REGINA THURSTON HALL
Resources
Regina Thurston Hall
Professional Standards for the Self Employed
I had the experience of placing a Craigslist ad for a very specific task, which once you arrive onsite, should take less than 20 minutes start to finish.
The bids I received were $20, $35, $40, $50 and $125. The person who is charging $20 probably best understands why I think this is reasonable compensation. I am supplying all the tools. I simply need labor, which if you follow the instructions as provided would take less than 20 minutes.
The person who is charging $125 included several "cost" factors that I excluded. My response to that person was I would not pay for travel costs and gas because that is the cost of doing business. I also explained that if this was a full-time job and an hour commute, you might not take the job. You wouldn't ask the employer for higher pay based on your commute costs. You could however ask for higher pay based on skill or expertise that you are providing to the employer.
I have a full-time job and I am self-employed. I have a minimum price I would charge for any job based on my perception of the worth of my time. I turn down certain jobs rather than insult someone with an unfair rate. If I know someone who can and probably would provide the job at a fair rate, I make referrals.
I consider this a professional standard for the self-employed.
I received an e-mail regarding an IT/finance-related contractor position in Arizona and the rate was $60/hour. Just because I live in Michigan and would have to semi-relocate, I can't just demand $100/hour based on this factor. If I want the job, I must absorb the cost of doing business.
I consider this a professional standard for the self-employed.
My PayPal Goof
I meant to send an electronic payment to a graphic designer in Michigan and the payment ended up with a graphic designer is Maryland. How? I mis-typed the e-mail address, which differed by two characters.
Thankfully the Maryland designer issued me a refund and I was able to pay the Michigan designer without incurring double costs.
Vacation Clubs and Timeshares: ETour and Travel
The focus of my blog was suppose to be finance and information technology. But since it is MY blog, I can add other topics. I've decided to add travel as a topic.
I actually love to travel. I enjoy seeing new environments and new landscapes.
My husband and I joined a travel club last year and it opened our eyes to the vast pricing schemes in the travel industry. We also sign up for more offers now and receive phone calls about different travel opportunities. He's been receiving cruise phone calls and I just got a call today from ETour and Travel. They offered 4 days / 3 nights in Orlando (with a stay at a Sheraton/Hilton property) and 4 days / 3 nights in Dayton. The package also includes vouchers for discounts on air travel ($100 per ticket) and $100 in credits toward shows and attractions. Our cost: $149.
Sounds good on the surface, but what's the catch? You have to attend a 45-minute presentation (not a big deal) but you also must BUY NOW. I hate snap decision. The caller said I could not call back in a couple of hours and get the same rate.
I said if it's a good deal now, it will be a good deal later. Maybe another company will call with the same or better offer.
For $149, you get a package in a mail that tells you how to activate everything and you have two years to use it and there are no blackout dates. But why must you BUY NOW? Is the offer really going to disappear 2-3 hours from now?
The Evolution of the name HH Web Design
I was in Toronto recently and had the pleasure of finally meeting one of my web design clients face-to-face. We met at Union Station and then ventured out on to Front Street to find an affordable restaurant. We did and we had a really good conversation. We covered so much - more than we ever could have over the phone or via e-mail. The purpose of the meeting was simply to meet, not discuss any business. However....
During our conversation, it became apparent that she was not clear on my actual physical home base / home office.
In the early 90's I started Thurston Consulting in Brooklyn, NY. I moved to Detroit, MI in 1996. To keep my relationship with NY/NJ/CT clients I partnered with JB White Enterprises and started using the name JB Web Design. JB White Enteprises has now expanded to Ontario, Canada so now I have a Canadia client bases. I married Mr. Elliott Hall in 2010, so we began marketing our services as Hall and Hall, LLC. Thus, the evolution of the name HH Web Design.
Currently, I still use all three names, depending on when my client relationship began and what service is provided. Electronic billing accounts might use any one of the aforementioned name or even the name What are you Wearing, which is another company that has nothing to do with consulting.
During our conversation, it became apparent that she was not clear on my actual physical home base / home office.
