Chris Jennings

Mike Jones, VP of AOL contracted me to do some concepting for his new venture, Texty. I used a Web 2.0 palette with rounded fonts and come to a great solution.

Link: Texty Concept

Upon the release of his new book, Tim Ferriss through a referral from Noah Kagan, approached me for a custom Wordpress blog design.

Tim had a good idea of what he wanted and we worked together closely to get it finished in time for the release of The Four Hour Work Week that has since topped the New York Times’ Bestseller List at #1.

I can only dream that in some way my blog design has added value to his efforts and I wish him the best.

Link: The 4 Hour Work-week Blog 

Ben Bleikamp volunteered to redesign an early version of OK Dork, a marketing blog written by Facebook employee and Berkley graduate Noah Kagan.  This job lead to a lot of work due to Noah’s contacts, he’s a great guy and I see us working together in the future.

I worked briefly with Vanson Studios as a blog consultant for their efforts of migrating to Wordpress. I was able to effectively establish a plan to move his files and previous blog posts to the new system, as well as plan a new design for him.

Joe’s in house crew decided to stick with the design they had (which screamed 1998), but I am content. I had a great time and would love to work with more celebrities in the future.

I’m really jumping headfirst into this, but I have decided to take the knowledge I’ve gained over the course of my online career and put it to use for myself. I have had this ominous “entrepreneur” word laying around for awhile now, and it’s past due time to show up.

So at this point, I have done some preliminary  SEO research  for my targeted phrase and concluded that with the right dedication, I can dominate the phrase in the course of a year or so.  After I begin, I will provide a recap of my success if I so find it.

So let’s begin, I have taken an admittedly ambitious path with the niche I’ve picked, but I feel that with the passion I have for the topic of Teeth Whitening, I will be more likely to stick to it.

In my teens I suffered from naturally stained teeth.  I didn’t smoke and brushed regularly but this wasn’t enough.  My sister had similar luck and was treated by our dentist for $500.  As a kid, this was a TON of money.  I felt terrible for even wanting to ask my parents to pay for a treatment that was so expensive… I mean it was only vanity, not life of death… the stains remained.

I tried whitening strips, over-the-counter bleaching formulas and as seen on TV lights and had no success.  My sister’s teeth were so white and these off-brand solutions had left me broke and without results.

Luckily, I have a few friends in the dental field and they pointed me to their suppliers, unknowingly that I was looking to join them in practice.   To make an overwhelming long story short, I was able to cut a deal in which a certain supplier would ship orders on demand of my orders.

With no further ado, I bring you the Premium White Teeth Whitening system, one of the most powerful procedures available on the market and no thanks to your dentist, priced so that anyone can afford the confidence of a whiter, brighter, smile.

When news first broke of Shopify, I was ecstatic. A fully functioning, hosted shopping cart solution was a godsend for me as a web designer. I have several clients who thank me often for switching them over to such a robust, yet painfully simple ecommerce solution. After seeing the success that they’ve had, I have been quietly building a store of my own using Shopify.

Today I logged in to find out that: 1. The stats that are usually on my dashboard are missing, 2. the option to add a coupon is greyed out and there is now a link beside of it saying “upgrade your account.”

… I was at a lost for words. After further inspection, I was now listed as a “trial member” instead of simply having a free account. I was outraged. I wasn’t warned, offered an upgrade… nothing.

Here’s What’s New

For everyone that hadn’t activated their account before August 11th, 2007 you are now a trial member. You have 5 free orders to process before you are forced to upgrade. Those that had an activated account were granted a “grandfathered” tier in which everything stayed the same… unless they need SKU’s for more than 1000 products, then they will be forced to upgrade and pay the new monthly rate.

Here are the new tiers:

• Trial - $0/month - No coupons, 1 Block of Storage, 5 Max SKU’s, No Stats, 0% Transaction Fee, Can’t use own domain name.
• Basic - $24/month - No coupons, 1 Block of Storage, 1000 Max SKU’s, Basic Stats, 2% Transaction Fee
• Professional - $54/month, Unlimited Coupons, 4 Blocks of Storage, 2,500 Max SKU’s, Advanced Stats, 1% Transaction Fee
• Enterprise - $299/month (wtf!), Unlimited Coupons, 8 Blocks of Storage, 10,000 Max SKU’s, Advanced Stats, 0.5% Transaction Fee.

As you can see, things have changed. The lovable Shopify.com that I brag about to all of my colleagues and clients about is no more. To get the same features I was getting for free, I now have to pay $59 a month for.

Update - There is hope for some.

There is hope for those who had signed up before August 11th, 2007 but had not activated the payment gateway. Today I sent the following message using the Shopify support system:

Shopify, I have carefully been planning my launch for the past few weeks and I log in today to find out that since I didn’t activate my account, I haven’t been “grandfathered”. I feel that I too have been a loyal customer by simply telling my colleagues how amazing your free service has been so far.

I don’t think this is fair and would like to request that I be grandfathered as well. This is not what I signed up for, nor what I was promised - nor what I have been working on for weeks. I hope you all have the integrity to make this right.

