Well, I’m four months into this thing and have a couple of writers that have produced/are producing good content. I have the ability to hire more if I need too…. It’s time to find a designer.

I’ve got my first project posted on Elance and after being up for 4 days I am not very happy with the bids I have received. The sites in the designer’s portfolios have all been faulty; from being slow to load, to just being plain old ugly.

My original plan was to outsource most of the content creation I needed and do most of the page design/coding myself using Dreamweaver. I’ve played around with Dreamweaver 8 for about a year, but only in the last month and a half have I really gotten into it. I went through the whole Lynda basic video tutorial, doing the exercises, and taking extensive notes (which I hope to have online soon). Looking back on it, the tutorial was only mediocre, and I question the expertise of the instructor. Too much time was devoted to tables and old ways of formatting text. Not enough time was spent going through CSS, and there were not enough elaboration that would be expected from someone supposed to be an expert.
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Their site is now live - Best of luck guys. A quick search of links shows none incoming, even the one from this blog, so it must not be an accurate count. No meta data on the incoming page… they could at least throw a description and some keywords in there.

You know what… I’m going to turn these Blastspot updates into an ongoing thing. It will be interesting watching a very Web 2.0 site try and make it. From birth to success? Or from birth to death? They have a great looking site… its time to market it heavily.

Current searches per day according to Wordtracker:
Myspace 207,003
Facebook 20,167
Blackboard 359
Blastspot 0

If I was promoting Blastspot, I would first start a flyer campaign around college campuses that would have a contest involved. I used flyers to find content writers and it worked really well. They should create a flyer with their orange logo with tabs along the sides or bottoms. Yes, sides. I had to go to campus today and was seeing how some flyers I put up a week ago were doing and saw the side tab design that was very eye-catching and unique. Okay, so why should people sign up for Blastspot? Is it because because they have a cool logo - nope, its not that easy. There needs to be an incentive for people to take action (in this case become a member), there is no compelling content that is being offered or an awesome deal. In this case a contest is needed, and what for the prize (lets say a $1000 budget)?

1.
Cash
$500 - 1st Prize
$300 - 2nd Prize
$100 - 3rd Prize
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Well this weekend I jumped ship and shelled out the almost $400 to form an LLC. I am running a company so I might as well get the legal protections. I used Legalzoom and the process was pretty painless. One thing to be aware of if you are considering forming an LLC or a corporation is that there is a recurring fee for using their registered agent service. The fee is optional, but from what I have read it is a good idea to have a registered agent - they serve as an intermediary for any tax or legal issues. As a company you are required by law to be available during normal business hours and a registered agent fulfills this purpose. The registered agent fee at Legalzoom is $150/yr and is included in the first year’s price (if you choose to have one). I’ll post an update when all the paperwork comes through letting everyone know how it goes.

Quick Tip - If you want a $15 discount fill out all of the info as if you were going to buy their LLC formation package, but at the end don’t pay. You will get an email about 3 days later giving you a $15 discount if you complete the transaction.