I’m a website designer & programmer. I can work with anyone, anywhere in the world. I chose to be different and do most of my work in the local region. But like I said, that’s different. Many of my colleagues think more is better, and try to price low and gain money on quantity rather than quality, both of their clients and of their services.

When searching for a service online, I don’t care if you’re looking for website hosting, website design, logo design, custom graphics, or an alarm company (the only item in this list that I’m not providing), you probably want — or need — to know where the person is.

So how do you figure it out?

I wanted to use a specific set of examples in this post. Top-of-the-search engine results with fantastic prices, and absolutely no phone number or address to be seen on their website. Sites that ended up being in other countries. Websites with blatant grammatical errors that obviously still rake in enough cash to get to the top of Google search results on pay-per-click hot topics that are highly competitive.

But they asked me nicely to remove their website address and information from my blog. So I’m removing it. Not exactly sure what offended them about the post, as they were only a live example and it was true that they were in a foreign country, but I’ll remove it to keep the peace.

Some cliches exist for a reason. “You get what you pay for” is one of them. In a vast sea of choices and no education, people choose the products by lowest price. There’s either too much information, or not enough, to educate the consumer into making informed choices.

There are real dangers in sending your money to a foreign corporation. They can be of the most stellar reputation, 100% honest, hard-working people, but you are still never afforded the same protections and conveniences you have working with someone in the same town or at least the same state. It is much less convenient to do business out-of-state, or out-of-the-country. If it’s out-of-state you have the additional complications of figuring out which state/jurisdiction to interpret your contract in, and where you have to travel to in order to arbitrate disputes. In foreign matters, unless you have the type of money it takes to go to International court, you don’t have legal protections no matter what the contract says.

If you are going to a local company, you can check their mailing address, their reputation, get a real referral from someone you know to someone you know you can trust. You can track their professional affiliations, check the Better Business Bureau to see if there are complaints against them. And more.

So how do you figure out who people really are? There is a database that stores their legal domain registration information. There is real consideration to abolishing this information on the web, but in the meantime the more of us who are using it for legitimate reasons (to check on the idenitity of a service before purchase) the better. This database is accessible at http://www.whois.net/

If you enter theirdomainname.com into Whois you can see their registration record. Enter “theirdomainname” in the field for looking up domain registration data. Make sure the right suffix is selected (”.com”) and click GO!

Not all domains show legal registration information online. The domain owner can hide that information by paying their domain registrar a few extra bucks to make even that anonymous…. Then you need to get into some website gymnastics to figure out who these people are, and I am not sure it’s worthwhile. If they’re hiding, maybe they have something to hide. More often, though, people are banking on ignorance. This blog post is to help some people wake up and smell the scandal. The flip side of this idea: If you run a legitimate business, you should not be anonymous on the web, and prospective clients shouldn’t need to resort to the “whois database” method above, just to figure out where you’re located. I get a few junk mails and a junk fax or 3 for having my information up — the worst is the domain-registration related spam, but that’s a hazard of doing legit business on the web.

I suggest you look at people’s Contact Us page and check that their information matches their WhoIs registration — check their professional affiliations and their memberships in local chambers of commerce. Ask if there have been any complaints against them.

If you’re in the local region, you could ask for a face-to-face with the person you’re doing business with. The only way to see eye-to-eye on any project is to actually be able to look someone in the face.

Moral: You pay for what you get.

Good luck!

I’ve decided to change discount policies. There are two blanket discounts available:

Orange & Sullivan (NY) Chamber of Commerce members, and members of Business Exchange Network get a base 5% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

Child care professionals (including teachers, schools, and child care centers), holistic businesses & practitioners, organic businesses, and registered educational non-profits get a base 10% discount on Eclectic Tech’s easy-to-edit websites.

I’m extending a discount of 5% for any contract which is paid in full at contract signing. This discount is in addition to the discounts mentioned above. So for a chamber member to enjoy a 10% discount now requires payment in full up-front.

The discounts will no longer extend to other services or my hourly rates.

I’ve watched some very large contracts come through where chamber members would be getting a discount that is more than enough to pay for me to renew my chamber membership next year. I can’t sustain that level of discounting on my services, especially any services that are laborious and may not be furthering my overall goals in my business.

I’m sorry for any inconvenience. I will honor any proposals that have not expired, but the new policies will take place in any future or re-assessed contracts.

Bank acquisitions have become so commonplace around here that I’m not at all surprised to walk into my nice local upstate-only bank and find that some global giant is gobbling it up like yet another Pac-Man pellet. I look on with concern, watching them rip apart the interior of my local branches to change the branding so that we can know for 100% certain that our money is no longer helping a local institution.