In the early 90's I started Thurston Consulting in Brooklyn, NY. I moved to Detroit, MI in 1996. To keep my relationship with NY/NJ/CT clients I partnered with JB White Enterprises and started using the name JB Web Design. JB White Enteprises has now expanded to Ontario, Canada so now I have a Canadia client bases. I married Mr. Elliott Hall in 2010, so we began marketing our services as Hall and Hall, LLC. Thus, the evolution of the name HH Web Design.
Currently, I still use all three names, depending on when my client relationship began and what service is provided. Electronic billing accounts might use any one of the aforementioned name or even the name What are you Wearing, which is another company that has nothing to do with consulting.
When Job Boards are Misused
In response to something that happened to me and comments that were on the website about the alleged recruiting agency Work Save Retire, I entered the following information on the website.
My call was from 810-224-9420 and has the same elements that other people mentioned. I think WorkSaveRetire was trying to get me to meet with a Brian. Suggested that Brian would come to my house. I said I wasn't comfortable with that so then she suggested a public spot like a cafe or library. I asked where was Brian's office and was give a lame excuse as to why Brian is never in the office. So I said I wanted to meet some company representative in the office and that's when things unravelled.
The things that stood out as unusual: (1) a recruiting company that has YOU finding the job utilizing desktop sofware, (2) require that you meet with financial advisor, (3) asked if I had 401K to rollover, (3) asked value of retirement assets, (4) asked fewer career/job related questions, (5) has many offices throughout the country but did not know the address of the company's location in my area.
So after I received their e-mail (they had my address from CareerBuilder) I visited their website and noticed that Contact Us does not list an address and notice that the website itself is not even their own domain name - its subhosted on Ning, a social networking site.
Somebody wanted to know where is the scam? The scam is that job boards are exploited to sell other services. What recruiting agency asks the job seeker to find the jobs using software. Recruiters are the people with relationships with the employers.
It's a bait and switch. The bait is "help you find a job". The switch is "in the meantime, talk to my financial advisor".
This is what happens when job boards are misused. You get people like me who blog about it at every opportunity.
I have a Facebook page, do I need a website?
A potential client asked if you needed a website if you have a Facebook page.If you understand what you can and cannot do through Facebook, it is possible to get by with just a Facebook page. However, as soon as you want a particular feature that is not available through Facebook, you start to realize that having your own website gives you more control over content. On your own website you can implement almost anything you can image.
People who think it's better to have a Facebook site over a web site don't understand the limitations of Facebook.
Photo galleries. On your own website you can have hundreds or thousands of photos. The Facebook limit is 200 per this source. I actually encountered this recently while trying to upload 258 photos not knowing the limit. The error message was something like you've exceeded the limit.
Page Layout. On your own website you can have as many or few columns as you want and place your site navigation wherever you want. On Facebook, as it exists today, you get three columns and your site navigation is vertical on the left column.
Advertising. Companies like Microsoft and Google have Facebook pages and even their third column has the Facebook-imposed advertising. On your own website, if you choose to have advertising, at least you can get paid for it. You can also choose not to have any advertising.
E-commerce. Have you seen any e-stores on Facebook or have you seen promotional data on Facebook directing you to another site? Facebook is not equipped to do e-commerce, nor was it meant to be. At best the business use of Facebook is interactivity with your customer/fan base and promotion of items. For example, the following companies have Facebook pages and you cannot buy products directly from their sites.
Some people prefer a Facebook page over a website have no budget for a website or perhaps have a different approach for selling their products of services. Stores use their own websites for customer purchases and use Facebook for advertising and promotion. They are just capitalizing on the Facebook sensation.
A website that you own and control gives you far more control and flexibility. And remember 4-5 years ago, MySpace was the big rave.
Another client asked if a Facebook page could accept donations. Yes, it can per this link. You can also do this on your own website.
So it really is a matter of capabilities. If you don't need certain features, then Facebook can serve a purpose. Just remember, when Facebook is surpassed by something else or decides to implement a pay-to-play model, you have to find your next platform.
Deprecated HTML Tags and Hexadecimal Color Values
I gave my nephew the assignment of learning all of the HTML tags listed on the W3 Schools website, by writing it down on good old fashion index cards - aka flash cards. Being the genius that he is, he said, let me quiz you. So he read the definitions and asked me the name of the tag. Well, I got some "wrong".
