You've probably heard us talk about Stripe before. It's a great alternative to Paypal or a merchant account with your bank. But it's built for developers. Trying to just sell one off products or classes with it - or maybe even accept payment for a service is kind of difficult.
Keep ReadingFor many years, the only way FortySeven Media took money was by paper check. That check then had to be taken to the bank and deposited before the money would be in our account. This worked ok when we were sending invoices spaced out between project phases, but we recently moved to tracking our time and invoicing every two weeks. Obviously more checks were going to be going out, and the time tracking software we were using (Harvest) had built in support for accepting credit cards.
It was time to start taking digital payments.
Harvest (or just about any invoicing software) supports a lot of different gateways and merchant accounts so we did some research before settling on one. I'll just be covering the “big three,” as these should be available for most apps, but let me know in the comments if we should be talking about some other ones.
Finally, we're based in the US so some of these may not be available if you're out of the country. Let's get started!
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Let me tell you that creating our first product has been a grand adventure. Our little web design business training membership program has gone through a ton of changes. Some big (like bringing a partner on) and some small (like the endless tweaking we've done).
And that's not including the content. In fact, since we launched last year we've created over 65 videos and nearly 30 blog articles. Dang. Nap, anyone?
But back to the changes. We've got some exciting news for you guys:
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Nate and I became internet friends with Allan Branch & Steve Bristol of LessEverything about 6 years ago when they wrote a short post about our “Don't Hire Us” page. Many tweets and recriprocal blog posts later, we finally got to meet them at their second LessConf. And we found an even closer friendship with those guys. They totally got us.
Back to LessConf, though - we really enjoyed that conference and came back every year after that, but I think it wasn't until the 5th and final one last week that I fully understood what LessConf was.
You see, Allan & Steve like to make a spectacle. They know how to create things that people talk about. Seven hour hugs on stage. Gourmet popsicles. Milk and cookie breaks. Complimentary massages. The list could go on. Trust me.
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What are you doing next Thursday? Maybe you'd like to learn how to make your business freakishly profitable?
Turns out the Kicktastic crew is doing a 3 hour workshop at ConvergeSE on Thursday, April 25th about that very thing!
We've been there - getting worn out on small processes and tasks, not making enough money, getting lost in tedious client work and having cashflow problems. We want to help. We'll give you practical tips for turning pain into profit - and we'll have lots of fun doing it.
Keep ReadingFor Christmas last year, Nate and I wanted to do something special for our clients. We pondered and thought and decided, “what better way to show our clients we love them than to send them a custom designed t-shirt that says we love them!?!?!?!” Clearly because we are geniuses.
After much sketching, hand crafting and designing we came up with “Two Hairy Guys in Tennessee Love Me.”
Continuing our apparently violent tendancies towards client advice, we look to the best way to deal with deliquent payments. Keep an eye on those line items!
Like our strange little dentist friend in the picture above, we all want to be that happy doing the work we have dreamed about doing. Most of us come preinstalled with a desire to do work that we enjoy. It is as if we know that it is possible to provide for ourselves and not hate doing so.
Unfortunately, most of us are also completely terrible at pulling this off. Even if we have pretty good jobs that we mostly like, it seems like that magical dream job is always dangling just out of reach. Why is that?
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It's that time of year again, folks! Our favorite conference, ConvergeSE is back and the tickets are on sale now. They sold out in about 2 hours last year so speed it up and get on over there. Converge will be held in Columbia, SC on April 25-27.
We're super excited because this year we are doing a Kicktastic workshop on the first day of the conference. It will be a blast, we promise!
So go get your tickets now before they're gone. Trust us, you need to come to ConvergeSE 2013.
In case you hadn't heard, we're shooting for this year to be our Best Year Ever at FortySeven Media. While we were doing our planning for 47m, Kicktastic and Bright Newt with Austin, he pulled out a curious looking, sprial bound notebook with a bullseye on the front. “What is this madness?” I asked and he replied, “Why, it's Seth Godin's planning workbook, of course!”
Being a Seth Godin fan I ordered the 4 pack immediately, but only recently got to sit down and look through them with my wife as we planned for this next year. It's a really simple concept, based on a program from Zig Ziglar - you take some time to identify goals that are the most important to you, make sure you are balancing between work, home, fitness, money, etc…, and then pick the 4 most important ones to work on for the next 12 weeks.
The book is setup for daily notes on each goal, and that's why I think it's such a great idea. Often wanting to do something like “start a new business,” or “loose weight,” take time. Lots of time. And it's easy to get discouraged or forget about it or get halfway done. But if you're spending at least a few minutes each day on your goal, then you can't help but make progress, right?
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Here's the deal - Unmatched Style is doing a 4 HOUR live podcast on Friday, December 14th. That's right, 4 hours of really smart people talking about business, the web and super cool stuff. And by really smart we mean Gene Crawford, Carl Smith, Dan Mall, JD Graffam, Jon and Chris of Zurb, Nathan Peretic and Jay Fanelli. Somehow we got thrown in the mix, too.
Here's the cool thing, though - this will be the first time Nate Croft, Jon Longnecker and our new Kicktastic partner Austin Church will be discussing businessy things live on the internet. You will laugh. You will cry. You'll probably never talk to us again. Or you might just fall in love with our weirdness.
