BuySellAds.com was founded in February/March 2008 and helps online advertisers and website publishers buy and sell ads better. Below Todd shares his insights and experience in rapidly growing BuySellAds.

For those readers who are preparing to launch or have recently launched their app/web-based service, can you share what you guys did early on to attract those initial customers for BuySellAds?

The first thing was having an app/product that solved a common problem. Since we were initially solving this problem for ourselves, telling our story was very easy, natural, and resonated well with the initial users we approached. With BSA we were lucky in that it was very obvious who could benefit from using the app. We weren’t competing with other ad networks, we were competing with the individual website owners who were currently doing by hand what BSA was built to do. It was very grass-roots, sending legitimate personal emails and letting our passion for the business show through with fast and accurate support.

What do you attribute to BuySellAds’ success? How have you grown so quickly?

Two things. First, we were making website owners (mostly freelancers) more efficient – people who tend to always be busy, and for whom time is real money. Second, our intentions have always been very genuine and transparent from the start, and we have been extremely consistent for over 2 years now. Consistently delivering for your users is key. It’s a great way to build loyalty and the only true way to win business month after month.

How are you currently marketing BuySellAds? Can you elaborate on what has and has not worked well for you?

We still have a very grass-roots approach. Our best marketing comes from our users who recommend us, write blog posts, and tweet about us. After that it is our support. Providing great support has really strengthened relationships with our users. Any company who doesn’t provide awesome support these days is crazy, it’s the easiest thing to get right. All you have to do is care.

What role do you think design and usability has played in the success of BuySellAds? Has it given you an edge over the competition?

Since the majority of our users are web designers and developers (or looking to market to them) I think that design has played somewhat of a role. I say somewhat because the early versions of BSA weren’t pixel perfect (the current version isn’t either). However, when it comes to usability, I think it’s played a larger role than design. It is so incredibly easy for someone to buy an ad through us, people get addicted. It’s fun. You can get your ad live on some serious websites in only a few minutes. The design and usability of our site is always something that we will work hard to improve. It is a personal passion of mine, and I value this aspect of our business highly.

What are the key metrics for your business that you review regularly?

Well, to be honest, we have been growing so quickly that I do not look at all that I should. The metrics that tend to put me in a good mood or a bad mood are our total cancellations, total new purchases, total recurring purchases on a daily basis and on a month to date basis. These three stats hold the pulse of the business and allow me to make basic decisions on where to focus our time from week to week. Beyond that, we tend to dive into publisher specific earnings and advertiser specific results while trying to make recommendations and sell more ads.

Looking back, what are the top three things you wish you would have done differently since launching BuySellAds?

I wish that I would have quit my full-time job sooner and focused 100% on BSA before Jan. 1st 2009. I wish that I would have started delegating sooner – I am a control freak and teaching other people how to do parts of my job is a hard thing for me, because I enjoy every aspect so much. Lastly, I wish that I had not spoken with venture capitalist. While I greatly appreciate meeting those that I did and was fortunate to hear their valuable advice, I was never fully committed to raising money and it ended up being a huge time commitment.

What tips would you give someone who is launching an app for the first time?

This is almost a bit cliché these days, but it’s true: get it out there, launch, constantly iterate and improve.

Thanks for sharing your experience with our readers Todd!
Be sure to visit their website at http://www.buysellads.com

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The Iconfactory has developed icons for a number of high profile clients including Adobe, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple to name a few. The company was founded in 1996 and is based in Greensboro, NC. In this interview Gedeon shares his experience in starting Iconfactory, gives us a peek at what a typical day is like for an icon designer, and shares insight on their recently released iPhone app, RampChamp. Enjoy!

How did you get started in icon design?

After being laid off twice by companies that thought they wanted to get out of the technology sector, I and the other founders at the Iconfactory made the conscious decision to become our own bosses. We had already done icon work on the side for Microsoft’s Outlook Express for the Mac, and made the decision to try it full time. I think this turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. I’ve enjoyed every minute of our careers together.

Tell me more about starting Iconfactory and the early days of the business.

The Iconfactory was started back in April of 1996 as a hobby between our three founding members: Corey Marion, Talos Tsui and myself. At the time, all three of us were working for a small multi-media company called Paradigm Interactive designing educational CD-ROMs for children. Icon making was part of the job description, and each of the three members started pushing pixels on their own time for fun.