I explained that no real web programmer actually uses the tag anymore to accomplish the function. I mentioned the word deprecated. Deprecated? What does that mean? Well it looks like depreciated, which means decrease in value. Thus to me, deprecated means diminishing in use. You can still use the tag but should use the more current equivalent. Wikipedia expounds upon the definition. Most of the deprecated HTML tags have been replaced with the style attribute of tags or have another tag altogether.
W3 Schools also has a list of hexadecimal color values. The list has 147 colors, so I decided not to overwhelm and said to learn the 17 standard colors. Then I thought to myself, I don't even know the 17 standard colors. I know 6 colors: black, white, red, green, blue and gray. I explained to him that color display was based on the degree of light. In very general terms, 100% light is white 0% light is black. Thus the hexadecimal value of black is #000000 and thus the value of white is #ffffff.
Then we moved on to red, green and blue. Hexadecimal, sort of means, 6 digits where the digits 1-2 is the % red, 3-4 is the % green and 5-6 is % blue - hence the other color model RGB. He nailed that concept pretty quickly.
So I said, what two colors make up purple (one of my favorites color). His response: red and blue. My response: so the hexadecimal value of purple. He stumbled a bit but eventually answered correctly. Then I said, what's the hex value of orange? Hmm, required more thinking. So I said get some crayons, but not an orange crayon. Actually red plus yellow = orange, but how do you get yellow? Red plus green. How much blue is in yellow? None. So if blue is the 5th and 6th digits of hex, then you know those values would be "00".
Then I told him, no one actually remembers all of the hex color values. We only remember the ones we use the most and we look up the rest.
So after the discussion of deprecated HMTL tags and hexadecimal color values, we moved on to the basic tags all web pages contain. He actually opened notepad and begin coding from scratch. In about 2 hours, he designed a very basic page with text area, site navigation, and perfectly aligned photo objects. And he did it without Dreamweaver or Frontpage (oops they are both deprecated, replaced by Creative Suite and Expression Web respectively).
I explained that no real web programmer actually uses the tag anymore to accomplish the function. I mentioned the word deprecated. Deprecated? What does that mean? Well it looks like depreciated, which means decrease in value. Thus to me, deprecated means diminishing in use. You can still use the tag but should use the more current equivalent. Wikipedia expounds upon the definition. Most of the deprecated HTML tags have been replaced with the style attribute of tags or have another tag altogether.
W3 Schools also has a list of hexadecimal color values. The list has 147 colors, so I decided not to overwhelm and said to learn the 17 standard colors. Then I thought to myself, I don't even know the 17 standard colors. I know 6 colors: black, white, red, green, blue and gray. I explained to him that color display was based on the degree of light. In very general terms, 100% light is white 0% light is black. Thus the hexadecimal value of black is #000000 and thus the value of white is #ffffff.
Then we moved on to red, green and blue. Hexadecimal, sort of means, 6 digits where the digits 1-2 is the % red, 3-4 is the % green and 5-6 is % blue - hence the other color model RGB. He nailed that concept pretty quickly.
So I said, what two colors make up purple (one of my favorites color). His response: red and blue. My response: so the hexadecimal value of purple. He stumbled a bit but eventually answered correctly. Then I said, what's the hex value of orange? Hmm, required more thinking. So I said get some crayons, but not an orange crayon. Actually red plus yellow = orange, but how do you get yellow? Red plus green. How much blue is in yellow? None. So if blue is the 5th and 6th digits of hex, then you know those values would be "00".
Then I told him, no one actually remembers all of the hex color values. We only remember the ones we use the most and we look up the rest.
So after the discussion of deprecated HMTL tags and hexadecimal color values, we moved on to the basic tags all web pages contain. He actually opened notepad and begin coding from scratch. In about 2 hours, he designed a very basic page with text area, site navigation, and perfectly aligned photo objects. And he did it without Dreamweaver or Frontpage (oops they are both deprecated, replaced by Creative Suite and Expression Web respectively).
Teaching Web Design to a Pre-teen
This weekend I will have the pleasure and challenge of teaching web design to my 12 year old nephew who LOVES computers. I think he will hang on to my every word.
