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Working with yourself or a group on the internet

by Darren

If you’re in the website development game, you reach a point where you decide on working with others, or if you bring in more people for collaborations. I personally have been very reluctant to do any projects with people, and the few that I started with others dried up fast. Most of working online is just plain hard work. If you can find others to work hard, great. But what I worried about happening is spending all of my time managing people, when I could just concentrate on maximizing profit.

If you hire others, your expenses go way up and have to be offset by increased revenue. Even if you enter into a joint venture with others, you need to make more money, or it would be pointless to enter the relationship. But potentifal pitfalls exist, especially because of the unique nature of the internet.

• The partner might steal your ideas – it’s very easy to steal intellectual property
• The relationship might fizzle, and you end up having one more competitor for the top 3 spots of a keyword

Have you done joint projects with others? How did you set up the partnership? Do you think others in a group will pull their weight?