Corey, Talos and I all had individual web pages where people could download our icons, but it wasn’t until Corey came up with the idea to create a single page where the three could consolidate their work and thereby increase hits that the first version of the factory was born. Corey came up with the name “Iconfactory” as well as the first icon of the factory itself. The original site (a single web page) was created and hosted on AOL.

How many employees does Iconfactory have now?

Today, the Iconfactory has grown to 11 people and had offices both in the US and Sweden.

Here’s a look at where Gedeon gets his work done

Iconfactory is known for working with some of the largest companies and creating phenomenal icons. How have you been able to build such a talented team?

We’ve been very fortunate in both our timing and talent. We started in icon design when there really was no competition and those who were doing it, didn’t specialize in the field. This left the door wide open for a company with attention to detail to step in and make a name for ourselves.

We have also been very fortunate to find some of the most talented designers in the industry. We really owe this to the icon design contest we used to run called Pixelpalooza. Pixelpaooza was a forum for icon artists around the world to submit entries and compete for cool prizes. We found three of our current people (and one founder) via Pixelpalooza – Dave Brasgalla, Anthony Piraino and David Lanham. We hope to bring the contest back at some point in the future.

With the business growing rapidly, how has your role changed? Do you do less design work now than you did in the beginning because of the additional responsibilities of running the business?

Unfortunately yes. As a company grows, so does the need to oversee day to day operations. When we first started out there was only three of us and we did everything from human resources, to tech support to design and more. But as the Iconfactory has grown into new spaces, software, iPhone, large contract work, it’s become difficult for me to stay focused on just design work. Someone has to respond to business proposals, do long term company planning, determine our software product road maps and more. More and more, that role is falling to me and I enjoy it. I also don’t get to do as much of the actual “creating” anymore though which is a natural evolution for a position like this.

You guys also have an impressive collection of stock icons as well. How does the workload break down? Is there a team that focuses solely on custom work and another on the stock icons you provide?

No, we all do everything. We structure our time between client work and internal work as best we can. Clients always have higher priority than internal Iconfactory projects, which is why a freeware release or a stock icon release may be delayed at any given time. About 1/3 of our time during a given week is devoted to internal projects like software, stock icons or freeware. The rest is all devoted to paid client projects.

Can you take us through a typical day for you?

Some days are more typical than others, but generally it goes something like this. I typically get into the office anywhere between 8:30am and 9:30am and when I arrive I always try to catch up on email both for my own personal account and for the Iconfactory’s Webmaster account. This email account is the “catch-all” for requests that come into the company. One of the things we pride ourselves on is that even after a decade in business, we respond to ALL emails we receive. It may take a few days, but we try to answer everything.

After email is parsed, I prioritize tasks for the day both for myself and
potentially for any one of the designers. If there are urgent request of
some kind or meetings that need to be set up, I try and take care of them or delegate those requests out. Next, if there are company bills to pay or payroll to distribute, etc. then I spend some time taking care of them before lunch.

Afternoons are spent doing as much actual “work” as possible. Sometimes this can be internal or external, but often it involves meetings via phone or iChat with clients or Iconfactory personnel who are not on site. I’m typically the last one to leave the office which is usually around 6:30pm.

Can you walk us through your design process from concept to a completed icon?

Typically it starts with a brainstorming session. This can be done alone by the assigned designer, or they can pull the entire group of icon artists in for brainstorm. We flush out what the client wants and try to come up with several rough concepts. Depending on the individual designer’s preferences, some provide the client with scanned pencil sketches, others opt for black and white line art from Adobe Illustrator. Either way they are simply concepts to be reviewed. Once the direction is established, we usually move to a rough vector comp to get the layout and perspective down and once that is approved we move onto final rendering. It varies depending on if the project is a new one or if the icon is part of a suite that has been tackled before of course.

What hardware do you and your team use? Can you give us a rundown of your setup?

All of the designers at the Iconfactory (myself included) have Quad-Core Intel Mac Pros with at least 4GB of RAM. We each also have one 30″ cinema display and a smaller 21 or 24 inch display for our working palettes, email & twitter. All of us have WACOM Intuos tablets, but some use them more than others. I use my tablet for standard mouse input as well as sketching, drawing and rendering. We also have a Mac Mini that runs Parallels for testing on the PC side.

