When I started working for myself again last year I was looking for the next whizzy web application I could build. The more I researched the more I realised how much fantastic stuff there is out there that is just not being used. Whether it’s cloud based accounting from the likes of freeAgent or simple eCommerce solutions with Shopify, these tools offer fantastic solutions to real problems faced by cash strapped startups. But the vast majority of people are still using the old headache inducing tools like Sage for accounting and all sorts of locked in bespoke solutions for eCommerce.
So rather than write yet another fancy tool I thought my time would be better spent trying to help people adopt some of the best of breed products that I believed could save people time and money. How? Well I liked what I saw Martin Lewis doing with Money Saving Expert. He, along with his company and website, seemed to be doing a genuinely good public service advising people with free, simple advice and making a decent living out of it at the same time through affiliate relationships. I like this model. So I started The Technology Expert. I built a site with direct to the point advice and recommendations for solving real world problems with technology. No beating around the bush. I felt and still do feel that this is what people need. I have written many articles and managed to get other people to join me in doing this. Traffic has grown gradually and people seem to love the bite size twitter tips which is another story.
I thought I would love researching and writing content and I did for a while, but that soon changed. I thought people would see the clear differentiator with what I was trying to do compared to all those many technology news and review sites, I don’t think they do (yet). The mid to late adopter audience that I care so passionately about is hard to reach. I thought I could write a quality article better than anything else out there in a few hours. I can’t. To keep quality up, it was taking a day and more per article. I have been surprised that although traffic and follower volume has been very good engagement has been low.
So, the idea is that The Technology Expert will be a slow burner blog style site that I will keep going on the side and just engage and observe the problems people have, hopefully finding the perfect gap in the market to exploit with a web application at some stage as well as sustain some income from the blog itself. Basically I want to listen to and engage real end users rather than just other web/tech professionals.
The reason for the name of the blog was to create a trustworthy unbiased persona that is crucial in being an intermediary between the consumer and the businesses they are looking to buy from. This is hard. The downside of using the word “Expert” is that people tend to see it as a self promoting, ego induced title which I can quite understand as that’s what most people use it for. This was sad and problematic for me as the site is absolutely not about me, but about seeing a problem and trying to do something about it, and actually I hate anything being about me.
Whilst working on the TTE website I fell in love with twitter, after using it rather sporadically for a couple of years previously. I can see how it is an amazing solution for engaging, understanding, learning and connecting. In a world where local communities are fragmenting and people spend less time socialising to the detrement of society I saw a problem and a solution. I had found a new path I wanted to pursue and it felt good. I still absolutely want to continue TTE because the problem is very much there but perhaps the solution needs some work. However a lot of the solution for this and many other problems is simply connecting and engaging the right people. Twitter takes a fair amount of research, reading and interacting before it becomes a genuinely useful tool. In the process many people give up or never really get started. I want to do something about this with a new website flumes. Of course it’s not all about websites and by helping with Suffolk Digital and the local tweetups I also want to help connect people face to face, which is so much richer than the online experience.
But it’s time to stop @the_tech_expert twitter name I have always felt pretty uncomfortable with. It’s time to be me, so the name is to change.
That’s the end of my self indulgent ramblings but perhaps it answers a few questions about who I am and what I’m trying to do.
Steve
