All things change in time, and this year brings many changes with EastWave.
The web design & internet consulting division of our company will now be located at www.eastwavemedia.com. We are also rolling out new media services & development packages which can also be found at the following new websites:
www.eastwavemedia.com
www.eastwavehosting.com
www.appsdesigner.com
www.customsigndesigner.com
www.ecommerceturnkey.com
www.dropshipcontacts.com
www.monetizations.com
www.promotionalbears.com
Goodbye Windows, great COC song also (legendary national metal band from NC)…
That is Corrosion Of Conformity if you didn’t know from the initials…
I made the switch… My main computer is now a new Apple 24” Widescreen iMac, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, 650 GB hard drive, etc…
I have been an Apple devotee all my life, and Steve Jobs has been a huge role model for me for years. It’s actually amazing that I waited so long to make this change to begin with.
My first computer experience came back in middle school in the eighties with an Apple II. The first real computer I purchased was an Apple IIc from a pawnshop in the late eighties. My next computer was a used early Macintosh, which I think I bought out of a local classifieds magazine. In college, my mom & dad bought me a brand new Macintosh Performa model. That was one of the models made during the years that Steve Jobs was not at Apple, and in hindsight, it shows.
Once I went to work for a web hosting company, I realized that due to all the support calls, I had to switch to PCs (or Windows based PCs anyway) just so I could have some real experience with the problems many of our customers were having. My first PC was a Sony Vaio laptop, which was truly a workhorse and still runs to this day, although it’s creepingly slow now. I then went through many other Windows based personal computers as well as servers once I branched out to my own company and through the early part of 2009.
I got to the breaking point with Windows after endless problems with spam, viruses, crashes, OS reinstalls & everything else that comes along with using Windows. When my main hosting server & my main workstation crashed (both Windows machines) within a month of each other, I started to think that there must be a better way.
I already knew that there was a better way as far as web servers go, as I was running a Linux based server for mostly all of the servers that ran my own websites and other customers’ internet stores.
When my own personal computer crashed though, I decided that I was going to go back to Mac. After experiencing the amazing evolution of the iPod and then the iPhone, I realized that maybe Steve Jobs had brought something back to Apple that was definitely not there on my last Macintosh.
I was right…
What a wonderful experience my new iMac is… I had never used OSX at all when I purchased the new machine, but the night I turned it on, it was like saying hello to an old friend. MANY things have been changed though, so it definitely took a month or so to get used to everything. I can already see improvements in all areas of work that I have completed since then. I can definitely say that this is the best operating system I have ever used on a computer. After getting a new Mac, I started to realize that it just helps streamline all aspects of my life. Everything works like I want it to, and instead of fighting the operating system, I’m using the computer to actually get work done.
Another thing that made me want to go back to Mac was the idea that I wanted get into doing a lot more audio recording & video production type projects. Everyone knows that Mac has always been the computer of choice for these type applications.
What surprised me though, was realizing just how “pro” some of the FREE applications that come installed on the Mac were, such as Garage Band & iMovie.
Garage Band basically turns your Mac into a multi-track digital recording studio… In the past, I have paid more money for a standalone multi-track digital recording workstation than I paid for the iMac, which has this as an afterthought. iMovie gives you a limited version of a digital movie editor that for most users will be the only digital movie editing software that you will ever need.
I have upgraded to more pro versions of each of the above-mentioned programs, but I have to say that the free “consumer” versions work very well and would be fine for a good majority of people out there that use a computer in their daily life.
Oh…
By the way…
That first computer that I purchased in a pawnshop (Apple IIc) still runs to this day, complete with its monochrome, two-color, green letters on black screen.
I wonder if my new iMac will still actually boot up in 2029???
Something to ponder…
Going back to work after a life changing experience is one of the toughest things that a person could ever face. There is a part of you that wants to get back in the swing of things, since you know that you can’t drown yourself in misery forever. There is another part of you that wants to just sit there and stare at the screen and feel contempt & hatred for the backlog of projects that you are faced with since everything was put off due to the personal problems you were going through.
In other words, you spend a whole lot more time working on projects because you are torn between those two poles to begin with. As the days go on, you start to realize that you are getting more work accomplished than you were, say, a week ago. You start to heal a bit more each day and try to use your emotions in a positive way to hopefully produce positive results from your work.
I was so backed up on work after everything that went on in my life, that my main website (EastWave.com) has been offline since before Christmas. In a way this was actually positive because it let me and my team finish up all of the backlogged work and get that out of the way. It also let me sit back and analyze what my company actually IS, over 5 years after I started it.
I mentioned in a previous blog post of how my hands were in too many cookie jars before all of this took place…
I remedied part of that issue by turning over our web hosting clients to my friend at MatrixEast.com. Another partner & myself also agreed to shut down the domain monetization idea that we had worked extensively on, because neither of us really had the time to put our full efforts into making it successful. It’s still a great idea, but sometimes you have to say to yourself “the juice is just not worth the squeeze”, not at the present time anyway.
I wrote the previous posts as a way to let everyone know what was going on, since I have had a few customers and associates ask “When is your site going to be back online?”.
