Great job opportunity for UK Web Developers…

October 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you’re a UK-based Web Developer looking for a career with a brilliant and fast-growing company, then one of my clients, Jigowatt (creators of Jigoshop) , might have just the thing for you.

They’re looking for talented and experienced web developers to become a core part of the team, with the opportunity to become a core part of evolving the brilliant Jigoshop WordPress eCommerce product, and also the chance to work on a range of interesting projects for a growing number of clients.

You can read the full details on the Jigowatt and Jigoshop hiring here, but there are a number of things to consider that aren’t in the formal details.

  • The team are great to work with – all very talented, all very driven, and all nice enough that they can put up with me in the office. And there’s a great atmosphere in the office.
  • The company has existed for 3+ years and continues to grow at a good rate.
  • You’ll get a chance to choose what’s on the office stereo – at least when Chris isn’t at his desk and he’s left Spotify running.
  • Almost every day someone brings in cakes and biscuits, which is brilliant if you’ve overslept and missed breakfast.
  • And most importantly – as a free and open source project, Jigoshop is all about the amazing community, whether that’s the contributions made via Github, the designers and developers adapting Jigoshop for clients, or end users, and it’s a wonderfully gratfying experience to be able to help, support and encourage that community to achieve the best results. It’s what is really seperating the Jigoshop experience, and makes it a joy to work on.

I can honestly say that working with Jigoshop is one of the most fun things I’ve ever managed to get paid to do. So if you’re a web developer, you really should check out the ad.

 

Filed Under: Clients, Jobs Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Two of my favourite things – Jigoshop and Genesis together…

September 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’m a big fan of WordPress eCommerce solution Jigoshop, having worked with the team for a while to get the word out that there’s a free open-source eCommerce plugin which is easy to use, quick to set-up, and isn’t limited to requiring a qualified developer to get it running – even I’ve managed it on a test site in about 10 minutes.

I’m also a big fan of the StudioPress Genesis Framework for WordPress, and their child themes. To the point that I spent a significant amount for the Pro Plus package to have access to all of them. All my new sites run on the various StudioPress child themes, including ResCogs. And in fact, OnlineRaceDriver and FPSPrestige are actually running on the pre-Genesis Metro theme from StudioPress.

So I’m really pleased that Genesis Commerce is now available as a theme to combine the Genesis Framework with Jigoshop eCommerce.

Genesis Commerce combines Jigoshop and Genesis Framework

Genesis Commerce combines Jigoshop and Genesis Framework

I’m really proud to be working with Jigoshop because it allows you to own your store, rather than relying solely on someone else setting and running everything, whether it’s Etsy or eBay. I’m never against using those sites to promote or sell, but it’s the different between having a market stall on someone’s pitch, or owning your own store outright. And being able to use Genesis makes an easy set-up even easier, plus adds some additional SEO benefits and other cool features.

Filed Under: Clients, ecommerce, wordpress Tagged With: , , , ,

From Hollywood to Aylesbury (and UK freelancers)

September 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

When I dreamed about entering the movie business, I always assumed it would involve luxurious offices in Los Angeles or London, rather than a suburban semi-detached in Aylesbury. As it happens, I’m helping out the immensely talented Dalang Films, who are now releasing their own projects after working on many of the biggest films of the last decade.

Hollywood Sign

Chatting about their plans and introducing them to a few ideas around licensing, digital distribution and marketing, I couldn’t help thinking about the way business is changing every day in the UK, with more and more freelances, entrepreneurs and small businesses appearing every day.

A recent story on the Atlantic shared some relevant stats from the U.S.

  • In 2005 1/3 of the US workforce participated in the ‘freelance economy’, with data showing that number has increased ever since.
  • 2009 saw the highest level of entrepreneurial activity in the U.S in 14 years.
  • Online freelance job postings rockets in 2010, and companies are increasingly outsourcing various functions, along with increasing support for telecommuting.

I don’t have the equivalent UK figures, but I’d suspect we’re probably a bit behind due to cultural differences, but the same change is definitely happening. And despite the media fascination with ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in London, or even the ‘Silicon Fens’, there’s a huge amount of small business and individual endeavour that’s being missed.

