and following him on Twitter at @JohnONolan.