They even tore out the ATM machine and replaced it with a Diebold monstrosity. It has all the bells and whistles, or should I say beeps. Every number in your password elicits a LOUD beep so everyone in the bank knows how many digits there are in your password. When the cash is coming out, it beeps loudly. Thanks for letting everyone in a 12-block radius know I now have cash in my pocket. Wheeeeee! I hope they’re not rolling out these monsters in NYC proper, but they probably did. Now they’re infiltrating upstate New York. As if it weren’t bad enough that the bank is changing, the new regime has installed monster equipment from the same company many people suspect have rigged elections. I’m scared to death to put my credit cards and debit cards into it’s gaping maw. The only thing I can say in its favor is that it has an exquisitely sensitive touch screen. Everything else — and I mean everything — disgusts me. Every. Shiny. Millimeter. And I’m a geek.

I had 2 accounts at this bank. One personal (free for life — *cough*) and one business. The business account’s days were numbered already — I never have enough money in the bank to escape monthly fees — the bank gave me my first year in business for free. I threw enough of a stink that I got my second year free. But any day now, the account is going to start costing me $12 a month. That’s enough chicken to feed my family for 3 weeks!! Forget it — I was SO out of there. I started shopping around for a new bank. One that respected that my miniscule business needs every penny it works so hard to earn.

The DDay was to be March 23. I needed that account closed before the official 100% turn-over to the other bank. I didn’t want them to send me new checks with a new routing number. I didn’t want their promises that things wouldn’t change too much. I didn’t want their new signage. I definitely didn’t want the Diebold ATM.

I had an outstanding check floating around in the wild, so I called the payee, and I made arrangements to send a money order and I was to put a stop payment on the check in question. They wrote a note in my account not to cash the check. I went to put a stop payment order on the check. Note the check is only for about $40.

It would cost me $33 to put a stop payment order on the check. For crying out loud, that feeds my family chicken for over 2 months! That’s a lot of rice & beans. I hope they sleep well at night! Who would put a $33 stop payment order on a $40 check??!?

So, given that it could cost me $40 if the check goes through after I get the money order — or $73 if it goes through but there are insufficient funds (but wait, then another $33 on top of that if the fee for insufficient funds sends the balance into the negatives!) — or $33 to put a stop payment on the check, I chose the best thing. I’m closing the account out. Right now. It’s cheaper. They’re absolutely INSANE. They’ve sold their soul to someone out there, and I’m just another cow to be milked for my money.

Good Bye. Good Riddance.

I want to tell you about my savior. She came into my Thursday morning referral group and mentioned Federal Credit Union and lightbulbs lit up and chorusses of angels began to sing. Nancy Finn of Mid-Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union said the magic words of lower fees, lower (or non-existant) minimum balances, non-profit bank-like institution. Magic. I promise.

I opened accounts in December, and started the confusion of having my money spread out in too many places, too many accounts to juggle, etc. I waited until after the 30 day probation period required at a new banking institution before moving all my money over. Now I’m doing all my banking at the Federal Credit Union, and only keeping the personal monster account open so that my ex has an easy place to deposit child support payments if needed.

When you open a business account at a for-profit bank, you pay probably $20 for 50 business checks. It doesn’t last long. I paid $10 for a whole box of personal-sized business checks.

None of my accounts have a minimum balance, except the $5 minimum for my savings accounts — which is more like a membership deposit. When you quit the credit union you get $5 back. Who would quit?

All my accounts, including joint accounts, are on one screen when I do online banking. They’ve created such a simple interface for banking online that I’m very impressed.

I feel like the cow that woke up from a dream to find out they were human — was I a human dreaming I was a cow? Or am I a cow dreaming I’m human? Who cares as long as I’m not getting milked! heh

They’re friendly, they’re not out to get you. There are some fees if you do something stupid, just like at the for-profits, but the fees are lower, sometimes very significantly lower.

The best thing, though, is that they’re local, non-profit, and they’re going to stay that way. The big for-profits won’t gobble them up. No Diebold machines. Please. *phew*

My taste in chocolate went from white and milk in childhood to darker and darker chocolates. With the one exception of some stale 70% cocoa concoction my roommate gave me, I can go up to a 90% bar and be quite happy. I keep a bag of Ghiardelli double chocolate chips in the house to dip into for a quick fix, or for a rare batch of cookies or pancakes. Organic, free trade, Swiss, German, it doesn’t make much of a difference to me — just give me my chocolate, and no one gets hurt!

Except that those are made in a factory. The best chocolate to give, receive or eat is chocolates made with love.

Fran Greenfield (aka “Candy Fran”) of Candy Designs by Fran is sought-after and well received in both Orange and Sullivan counties, and most definitely makes her chocolates with love. Hand-made, melted, dipped, coated, drizzled, packaged, and often hand-delivered, Candy Fran makes the most exquisite treats you could ever eat. People who have given her corporate gift baskets always come back to give them again and again. Last fall, all my top clients got a treat created by Fran and I got thank-you emails including one with the subject line of “MMmmmmm chocolate!”

One was undeliverable, and so I ate it (can I still deduct it from my taxes? I tried!!). Clients shouldn’t move without informing their vendors *tsk*.

Fran’s treats are available retail and wholesale, and she’ll ship them to you or your clients. If you buy your candy from other online vendors, you might just be getting Fran’s chocolates under a different name…I just hope for everyone’s sake they still have a healthy dose of Vitamin-L (love), because if that’s lost in translation you ought to order straight from the source.