Where do you turn for inspiration?

I visit as many websites as I can, I also follow a large number of designers and illustrators on Twitter so I’m always getting to see new and exciting work online. I get inspiration from TV, movies, magazines, music and commercials believe it or not.

What blogs do you read daily?

Some blogs that read on an average day include:

1. Daring Fireball
2. Mashable
3. IO9
4. Buzzfeed
5. Kotaku
6. The Huffington Post
7. Ars Technica

You and your team, along with DS Media Labs, recently launched Ramp Champ. Tell me more about Ramp Champ. How did you guys come up with the idea?

We wanted to take a fun, familiar game that we remembered from our youth and give it a distinctly iPhone update. What started out as a simple version of classic Skee-Ball soon turned into a sprawling multi-laned game with unique themes, prizes, goals and more. We were fortunate enough to partner with the talented folks at DS Media Labs who wrote the actual software and helped us develop and fine-tune the game play over a period of around 7 months.

Each one of the designers here at the factory was assigned a ramp and its associated prizes and goals. We each worked on and off for months to create the artwork while DS created a native Mac OS X application that we could use to actually assemble the lanes. I did the majority of the sound effects in the original release as well as the design and production of the Space Swarm ramp. Everyone had a ton of fun working on the project. We’re about to release 2 new add-on packs for Ramp Champ which people should enjoy.

The game has been getting great reviews and seems to be a hit with pretty much everyone who has played it. Unfortunately the mechanics of the App Store have kept it from becoming a break away hit. We hope to change that with future updates.

We’ve written several posts about the development of Ramp Champ. If your readers are interested, they can check them out here:

http://dlanham.com/2009/09/ramp-champ/

http://mantia.me/blog/designing-ramp-champ/

What’s on tap for iconfactory? Any new stock icons coming out soon? Any new iPhone apps in the works?

We just released a whole new set of add-ons for stock icons for 5 of our families called Web. The add-on covers internet related metaphors and are our most affordable sets yet at $89.00. In addition, we’ve got another new iPhone game coming in October that I can’t say too much about yet. It’s smaller than Ramp Champ, but is designed to be fun for both single players and multiple players of up to 21 people. It’s family friendly and was designed by our own David Lanham. Watch for it soon.

Gedeon, thanks for taking the time to share more information about the Iconfactory. We’ll be on the lookout for the new iPhone app next month!

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Today we have Grant Friedman, a freelance designer and founder of Colorburned. Colorburned is a popular design blog that provides design news, resources, and tutorials from around the web.

Tell me more about your background. How did you get started in graphic design?

I got my start in graphic design about 10 years ago. Back then, the Internet was still relatively new to everyone. I volunteered to figure out how to distribute a newsletter to the membership of a student organization I was involved with over email.
It didn’t take much time before I began taking classes in HTML, Dreamweaver, and Macromedia Fireworks.

Eventually, I migrated over to Photoshop and Illustrator. Today, I’m a design junkie and couldn’t be happier!

How long have you been doing freelance work?
I’ve been doing freelance work since the beginning. I used to have a full-time job working for the government a while back but I’ve been freelancing and blogging full-time for a about 2 years now.

What type of projects do you typically work on (branding, website design, print design, etc)?
I will work on all sorts of projects. I’m happy to do branding, web design, or print but typically I like to work on projects that don’t involve a lot of code.

What tools/apps do you use to help manage your work?
I’m fairly old-school in terms of project management. I handle most of my projects through careful organization of email. There are a lot of project management apps out there but for the most part I’m just too small-time to make the most of them at this point.

What advice would you give to other freelance designers who are just getting started?
I always give the same advice to aspiring graphic designers. When you’re just starting out most people will try to take advantage of you. They will say things like -”since you’re just starting out we can’t pay you much money or we can’t pay you much but this job will be a great opportunity to build your portfolio”. Don’t let this happen! Whatever you do make sure that you are fairly compensated for your time. It’s very hard to get over the stigma of being some one who will do work for free. It’s better to be thought of as some one who charges a fair price.