For instance, the 40-50 people in Digital People in Peterborough are almost entirely comprised of small businesses and individial freelancers, with just a handful of exceptions. And I’d bet a similar picture is true of a huge number of geek meet-ups, or business networking events outside of London.

It’s not an easy life, and I wouldn’t romanticise the challenges of choosing between buying food or paying the bills when client invoices get missed and paid late. Or of working late into the night on something because there’s simply no-one else to help. But I do believe that there’s a cultural and business change happening which not only makes freelancing and telecommuting more acceptable, but will also enable it to become easier, with more support from the various necessary institutions.

And if you’ll excuse me, I have some client work to finish before I sit back with a beer and practice my Oscar acceptance speech. I know there’s not one for marketing, so I’ve offered to help out on various odd film jobs to make sure I get included in the nominations!

Filed Under: Clients, Digital Television, Entrenpreneurship Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Client solves Ecommerce for WordPress via Open Source

July 14, 2011 By 2 Comments

I don’t often write about clients on my blog for various reasons, but I wanted to spread the word about Jigoshop, which is a great Ecommerce for WordPress solution that I’ve been working on for a couple of months now. One reason is simply that it’s a really good product which I can easily recommend – as part of research I played around with the alternatives and I can honestly say that I’d already decided to use Jigoshop to power a couple of future projects before working with them. And the other is that it’s one of the first times I’ve been working on a project which is delivering something via Open Source, rather than using OS products as an end user.

Jigoshop Ecommerce for WordPress

 

So what makes Jigoshop so good?

It’s worth explaining that the company behind it, Jigowatt, specialises in Ecommerce sites for a large range of clients, using both WordPress and Magento, so they’ve spent a lot of time working with all the existing ways to produce effective and attractive online stores, and have particular experience handling the backend admin side of getting lots of products uploaded and ranking in search for their clients. That means they’ve got a long list of all the features that they wish existed and eventually reached the point that they knew it made more sense to build something to answer all their problems.

It’s incredibly quick and simple to use – even I can get an online store up and running in about 20 minutes. But at the same time it’s also highly configurable when you want to get into setting attributes, localising your shop, and stock management.

 

The benefits of a true Open Source Ecommerce solution

I was lucky enough to start getting involved with Jigowatt and Jigoshop when they started discussing how to licence Jigoshop, and how they could try and ensure that it has the optimum chance of being the best possible product, and also how it can generate revenue to justify continuing to work on it alongside the masses of client work they’ve got at any time. They had already started discussing the open source model, obviously drawing from their experience with the likes of WordPress and other open source developments and plugins, and they’d also been open and honest on their blog about their ideas – which led to really helpful input from other WordPress plugin developers, for instance, comments and suggestions from some of the guys at RocketGenius, who make the great Gravity Forms solution.

I also whittered on about everything from the birth of the Free Software Foundation and Open Source to the business models used by the likes of Arduino, and slowly the shape of the Jigoshop business model emerged, which was to release the shop itself under a GPL licence.

  • That means that you can download it, get your store up and running, and take payments via Paypal without having to sign-up for a trial or submit a credit card.
  • And it means anyone can build on top of it, whether that’s additional features or themes etc.

The revenue streams are all around specific extensions to the main Jigoshop platform, whether it’s payment gateways or specific themes, as well as allowing donations. And that’s an approach I really hope works for this specific project, because I really want to see Jigoshop continue and evolve.

 

It’s not just me recommending Jigoshop

Obviously as a client, I might be a little biased, but the good thing is that absolutely loads of WordPress specialists and big independent sites have been giving positive reviews to Jigoshop, reinforcing the fact that it’s a really good product. Just some of the mentions since it launched include Mashable, ThemesForge, and Envato. And there’s a growing forum community on the site which is worth checking out.

 

So I figured there’s enough to justify writing about a client for once! And obviously if you’re interested in finding out more about the range of freelance content and marketing services on offer, then please do get in touch….

Filed Under: Clients, marketing, open source, wordpress Tagged With: , , , , ,