Since this just weekend #1 and he is only 12, I have to make it meaningful to him. I pride myself on being able to communicate at all levels, so here is my plan.
My approach to teaching web design is to view it as a three-fold endeavor. In my mind, web design has three components
When you take a traditional web design course, the focus is typically on the technical component. However the technical side only suffices if you're going to work as a Web Developer or Web Programmer for a company. Your main role within the company will be technical. The company may have someone else who works the business side and yet a third person who is the creative director.
If you want to design websites for your own clients, you must understand business and creativity.
Side note to my beloved nephew: it's OK if you can't totally grasp the business side. We'll focus on the technical and creative components. You will learn HTML tags, design a flash website in Wix and learn one graphic design technique.
Since this just weekend #1 and he is only 12, I have to make it meaningful to him. I pride myself on being able to communicate at all levels, so here is my plan.
My approach to teaching web design is to view it as a three-fold endeavor. In my mind, web design has three components
- Business
- Technical
- Creativity
When you take a traditional web design course, the focus is typically on the technical component. However the technical side only suffices if you're going to work as a Web Developer or Web Programmer for a company. Your main role within the company will be technical. The company may have someone else who works the business side and yet a third person who is the creative director.
If you want to design websites for your own clients, you must understand business and creativity.
Side note to my beloved nephew: it's OK if you can't totally grasp the business side. We'll focus on the technical and creative components. You will learn HTML tags, design a flash website in Wix and learn one graphic design technique.
Business
- Marketing your services
- Understanding your customer's goals
- Helping your customer reach those goals
- Serving as a consultant to your customer to point out pertinent details
- Delivering a product that meets your customer's goals
- Active follow-up
Technical
Design
- understand the various technologies and when to use which
- gain knowledge of HTML and CSS
- learn when to use sound, video and animation
- must know the limitations of the basic formats
- test your web design in the major web browsers
- your website must display properly on the majority of the computers and devices used by your target market
- use templates and customize them for your customer (when appropriate)
- sometimes it's cheaper and easier
- if the customer wants a truly unique design, don't use a template
Deliver
- know the major domain registrars and the reliable hosting companies
- learn the basics of FTP
- offer a content management system
- make sure your customer can reasonably update the website himself (if the customer so chooses)
- offer ongoing technical support and actually respond to requests in a timely fashion
Creativity
- understand your customer's business and present a complementary image
- choose graphics, colors, layout and symbolism that conveys the customer message
- gain knowledge of various design tools
- in-depth knowledge of Photoshop will get you a job
- there are other design tools besides Photoshop
Desgining Websites with Cellphones in Mind
With the exception of
iPhones (whose browser is Safari), most cell phones cannot view flash
websites or flash elements in an HTML website. With the proliferation of
mobile devices, more people are surfing the internet from something
other than a desktop or notebook computer.
One of my customers mentioned that her website was visible on a computer but not on cellphones. She has a Blackberry; I have an Android. Both are smart phones and neither displayed sites that have flash. So I removed the flash from her site - problem solved.
Two HTML/CSS/CMS site types that seems to display well on cellphones is WordPress and DotNetNuke, so I will definitely continue to use that as a tool of choice for those those who do not insist on flash.
I would imagine in the next 2-3 years, all smart phones will support Flash.
Flash Web Design Tool: SWiSHMax
I read a Craigslist ad today where someone wanted to learn web design and provided a screenshot of a site that he would like to be able to design. To me, the site was pretty straightforward and can be handled by any content management package. Actually, it looked like a WordPress layout.
This ad reminded me that a key part of being able to design websites is choosing the best tools.
SWiSHMax is a tool for flash web design. This software resides on your computer so you create the design on your computer and then upload the files to your web server.
SWiSHMax is sold online at www.swishzone.com.
I used SWisHMax to modify a template that can be used by singers and musicians. The template is located on http://www.thurstonconsulting.us/templates/luther.
This ad reminded me that a key part of being able to design websites is choosing the best tools.
SWiSHMax is a tool for flash web design. This software resides on your computer so you create the design on your computer and then upload the files to your web server.
SWiSHMax is sold online at www.swishzone.com.
I used SWisHMax to modify a template that can be used by singers and musicians. The template is located on http://www.thurstonconsulting.us/templates/luther.