But you won't know for sure unless you tune in Friday at 1pm EST.
For those of you in the ExpressionEngine universe there was a lot of “hot drama” the beginning of this week. Brand new websites, sweeping licensing and support policy changes, taking down the whole Pro Network without any prior notice. I'm not going to try to analyze anything that EllisLab is doing because quite frankly their business is their business (see what I did there - you know you giggled).
However, I do think that this whole situation sheds light on the importance of building your own brand and not basing your business entirely on top of someone else's.
We've worked hard at FortySeven Media to create a brand that stands on it's own regardless of the CMS we use. We write on this blog, go to conferences, do silly web video shows, and all kinds of other projects that don't make money, but help build our brand. We also do great work for our clients and they spread the word.
And while we love ExpressionEngine, we don't just do EE development - we bring branding, design, marketing and consulting to the table as well. The technology is just a means to the end of an amazing final product for our customers. It's tempting to piggy back off of something like EE's success and build your business solely around it, but you have no control if they make drastic changes.
If the news this week is pulling the legs out from under you, maybe it's time to step back and focus more on your brand and how you're different from all those other EE shops.
But that's not the whole story. Because while our brand doesn't live or die by ExpressionEngine and web design work, a good chunk of our income does.
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Many of you that are reading this blog own your own companies, or are working for yourself in some form or fashion. Most likely we share a common dream, the freedom of working for ourselves! We serve no master, take no orders, and wear no pants! Ok, maybe we wear pants. Maybe. We started out on this journey full of ambition and with the highest of hopes. We, my friends, are free to shape our own destiny.
What do we do with all this freedom? Well, most of us make shackles.
Keep ReadingRecently we’ve been pondering a new requirement for large web jobs with FortySeven Media: face to face time.
I know, we keep talking about how the internet has made the world flat and we can work with anyone from anywhere and that’s very true. But lately we’ve been wondering if it’s such a good thing to cut ourselves off so cleanly from human interaction.
They’ll get to understand you, what you believe in, your humor and all sorts of other subtleties that don’t come across in an email.
We see a couple of benefits to working on-site with a new client for a day or so when kicking off the project:
Keep ReadingLet’s face it - between client work, social media, email and the zillion other things we need to do it’s easy to get stuck in a grind. Nate and I noticed a couple of years ago that we were so busy with everything else that we were neglecting our business.
Right, that makes sense. You're spending too much time working, but you're neglecting your business?
No, see what I mean is that we weren’t taking the time to plan, grow and market the way that we should. If all you do is the work that comes in your door you don’t get a lot of say in where you’re going. In fact, you’re probably just stuck in the house.
So we instituted FortySeven Media Mondays! Once a week Nate and I get together, plot and plan and take a look at the big picture of our company and where we want to go.
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It's no secret we love the Converge conferences. And wouldn't you know it, there's another one coming to Florida in just a few months! We had the honor of doing a live Kick Awesome Show at the last Converge conference and we've been invited back along with live tapings of Bizcraft and the Non-Breaking Space Show.
So! If you want to attend one of the best web conferences around and see some awesome live shows go and get registered for Converge Florida October 4th -5th 2012. Tickets go on sale August 1st for $200. We'll see you there.
We’ve had a few people ask us how in the world we built Kicktastic, our video business training project, so we thought we’d tell you.
Kicktastic is unconventional video training for gutsy businesses. Every month you'll get fresh content in the form of a main topic video, transcript and resources, and related video tips. We'll be interviewing the smartest minds in the business and refining it down into info packed, entertaining videos that don't waste your time. Plus, each video has its own discussion thread below so members can ask questions, share their stories and help each other out.
Pretty straightforward, right? Well, not so much. If you’ve ever tried to build a video training platform that takes recurring payments, and do this for under $1,000 in expenses (minus the time to build/design of course) things get a little nutty. Let’s look at each piece.
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We're so excited to announce the official launch of Kicktastic!.
Kicktastic is unconventional video training for gutsy businesses. Every month you'll get fresh content in the form of a main topic video, transcript and resources, and related video tips. We'll be interviewing the smartest minds in the business and refining it down into info packed, entertaining videos that don't waste your time. Plus, each video has its own discussion thread below so members can ask questions, share their stories and help each other out.
The first video series is by us, and it's called Branding, Attention & the Power of Video. You'll see how we've branded, marketed and used video to increase our profit over 50%!
This is obviously a lot of work, so it won't be free, but you'll have access to all the videos, books, transcripts and everything else we create for you as long as you're a member. The entrie site is responsive as well, so you can train on the go!
Interested? It's time to level up your business powers. Let's do this!
We’re currently doing some “interior” work on FortySeven Media - changing very fundamental things about how we work, collaborate and make money. We’ve basically done the same thing for quite a few years. Everything’s going ok. Why upend everything?
Because things were feeling too safe. We weren’t challenging ourselves nearly as much as we used to. And while incremental updates to processes and tools and contracts are fine, we got to a point where it was time to start fresh.
Keep ReadingInpiring talk by Adam Savage's talk at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012. He tells a great story about his Indiana Jones hat, how he got started building his obsessions, and why makers should embrace the things that they have no choice but to make.
A project by 47m
Learn how we made 50% more last year.
