Monetizer

To monetize.

I wish my spell checker would pick it up and blow it to bits. I hate that word.
If I finish a cool project, the first thing I hear from people is: “So how are you going to monetize this?”

Why must everything turn a profit? And then, why must some greasy people do all that’s in their power to increase that profit?

You can measure a product by the profit it brings you, and become dead in my eyes. You could also measure a product by how many users actually use and like it. Aren’t they the ones you built it for? When you sit down and start implementing and testing the UI, you put yourself in the place of the user. Do you ever think “aw, but this modal means they can’t click the banner ads” ?

When developers work on a project, they either do it with passion or they do it for the money. Did you ever notice how the big expensive projects, written in C# or Java usually have a lot of bugs, a horrible UI and take forever to launch? They were most probably built for the money.
Did you ever notice how fast open source projects’ bugs get fixed?

I guess you could say I have a problem, eh?

As long as I know I won’t go hungry, I’ll tweak you contact form, I’ll spend a day trying to repair your videos – even a Saturday – and I’ll go long into the night trying to squash a bug. All that for free.

I won’t fix your banners though. Money can wait, but UX has to be good now!
It’s never about the money or product or man-hours, it’s about the team and the people.

Remember that next time, OK?