maxer

good news for the irish startup scene

i dont use mailchimp because there spam control is too tight- i have email lists of small business owners who i have permission to be email but since they are generic emails addresses like info@domain or support@domain they wont let me send- means i lose 15% of my list and often the ones who need the email the most

i use notepad++ with Consolas under the zenburn theme, for clarity its the best, especially with long coding days

plentyoffish.com the worlds largest dating site is based on M$ tech

all work in northern ireland

there is on that exists http://www.seedups.com

i have been rejected from ycombinator multiple times over the years probably because i am a solo founder- its hard to find other guys to work with that i get on with in my local area..

my startup is yrecruit.com - someone mentioned am i ripping of ycombinator - its more a play on words

having been here for a few years, i feel that any time i comment or post anything interesting it will be downvoted. unless your a rockstar having an opinion doesn't count.. expecting downvotes...

I disagree with a few comments here- if i go home I am just going to play xbox, would it not be spent better writing code?

Plus I enjoy what I do in the office, it can be stressful but its not like 12-16 hours hard physical labour.

I dont work weekends though other than answer email or support requests

has google not bought twitter yet?

always love your facebook slide :)

interesting Des, your presentation on tuesday at DWS was thought provoking

just in from the dublin web summit and there seems to be 6-7 startup accelerators/incubators

the scene in dublin is coming on leaps and bounds very quickly

working from home sucks, i find myself depressed "finishing work" then going to another room, your stuck at home constantly,

got myself out of the house and got a shared office space and productivity went through the roof

a friend who is MD/owner of a cloud storage service for corporate told me that his career teacher at school told him not to do computers as a subject as they would never take over.. this was in the early 90s

would have paid for this

i check through out the day periodically

I for one venture to reddit more due to what digg has become

faceboook graph/api, always learning :)

andrew mason said when he moved from concentrating on the point, he used wordpress as the first groupon site

Optimised to convert.. would be a better way to put it. people waste lots of money on adwords by not having appropriate calls to action, or simple things like adding a number you can call, will also improve conversion rates

I'm a freelancer.. I develop stuff that interests me, facebook applications and integration. I love it because a lot of the time my friends get to see what i work on instead of me just doing some backend coding that they wouldnt know anything about, i can normally go.. "yes, that is my work"

Most of my business comes from agencies who outsource such skills, maybe design agencies who don't have coding skills or facebook expertise. But I do gather work from the odd startup.

How I landed into contracting? I downloaded wordpress, setup a trivial website and optimised the site for adwords.

Adwords has been my biggest source of work from the start but its only a starting point. I have built up relationships with guys who will pass me work over and over. I use twitter and facebook to connect with the agencies to constantly update changes within facebook and the new work that I do.

Most of the agencies that I work with have multiple clients from different sectors and what works for one of my clients may work for a client of theirs completely different to whom they originally contacted me about.

the cheaper your hourly rate is, the less that people respect you, simple.

if your not told your expensive on a monthly basis your too cheap

pg hit the home run on this one

love it, had an idea for the exact same service over here in ireland, would you be open to franchising it outside the US?

i need a flash designer/developer whos reliable for freelance work chris@justni.com

would have been good to post this as well

I assume you didnt live in northern ireland in the 70s/80s, where stop and searches where normal way of life and where you could see British soldiers patrolling the streets daily

i was at a conference recently and had my phone on silent the whole day, I have 8 missed calls and 2 emails in the space of 7 hours from a recruiter. Really, if i didnt answer the first 4 times that day what made him think i would answer the last 4. he was recruiting for a php contractor position

</end rant>

A cheap iphone apps contractor in Dublin will get €500/day