I see that you have a book coming out entitled Retro Style Graphics (1000s of Style Palettes). What is it about the retro style that enticed you to write a book about it? When will the book be available?
If you were to tell me 5 years ago that I would be publishing a book in the near future, I would have called you crazy! But after my blog started to take off about a year or so ago, the thought of writing a book seemed a bit more plausible, although far-fetched. That was until Angela Patchell of Patchell Books contacted me about writing Retro Style Graphics. I’ve always been fascinated with retro-inspired design so I enthusiastically agreed.

Click the Book to Pre-Order from Amazon

The book is essentially a resource style guide of retro-style graphics. The book will include an attached CD which will contain Illustrator brushes, Photoshop brushes, vector graphics, textures, color palettes, lists of retro fonts, links to tutorials, and much more! The book should be available some time in October or November of 2009.

Tell me more about Colorburned. When did you start the blog?


Colorburned originally started as a means of promoting my portfolio. At the time, I had just left my position with the government and was preparing to find a design job in the private sector. The more I got into blogging, the more I found myself drawn to the freelance lifestyle. When my blog began to take off several months later I just kept at it. Now I rarely update my portfolio and plan to eventually migrate it away from the site.

How many people do you have writing for Colorburned?
There are 11 authors on the site but I am the only one who contributes full-time.

How often do you post new content?
I try to publish new content about 3-5 times per week.

Since launching Colorburned, how have you seen it grow. Walk us through the stats for the site 6 months after launch, a year after launch…
When I first started Colorburned in May of 2008 the site was receiving about 1,200 visits per month. By November of that year Colorburned was receiving over 60,000 visits per month. By July of 2009 Colorburned had doubled that figure and is now receiving about 120,000 visits per month.

In terms of RSS subscriptions, the site now has over 5,000 and growing. I have to say that one of the most flattering statistics however is the number of followers my site has on Twitter. By the end of September I’m hoping to have reached the 10,000 follower mark which would be an amazing accomplishment.

There are a number of plug-ins, scripts, and customizations within the design for Colorburned. Can you give us a list of these?

1. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for displaying related posts
2. Glider.js to power the slider for featured content
3. Darren Hoyt’s TimThumb Script for auto-creation and auto-resizing of images to create the dynamic thumbnails below the featured content slider

There was also custom work done to integrate Twitter below each Commenter’s avatar as seen here:

For a nice run-down on the inner workings of the site check out this case study from E.Webscapes.

Give us the run down on the Hardware and Software you use.
Sadly, I’m currently running a couple of 5 year old Dell computers. I’ve been meaning to upgrade to a Mac but I’m holding out until one of them dies. In terms of software, I’m still running CS3 right now but will upgrade as soon as I buy a new computer.

Thanks for taking the time Grant. We look forward to following your continued success with Colorburned, your freelance work, and your new book.

Be sure to check out Colorburned.com and follow Grant on Twitter.

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David Leggett is a designer, blogger, and founder of Tutorial9; a leading website that provides Photoshop, Web Design, and Photography tutorials. David shares his experience in developing and growing Tutorial9, and provides advice for bloggers who are just getting started.

How did you get started in design?

Playing with 2D and 3D editing software was sort of a childhood passion of mine. Between a copy of Paint Shop Pro and Cinema 4D, I spent hours every day experimenting and dabbling on the computer.

I’m not sure I could justify that as design though. I believe that I’ve only just scraped the surface of designing, or creating experiences specifically built for certain groups of people in recent years. There is something about crafting an entire experience that greatly interests me.

Tell me more about Tutorial9.net….what’s your mission for the site?

Tutorial9 is a community platform for teaching and sharing resources. As a whole, we teach Photoshop, Web Design, Photography, and share useful downloads all for free. We pride ourselves in quality resources, and a super friendly community.

Our mission is to be the ultimate user-generated tutorial website by providing the best free resources online, and to inspire the community to lend helping hands to one another.

How long ago did you start Tutorial9?

We started working on Tutorial9 in December of 2007, and we launched May 1st, 2008. It just turned 1-year old, and it’s growing stronger every day!

I love the design of the site. How did you develop the concept? How much did it change from conception to final implementation?

Tutorial9 may only be a year old, but it’s already undergone 4 redesigns. A lot of our early attempts to capture the right mood and offer the right experience didn’t quite work out. Our current look is a huge step in the right direction, but it’s not flawless… Then again, a website is never actually 100% perfect!

