In my half-decade plus of marketing on the net, I've seen my share of trouble. DDos attacks (distributed denial of service), Viruses, Forums full of trolls, software that didn't work as advertised, tools that came with no documentation, and even less actual support. What was the one, unchanging weapon that steered me through all this? My ROCK? It was my PHP developer.
"What the heck IS a PHP developer and why do I need one?" a freshly-minted Internet Marketer might ask. PHP is an acronym that describes a type of coding language, used almost exclusively in web-based server environments called Hypertext PreProcessor. Don't ask me why it isn't HPP...maybe Hewlett-Packard had something to do with it? Or the SOUND of PHP is better...FUN like the old amusement park in Santa Monica, CA - POP (Pacific Ocean Park)...
PHP is a rival to the Microsoft server scripting languages such as .ASP and the .NET framework. Because PHP is open source, the development cycle is global, and occurs at a furious pace. It is not only relatively easy to learn. It's cheap (free) and the installed base of teaching tools, tutorials, and development libraries are as extensive as the worldwide developer community.
Unless you REALLY want to take a walk down the path less traveled, and embrace a OOPL (object-orient-programming-language) such as ROR: Ruby On Rails, just find yourself a great PHP developer you can communicate effectively with and settle in for a long and profitable ride.
Two bonuses I discovered in my own developer that are often missing among the developer mindset: Graphics skill and understanding marketing logic and tactics. If your developer is "stick-figure-impaired" you might want to keep looking. If you mention the phrase 2TAS (short for two-tier-affiliate system) and they look at you like you are from some other planet, it might be time to move on.
The other really critical skill is knowing how to have one's way with MySQL databases. PHP is just the instruction set that manipulates the data inside the database. And databases are funny animals. Get someone who isn't afraid of them. Someone who can make them DANCE. Once these skills are manifested in a reliable member of your marketing team, all the roadblocks to success just melt away. The web morphs into an infinity of possibilities, instead of a nightmare, just waiting to happen. Your web sites, your weapons, your tactics: all get dialed up a notch...often by an order of magnitude.
One last caveat: you get what you pay for! Get someone who speaks your native language. If your project comes back with all the database tables developed in Greek, or Russian, maintaining them in-house or with a new developer is going to be impossible, or at least prohibitively expensive.
Steve is a CPA, real estate developer and online entrepreneur. He operates a network of mentoring communities for aspiring web marketers. You can peer into his crazy world whenever you like at: [http://bigdogmentoring.com]
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