How to develop Good Taste - The Most Important Ability of the Web Entrepreneur

When Bill Gates was asked in the D5 conference what made Steve Jobs such a successful and influential entrepreneur, Gates said “Steve gave a speech once, which is one of my favorites, where he talked about, in a certain sense, we build the products that we want to use ourselves. And so he’s really pursued that with incredible taste and elegance that has had a huge impact on the industry.”

To succeed with your web venture you must produce quality results on all fronts. Apart from having a good idea for a product that delivers real benefits to your users, you need to produce easy to use software that’s also easy on the eye. If your website design isn’t good enough to build trust then visitors to your website will never even try your product. Your sales copy has to be compelling, otherwise visitors will get bored and your visitor to customer conversion rate will plummet.

These are just a small fraction of the things you must do well in order to succeed. Since no one (including you) is an expert on all things, you will need to cooperate with others to produce all the different aspects of your start-up.

And here is the best advice I can give you as a web entrepreneur. While you can’t be an expert in every field, you must learn to recognise quality in all these fields. In short - Have good taste. This simple ability will help you define your goals, hire the right employees and freelancers and reject shabby work.

So how can I develop a good taste?, you ask. The answer is - learn and don’t be afraid to be critical. For instance, to develop a good taste in graphic design, you need to start reading design blogs. When you find a well designed site, study it. Examine logos, colours, fonts. Compare your site with others. what makes your site less compelling? less elegant?. If you develop a real interest in web design and an opinion about what constitutes good design, then your website and application will have quality design.

This technique works in every field, from programming to design, from copywriting to SEO. So don’t wait, go and develop a good taste, who knows you might eventually create the iPod of web apps.

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100,000+ Free Images and Photos for Your Blog

Images and photos breath life into your posts. When used right, they enhance your message. But using the Google/Flicker image search usually returns copy-righted images. Bloggers that use these images (without permission) can find themselves on the recieving end of a lawsuit

PictureSandbox.com is a new search engine that enables you to retrieve only CC Licensed images from the Flicker database. You can freely use the images in your blog, usually, by just giving credit to the artist/photographer (in CC speak that’s called attribution).

This free image search is coupled with an efficient image browsing interface that makes finding images fun.

Here are some cool photos I found at PictureSandbox.