The concept is slightly evolved from our original monochromatic look. Blue is sort of our color, but Tutorial9 never felt as friendly and fun as it actually was when we stuck to so few colors. The current design really put some emphasis on our creative side: Our background is chuck full of swirls and design elements that immediately identify T9 as a creative site.

Under the hood though, a lot of thought was put into the actual interface so that there is a balance between form and function. The site looks pretty, and also is very easy to use.

Which WordPress plugins do you use for Tutorial9?

These are the important ones – the fewer plugins, the better performance you typically have!

1. All in One SEO Pack (I actually really despise “SEO” as a practice, but this plugin is very useful for on the fly editing of page attributes that would otherwise require more work in the backend)
2. Dagon Design Form Mailer (Best. WordPress. Forms. Evar.)
3. Similar Posts (Modified)
4. Role Manager
5. SyntaxHighlighter Plus (For fancy code in scripting tutorials)
6. WP-CommentNavi (Paged Comments)
7. WP-PageNavi (Paged Category pages and archives)
8. WP Super Cache (Must have for power users)

How often do you post new tutorials?

We usually have 1-2 new posts every week. Our community is growing, and we’ll likely raise the bar to 2-3 very soon!

Typically, a tutorial or resource will take anywhere from 3-10 hours to complete. We try to make sure our resources are highly polished before sharing them with our community!

How many people do you have contributing to Tutorial9?

Currently, there are about 40 Active users who have contributed some sort of resource to our community.

We consider many of our viewers to be active contributors as well. Tutorial9 depends on its active community to help spread the word when new posts go up by sharing it with others socially. Without our awesome users, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It really is their website.

How many monthly unique visitors were you receiving 6 months after launching? 1 year after launching?

1. 200,000 unique visitors at six months
2. 400,000 unique visitors at one year

We’re expecting close to 500,000 for September 2009

What’s next for Tutorial9? Where do you see the site a year from now?

Right now we’re still focusing on building a strong foundation with our community. We’re really depending on our users to help us build the most useful free resource out there – and so far they haven’t failed to disappoint.

In the next year, we’d like to have Tutorial9 be the largest community tutorial platform online with an awesome reward/recognition system that showcases our top contributors and most helpful users.

How were you able to grow the site so quickly?

My recipe for a successful site is very simple:

Passion + Hard Work + Striving To Help People = Foundation for Success

Tutorial9 is all about helping people. Our contributors are all very friendly, helpful people who really care about other people in the community. We make sure that we reward our contributors amply so that they can share really top of the line resources with our audience.

How do you currently market the website?

I’m not really into all that marketing jazz. I think marketing can be a very good thing (despite all the bad stuff going on in the advertising niche – when done right, it isn’t a bad thing), I’m just not a marketer myself.

The community has really been our means for spreading the word about the site. By publishing great content, we’re constantly being featured in other design blogs, and our viewers are always sharing us with their friends and on social bookmarking sites.

What advice would you give other bloggers who are just getting started?

Value is key to building a successful blog: If you can offer something of unique value to your readers, everything else sort of falls into place over time. Think of ways you can help your specific audience. Can you educate them in something you know very well? Can you save them time or money? Can you make them laugh? Be Helpful!

I see that you have two additional websites, UX Booth and the soon-to-be-launched BetterBlogger.net. How will BetterBlogger.net help its readers become better bloggers? Tell us more about these websites.

UX Booth is a blog about user experience design. It’s a group project with a growing community (not by any means my personal project, just one I’m lucky enough to be a part of!) UXBooth is really a site that helps other designers and developers build better user experiences. We’ve recently had the privilege to share some of what we know in publications like the Smashing Book!

Better Blogger is a personal project of mine that will be launched “When It’s Ready.”

The whole idea behind Better Blogger is that there is so much absurd information about blogging (as a profession) on the internet that it is difficult for a new blogger to know where to start. There is so much hog wash about getting rich fast, making money without any effort, and terrible marketing techniques. My goal with Better Blogger is to share useful information from real life experiences that will help people get started on the right foot – and also help experienced bloggers grow their sites even more.

Here’s where David gets his work done:

David, thanks for taking the time to share your experience with us. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Tutorial9 and UX Booth as they continue to grow and on the lookout for the launch of BetterBlogger.net.

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