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Linden, from Toronto, Canada, is a former folk singer who, at 41, has only recently begun his Web page design firm. "I am self-trained. I read books and I read over 300 pages of Internet messages, seven days a week. I'm not embarrassed to ask questions of the veterans, or to out source anything I don't think I can do at a high level."
| TinK, at 25 and from Trowbridge, Wiltshire, is the
manager and promoter of a band called Slightly Miffed (SM),
for which he also plays rhythm guitar. SM is as yet unsigned and TinK set up his
first Web page to promote the band. "From day one (March 8 1995), I started to receive E-Mail saying how good the site looks," explains TinK. "The UK is only just getting it together and people are falling over themselves to get on the Net. Apparently, not all people find the HTML (HyperText Markup Language, the programming language that is used to create the web) programming as easy as I do." |
In Canada, Linden's self-taught status is similar but the manner in which he got into the business varies. "Prior to this, I spent 15 years in PR and marketing, mainly in the entertainment industry but for the last three years I have been in business for myself".
Linden's company, BXI (Brand X Internet Services) Inc, is a value-added Internet presence provider handling everything from registering domain names and arranging the right connections to the Net through Web development and list management, to on-line and conventional marketing, training.
"We consider ourselves predominantly a communications and marketing firm, more than a high-tech one" he admits. "And I consider myself to be more a consultant than a "hitmalist", he continues. "For instance, though most of our early business seems to be coming from Web development, we're trying to create an industry and preserve a community".
Linden is president and chief operating officer of the company. He is joined by Kevin Bourassa, 37, chairman and chief executive office, and Steve Carfagnini, director of marketing. BXI is going after just corporate clients right now - and big ones at that. In the few months they've been in business, they're already landed two very good ones.
"Our missions is to put businesses on the Net and to help them market themselves there. We're not a service provider," Linden says. "We have two clients to date KPMG (formerly Peat Marwick accountants), one of the world's largest accounting and management consulting firms, and Sony Music of Canada, a project which is expected to be on-line in mid June". For KPMG, BXI did two Web developments, and transportation practice section and another piece which has not yet been uploaded.
His philosophy concerning DIY Web pages versus having
commercial companies do them is simple:
"Your Web site is your company's
introduction to a potential new audience of tens of millions of people.Anybody can
learn to write HTML code but its a lot harder to writer 'good' code"."None of
the add-ons understand the culture of those making up the internet," he explains with
regard to the Web page-writing add-ons for packages like WordPerfect and Microsoft
Word."They can't learn how important it is to make a site interactive. They can't
create forms. They have no perception of the importance of navigating from page to
small page through a Web site".
Nor can they: "determine what other sites make
cool links from yours and then install those links; register your site with the
search engines, indices and appropriate lists and so on," claims Linden.
Linden believes such a site takes
excellent text, well laid out; knowledgeable selection and placement of graphics,
good HTML which will look equally good on a variety of browsers; good programming for
interactive forms; good marketing of your site, both online and in the conventional
media, including your own publications.
"But perhaps most importantly of all, a
good understanding of the Internet community, of the way we react to each other in a
computer-mediated environment," he says.
TinK started his Web design consulting business as a self-employed contract, "but will soon start Slightly Miffed Ltd, which will also become the label for the band. If things go well, everyone else in and around the band will get involved. We're all young (early 20s), apart from me... I'm 25!".
TinK is a relative novice to the Web design business, having got on the Net last November via Compuserve. As far as funding is concerned, Slightly Miffed also had an impoverished start-up. But, like BXI, it is making good progress, "I've just started doing the enterprise allowance thing and I'll be approaching the Princes Truest etc," say TinK.
The one major client he can discuss is the Rock Around the World site for which he had just won the contract and was just beginning to reprogram as Creative Technology went to press. In addition, negotiations are underway with a TV
company, a lager company and a record company. |  |
Once the graphics and text are prepared by a company's PR, sales and/or marketing people, the work of the Web page programmer begins.
"It took me about a day to do the Slightly Miffed site," says TinK. "I had to do the programming and it took another half a day to test it thoroughly. The sampling and graphics are what take the time, so it depends on much there is of them".
In TinK's case, £25 per hour for basic programming job and upward from there depending on the complexity and add-ons required.
For Linden, its a bit more complex. "There is no basic cost," he explains, "it varies dramatically. The time I spend writing HTML is an hourly billing; consultation time is much higher, as is training. Registering the site with the search engines and indices, other online marketing (announcements in various locations on the Net) and placing links in as many of the 100 plus hotlink lists we've isolated is a cheaper process."
Linden says he can write code for the average piece of Web page text (including headers, internal links, etc) in about five to seven minutes. "Don't let anyone tell you it takes one to two hours to create the average page," he warns. "However, it can take a couple of hours to create a good table of contents for a larger site and to check all the links to make the code is right. It also takes some time to test a site's external links and to test a site on a variety of different Web browsers.
| TinK is also in negotiations with CUBE UK limited, Uxbridge,
Middlesex, maker of parallel computing systems which are used in engineering and
scientific environments. He is also processing very large databases and offering a
multi-media server service for projects like the BT interactive TV trials. "We are also talking to a few companies over in the States, including two recording studios, a video production company and a health care company," TinK continues. "They all want Web sites set-up and programmed by us. I have just reserved the miffed domain (MIFFED.COM) and found out that we will be amongst the first bands in the world to have their own domain". |
The future looks bright for both companies but there is also a wide open opportunity for anyone else with the talent to get into it.
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