“My name is Fran, and I’m a chocoholic….” (Fran Greenfield, Orange Networking Alliance, Feb 20, 2007)

A year ago, I joined the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, and I went to my first business networking blast last July. I didn’t have the networking thing down yet, so I was sitting and crowd-watching, and saw this woman with an enormous basket of little bags. It was a “speed networking” event, and I wasn’t in her row, so I didn’t have the pleasure of being directly gifted with a sample. When the event was over, she announced that she had plenty left, and put them on a table on the side of the room. I still didn’t “get it” and continued networking as much as I could stand to before fleeing. The event had started at 6:45am, so I beg both ignorance and exhaustion as my lame excuses.

In September there was going to be an Expo, and I considered sharing a booth at the Expo with another business. I had been taken under wing by Melanie Richards of Prism Promotions who showed me the ropes and gave me several really good lessons about networking in Orange County, NY. It was due to Melanie that I spoke to the Chamber about sharing a table, and Fran was recommended as a booth partner. I spoke to Fran about possibly sharing a booth with her, but as enticing as sharing a booth with the highly-sought-after Chocolate Lady was, I bowed out due to financial frustrations and a lack of preparation time. It was my first year in the Chamber, and I’m the type who learns (A LOT!) by watching. I volunteered to help at the event rather than take a booth. So I finally met Fran at the member dinner mixer after the event. She was bubbly, lively, friendly and forthcoming, if a little frazzled, but who isn’t frazzled at the end of a long day at an expo?

I had been checking out local networking/referral groups, and because several people I had met and really liked at the Chamber were members of Business Exchange Network, I ended up joining that group. Fran is one of the members, and since I now get to see her almost every week, I’m a little more out-of-shape, a lot more chocolified, and I’ve gotten to know this wonderful woman much better than I would have otherwise. She is quirky, but bright and cheery, and I admire her. She’s modest and exceptionally generous, and she actually has two jobs — Candy Fran by night and child photographer by day. I can only imagine she gets the biggest and brightest smiles out of children, without needing to bribe them with chocolate, because she gets smiles out of adults without the chocolate as well, though I suppose the chocolate anticipation really helps.

If you’re looking for a treat for a holiday, a gift to say Thank You to a client, something to bring for an extra “Ah” or “Oh” at a networking event, an unforgettable chocolate business card, or to put on a few pounds in absolute ecstasy, talk to Fran. If you don’t believe me, come to some of the events where Fran often shares her treats by bringing samples. Or I’ll send you a chocolate business card made by Fran, I have a few left…

This post is a whole lot of thank you for someone who touched my heart as well as my taste buds!

I have the pleasure of being a member of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce (I really need to put a member logo up to that effect), and as part of their membership drive I get to include a letter-sized flyer in a mailing.

I opted for the July mailing, since I have a couple ads coming out in June, and I want to see what impact they have. Also, I wanted the June 15 deadline to get them the flyer. Brainstorming and printing up 3000 flyers is no joke.

I’ve opted for 100% post-consumer paper, and I’m on the third laser cartridge (if anyone knows of soy-ink laser cartridges, I want to know! Now!).

Why the brainstorming? Boy, I’m so glad you asked!

You see, most of the flyers that come in the mailers are typical. Boring. Dry. Unimaginative. I’m a designer, a creative spirit — and adding to the boredom in the world is counter to my Declaration of Don’t Waste My Time. Boring flyers destined for the round (or *cross-fingers* recycle) bin and tantamount to spam. To environmental waste. I’ve come up with a unique idea, and unlike most people I’m going to use both sides of the paper (novel, isn’t it?). I’m making sure it has as low an environmental impact as I can muster on my low-budget-advertising strings. This chamber mailer is sent out monthly with other fliers anyway, via snail mail that gets delivered daily anyway. No extra envelopes needed. The recycled paper helps too, though I would prefer renewable treeless, denim, soy ink, etc. I just can’t afford the printing costs, and if I print at an environmental printer’s there’s delivery costs, the truck to my place — the extra pollution-per-mile of delivery.

I put a plea on the paper, right next to the recycle symbol, asking people who don’t need it to pass it on to someone else. The box of 3000 pages is rather large. Did I mention 3 laser ink cartridges? I hate to think of all my effort going to the waste basket.

I also don’t think any other company put as many man-hours into designing their flyers as I have. I’ve already put about 50+ hours into it. Creativity has a price. But now that I’m done, it is also be a viable stand-alone flyer for private mailers. It also has the potential (with a smidgeon of effort from me, I did my retouching on the greyscale images) to be printed in 4 color glossy (and look great!) eventually, but this time I think it will just be a laser print. I doubt a 4 color printer with sufficient ink for 3000 flyers is in my near future, and 4 color environmentally sound printing isn’t in my near future either.

I have preview images for y’all on my inhouse portfolio page.

Enjoy!