Please help me resolve this.

Shortly thereafter I received an email saying that I was granted a “grandfathered” account. This shows integrity (and saves me $60/month), however, what about those people who we’ve all been raving to about the “free” Shopify???

I have some great friends who have started a pop-punk band in my area and things are going really well with them. Earlier this year, they approached me for fundraising ideas and some-what of a proposition - to be their manager. They had asked this because of my network of contacts I have made in the music industry with my clothing company… to make a long story short, I am now managing First at Last part-time - so please check them out their myspace (which I designed) here:

http://www.myspace.com/firstatlast

Here’s to me living a little. Tell your friends and let me know what you think of them.

I don’t know what it is about this time of the year but I have been absolutely swamped.  I don’t think I’ve even looked up once since New Year’s and I am very thankful.  I have worked with some great people and have learned so much already in 2007 that I can’t imagine things getting much better…more about this in a moment.
In other news, my friend Eric (notice the sweet blog design) has nominated me this week for a Thinking Blogger Award.  I’m not exactly sure on what they are all about, but I appreciate it all the same… thanks for thinking of me!

Things really kicked off in January when I was commissioned to code a site for my friend and ex Facebook / Microsoft marketer, Noah Kagan.  After finishing his site, he referred me to Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneurial author, who was looking for a blog design to promote his latest release, “The Four Hour Workweek”, which was released earlier this month.  Please note that I only designed the blog portion of his site.

As I was finishing up on Tim’s site, I was able to land a deal with Joe Rogan, the guy from Fear Factor / News Radio / The Man Show / UFC, to help his team develop a blog for him.  He wanted to be able to have RSS feeds and a mini-blog from the road so of course I recommended the love of my life, Wordpress.  I wanted to take the design in a different direction, but they were worried it would not be consistent with the work they had done… so no worries.  Hopefully he’ll hook me up when I’m out in LA. Look for the launch of the New JoeRogan.net later this month.

Soon after the Rogan era, Noah came through for me again in mid-march with his friend and venture capitalist Dave Feinleib.  Dave wanted a design that wasn’t too cluttered and I am pretty confident I was able to come through for him.  One of my best designs in my opinion.
And if things couldn’t get any better, I was able to join the Miami based startup, OurScene.com, by designing their landing page and blog.  Jason Calliero and the rest of the Ourscene crew are doing big things that are going to effect the way music is done locally and globally so definitely check them out and reserve your seat for the beta.

That’s all for now, thanks again for a great year so far.

I’ve grown a lot over the past year. I’ve went from working full-time at a dead end job to running my own successful online business – and making twice as much, working half the time. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of room for improvement but I have total faith now that I can do anything I set my mind to.

One of the toughest obstacles for me has been focusing. I’m sure I’m not alone, but I tend to have at least 3 “million-dollar” ideas daily and sometimes end up wasting half the day sketching out site designs and business models. I wish I could say that even one of them has gone anywhere.

It’s only recently that I have realized what a complete waste of time all of this really was. I have a bad habit of wanting to be a part of every startup that crosses my path, just incase it’s the next Digg or Google… but in reality, this is just like playing the lottery. I could buy 1000 tickets and still never win whereas if I would had put the amount of time and money wasted into something I was passionate about, I would have invested in myself and came out much better in the long run.

The idea is not to cut out all of your streams of income; it’s about putting more focus on your solid bases and saying “I’ll pass” when you’re plate is full.

There are a few things that you can do to help you focus immediately.

Sell off your surplus domain names

I know that you’ve got them. I do. Unused idea domain names are filling my Godaddy account like Rosie O’Donnell in tight jeans, while also draining my wallet on a monthly basis. We need to get rid of these and give someone else a chance to bring them to life.

Limit your availability on Instant Messaging Services

It’s not rude to put an away message up while you’re working. It’s likely that if you have friends that are “entrepreneurs”, you are bound to get a few ideas pinged off of you from time to time. For me, other people’s ideas easily get my mind churning a bigger and better idea… and unfortunately, that could sometimes end in another domain, another site sketch and another business model. Did I mention another wasted afternoon?

Focusing is just another way to invest in yourself. Spreading yourself too thin is much too high of a risk when trying to survive online business. Find something that works for you and STAY AT IT.

Recently while developing a blog for author Tim Ferriss, I implemented a CSS based menu that used background images for the visual navigation. One major problem when using roll-over menus, no matter if it’s javascript or CSS, is the fact that the browser will not load the “hover” image until it is initially hovered over with the mouse. Until recently I have made use of a few lines of javascript to pre-load the images, however, due to the fact that Tim’s book isn’t necessarily targeted towards tech-savvy people, there’s a good chance that a few older browsers will make their way onto his site.

The Solution

To achieve the same effect, without all of the Javascript bulk, I simply made a new class in my stylesheet:

.invisible {display: none; }

Then, I loaded all of my images onto my page (they can be anywhere). Then, I simply set their class to “invisible”. That’s all there is to it. No more loading flickers for Tim’s navbar. woot.