6 Reasons Why You Should Make A Demo Site

The importance of creating your own online presence of you are a programmer.

If you are a programmer, do you have your own software or online presence? If you do, congratulations, you are in the top tier of programmers. If you don’t, please read on and I will describe the many benefits of establishing your online presence.

My name is Jim Tanner, and I have been an IT Consultant for over 25 years. For most of that time, I have maintained online presence and software products, and it has given me many benefits over the years.

One of my online projects, IMLock Software, ran for over 10 years, generated millions of downloads, and thousands of paid customers, generating over a million dollars in revenue. All while holding down my regular consulting jobs.

There are many other benefits to having an online presence

Tangible Showcase

In a job interview, if you can not only tell them you know, say Java Frameworks (for example), you can actually show them. Also you can include the links to your demo sites on your resume so potential employers can look at work examples.

This will get you interviews you may not have otherwise, and it will be a great conversation topic during the interview. There is a world of difference between saying you did something, and actually showing it. This will set you apart from 90% of other candidates.

Skill Building

I consider this one of the best reasons for developing your own online presence. If you are specializing in, say Java Framework Front Ends, what better way to hone your skills than to actually spend some of your spare time developing Java Front Ends?

And better if you develop them into something useful. Pick one or two highly marketable skills, hone in on those, and become an expert developing your own site, software, or product.

Interviewing – Keeps You Sharp

By working on your own projects with key skillsets, you can stay cutting edge and sharp on those skills. That is really going to show when you are doing technical interviews. Since you are researching, coding, and debugging these platforms, you will know a lot of detail.

This will allow you to have fast responses, and make some key points when answering technical questions. You may even be able to point out a few things that could help the clients current situation.

Stand Out

Not a lot of candidates will have their own sites, done in a very organized fashion for demonstration. This will immediately put you in a short list of people

Shows Initiative

Your site will show the hiring manager that you can be self motivated, you can think up projects and do them without a supervisor.

Build Leadership Skills

Your demo will show that you can lead a project, and see it through to completion. This tells the hiring manager she doesn’t have to babysit you if you are hired. You can take a lead.

Make Money

My own project, IMLock, generate over a million dollars in revenue. This was from a simple downloadable application. There are limitless opportunities for this. And you will learn a lot more in the process. You will learn how to set up ecommerce sites, websites, payment portals, and much more.

Gives You WOW Factor

Done correctly, your demo should have a significant WOW factor that gets attention. This means a very colorful dashboard, and a solid professional looking website. Reports, graphs, charts (of many types, Line, Pie, Bar, etc.), animations, the sky is the limit here.

The visual impact will sell you faster than anything else I can think of.