Going forward here are the plans and everything should be coming online shortly:
EastWave will no longer be offering web hosting to any new customers, we will however, recommend companies for hosting, dedicated servers and any other type services of that nature.
All development services will now be handled through our development & consulting division of the company at EastWaveMedia.com. We will have other websites under the EastWave Media arm, which will be specific to the new services that we will be rolling out soon.
There will be no referral fees given out from this point forward. If a previous customer recommended EastWave development services in the past, they would get a huge discount on their next project with us, or cash back if they preferred. We have realized that this just gave us more work to do, while making less money overall, in the end.
EastWave.com is going to become the main website in a new EastWave Products shopping network which will feature beach gifts, coastal décor, camping supplies, barbeque accessories & more. We have made strategic partnerships with a few different suppliers of product lines that we think will really take off.
For the local music friends of mine:
NCScene.com is still alive at this point (Forum Only) but that will be changing drastically in the future. I have plans to build a large social interaction network catered specifically to rock & metal musicians, tattoo artists, bikers, goth freaks, etc… I had plans for this, years ago, which got pushed off due the amount of work I had at hand. This project is back on track and we hope for completion within the next month or so.
So with all that said,
I look forward to the future of EastWave…
The Next Wave Begins Today…
Over the course of the last few years, I was so focused on building a profitable business that I almost let it consume me. One way to get a huge dose of reality is to experience the death of a close family member, for me it was my father.
You will hear things like this from others, but you will never know what it is like to experience it until it happens to you. My father was a tobacco auctioneer and was one of the best in the world at his profession. In a way a lot of the different paths I’ve taken in my own life was to make my father proud and be the best at what I was doing, just as he was the best at what he did in his life.
My father was always like a rock of the family who kept things going and did things no one else wanted to do. From mowing the lawn, to keeping all the vehicles that my family has had over the years running well, to whatever else was needed. Although my father may have said in the past “Boy why don’t you cut that hair”, he never once stood in my way and always supported me in any hobby or career choice that I was making at the time.
When I was a kid playing little league baseball, I wanted to be a pro baseball player & my Dad would be at all the practices helping out the team. When I was a teenager I wanted to be a pro freestyle BMX rider & my Dad would be out in the yard helping me build ramps to ride on. When I got into music, my Dad would help me buy any music equipment that I thought I needed, let me borrow his truck to haul it and my band around to any gigs we had scheduled, and help me unload everything no matter what time of the night it was when we got home.
Sometimes you take things like that for granted because that is the way your life has always been…
Sometimes you get so focused in your career that you don’t even realize what is going on right in front of your eyes. When my father started suffering from liver problems over the course of the last year, I still saw my Dad sitting there although other members of my family would tell me how bad he was doing health wise. Of course, if I asked my Dad how he was doing he would always say “I’m going to be all right, son”.
My father was in and out of the hospital from Christmas of 2008 on into March of 2009. He died in early March at Duke Hospital in Durham, NC just weeks before my fiancé and myself were to be married.
Every web designer or developer usually considers offering web hosting services as a complimentary service that fits well with their design services. My company offered web hosting services for the past 5 years, but we limited it to only customers that we did design work for.
The recurring revenue from web hosting helped my company get started, but it also got to a point to where the amount of hosting revenue that I had coming in each year was less than the amount of money it took to keep the web servers running each year. A lot of that had to do with the fact that I owned so many domain names of my own that I needed multiple servers to support my own company’s websites as well as to support the hosting division of my company. When I first started out, everything ran fine with my own websites sharing the same server as my customer websites.
Another thing to consider is the support that you must offer to customers that are hosting with you. For instance:
• Email issues including SPAM or missed emails
• Website downtime if anything goes wrong with your server
• General computer support as many customers will ask you for help with whatever computer issue they may be having at the time
• Hacker issues
There are things that come up when you are web host that you would never dream of happening. The ultimate nightmare, which I have experienced a few times is waking up one morning, knowing that you have a lot of projects on the table and finding your hosting server dead in the water. The phone will be ringing off the hook and you realize that your day will consist of ordering a new server and moving a hundred websites as quick as you can.
One other thing to consider about offering web hosting is that it is nearly impossible in today’s time to compete on price with the larger hosts out there. The only way to compete is offering better services than a lot of the bigger hosts, and even that is hard to do when a lot of the bigger companies have large support staffs.
I knew that one of the main changes I needed to make to my company was moving away from web hosting. How would I do this? This was the problem I ran into. When you have customers mostly paying by the year, and at different random months of the year depending on the customer billing cycle, there is no easy way to move away from web hosting.
When you have an internet store or even a brick & mortar business and want to shut it down, basically you close the doors or cancel the domain and take the loss yourself as an owner. When you are running a web hosting company, all of your customers are relying on you so you can’t just shut it off. Whatever move I was going to make, the most important thing would be that the customers would see very little downtime, and their future services would be up to the standards that I had provided with my company.
After exploring some options, my friend and server admin decided to take over my hosting customers under his new company of MatrixEast.com. This worked well since this was someone who I trusted to give the same level of support that I gave to my customers.
