But can you really build an asset out of giving stuff away?

I believe you can and I’ll tell you why.

I have dozens of small web businesses in diverse fields and one site in particular drives traffic in droves to most of others.

That’s its job. It’s a portal; a catalyst and it’s good at what it does.

You know what though?

I have been consistently and unwittingly underestimating power of its innate potential to build an asset, a priceless asset.

Until recently this valuable catalyst had no opt-in facility, no newsletter.

Crazy - and it took my ten year-old granddaughter to point out error of my ways.

I’ve heard several prominent web marketers mention in their classes and public forums how easy it is to create your own software. Why, all you have to do is run over to Elance.com or RentACoder.com and have some poor shmoe from Outer Slobvia whip out what you want. And all for price of a few trips to Starbucks.

Uh, not quite.

Is that a spec in your eye? -----------------------------------

First of all, there is matter of specifications. A spec is a description of what your software should do. The more specific your desires, more detailed your specification needs to be. Even most malnourished coder in Slobovia is going to balk if you say, “Try a gray background–oops, no, don’t like that. Let’s try light blue… Oh, that’s not right, either. Let’s try mauve.” If you just want to specify “the important stuff”, you have to be prepared to accept all “unimportant stuff” however it is handed to you.

By way, both RentACoder.com and Elance.com have provisions in their process and terms of use that protect their developers from vague specifications. The good news is that there are also provisions to protect you, publisher. Regardless, more detailed your specification, greater chance of a happy outcome. Ah, but writing those darn specs takes a lot of time… far more time than it sounds like when gurus tell you how easy it is.

This was only a test… ----------------------------

There’s also small matter of testing. Once you accept a developer’s work, they get paid and get on with their lives. You, however, must live with software. If you don’t find every bug that must be fixed before you pay coder, you either have to put out another project for bid to repair things or live with problems until you do.