Its only fitting though that once we agreed on this and decided to make this change in early January, my main hosting server decided to crash the week before Christmas!!! While everyone was out doing their last minute shopping, my friend & I were moving websites and trying to fix any issues we found.
It was almost like my server was saying to me “You are not getting out of this so easily”.
About a year ago, I started to realize that I was spreading myself way too thin in trying to build my business up to achieve its maximum potential. No matter how driven you are to succeed, you must always make time for yourself and take the time to “stop and smell the coffee”. Without doing so you are hurting yourself and your business if you do not take time to realize what parts of your business are profitable and what parts are not. You are also hurting your own personal health as you never have any downtime.
The life of an entrepreneur & freelancer is not a 9-5 type of job, instead it is a 24 hour type of job. There are no definite work hours, but it seems there is always work to be done and never enough time in a day to get that work done.
For the last 4 years or more, I took very little downtime as I was focused on keeping my customers happy and building up a profitable business. I also had basically given up playing music as I felt at the time, that the business was more important.
At this time last year, my company was based on:
• Providing web hosting services & support for local clients in the NC area
• Providing web design & consulting services to a range of clients throughout the United States
• Managing multiple websites for 2 separate large internet retail companies
• Owning, operating & continually updating an affiliate based network of over 100 niche internet stores
• Operating as a merchant with a network of internet retail stores selling novelties & other products
• Partnership in a new domain monetization startup company which would build niche websites on premium domains in exchange for a cut of the profits
EastWave has always run a very small staff in our main office in North Carolina. All development work for customers is handled in our NC office as well as all order processing for any of the products purchased on the web stores that we own.
I think there have been a few development customers that would come to us thinking that we were a large company with many developers. The truth is, almost 100% of any new development on websites either for customers or for our own interests was completed by me personally.
There have been numerous days to where I would work at the computer for 20 hours at a time, sleep a few hours and get back to work and put in another 20 hour day.
I knew that I had to make a change, but I wasn’t quite sure what that change would be.
Many changes are happening at EastWave, and I felt it was important to put my new blog online first to let everyone know what is going on in my world and throughout all the entities that I own.
So let’s begin with an introduction to my life, and how I got to where I am today…
Throughout high school, all I wanted to be was a rock star. I played in quite a few different bands in those days, which saw limited success. In various bands throughout my life, I have played either guitar, bass or handled the lead vocals. I can also play drums to a certain extent, but I wouldn’t consider myself a drummer.
My parents were determined that I needed to go to college, and of course I didn’t really think I needed a college education to play music so I wasn’t really sure what to do. On the last day of summer break after my high school graduation in 1992, I went to Wilson Technical Community College to enroll in SOMETHING since my mother had given me the choice of getting a job or going to school. I decided to take Automotive Technology since fast cars was another of my longtime passions. This worked out pretty well since I had the chance to work on my 280ZX anytime I wanted and I even ended up with a full scholarship to the automotive program since my grades were so good. Some may consider that a smart, educated rock n’ roller to be an anomaly in this world, but my whole life has been different from the normal life that 99% of people in this world live.
After graduating from the Automotive Technology program, I went on to take the college transfer program at WTCC and transferred to East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. Once again I had a dilemma since it was the last day of registration and I still had not chosen a major, since I still didn’t have a clue of what I wanted to do other than play music. I was looking at the programs and the Communications - Media Production program sounded interesting so I just chose that as my major with Business Administration as a minor. Keep in mind, this was totally off the cuff without even investigating the details of the program. Once classes started in my major, I realized that the Communications program was filled with scholarship football & basketball players. What a lucky pick for a major!!! I pretty much breezed through the college courses and ended up graduating from ECU in 1997.
The day I graduated from college was pretty special since my band at the time had our first show as well on that evening at a bar in Wilson, NC. The band at the time didn’t last very long after that, but something I learned during that time would have a MAJOR impact on my future career, the skill of website design.
I learned website design through trial and error, starting with a blank canvas in an image program and just created what would become a website. I have never read any books on computers, or even taken any computer classes in college. Back when I was in college, the students didn’t even have a college email address and the Internet was in its early stages of development.
From those early beginnings, I went on to work for a little over a year at a printshop in which I learned the skill of sign design & vinyl lettering. I left the printshop to work for a web hosting company in Greenville NC in which greatly increased my web development skills as I was the primary web designer for over 4 years.
In late 2003, I started creating my own company and network of websites that would later become my EastWave Media network. One thing led to another and I currently own over 100 developed internet properties.
I will be posting about various topics in this blog so please keep checking back. This post is just a brief overview of what led me to creating EastWave Media. I will go into more detail on previous periods in my life in future posts.
I will also be giving tips on internet marketing, web design, computers & much more so any of you out there interested in following a similar path should definitely bookmark my blog as there will be a lot of useful knowledge given out here.
Being an entrepreneur is not easy, so I will definitely be blogging about the ups and downs and pitfalls along the way… Hopefully, some of my stories will help some of you in your own ventures.
