We will periodically spotlight an area of the world where Coolmaps Components Club members have set up web design businesses and market themselves on the webbies.coolmaps.com locator.

This week we look at Northern California. You can link to the sites of our Webbies members by clicking on the map above, or in the northern California area on the coolmaps.com USA Webbies map.

The bay area, which includes the Silicon Valley, is by most people's definition the center of the internet world. This is the home of most of the big ones including Yahoo!, Oracle, HP, and some of the small ones, like ... NetObjects. The coffeehouses are filled with people talking dot-com lingo. And the golf courses are filled with Venture Capitalist from Sand Hill Road discussing their latest fund.

Many famous people were born in Northern California, including Peter Sklar, founder of coolmaps.com. Peter was born and raised in Palo Alto.

The Bay Area web community is a very hot place to work. There is no end to companies starting out that need graphic design work and a web presence. Knowing people who know people is very helpful. This is a large part of making a name for yourself here. Once people meet you and let you do work for them, it better be good because there is also no shortage of graphic designers and web designers waiting in line to take your place when you drop the ball. You must be on the cutting edge or provide some extraordinary service to keep your customers. Quality and customer service goes a long way.

The Monterey Peninsula, where one of our Webbies resides, is overwhelmingly tourist oriented. In Monterey, however, there are numerous companies and individuals doing web work and our member reports that there is plenty of work to do.

California is also home to many Coolmaps Components Club members, including five who are found on our Webbies web developer locator.

Sondesigns.com
Son Designs, Inc. is a graphic design and web page design company, servicing the small business community locally, nationally and internationally. They do all manner of graphic design, from logo creation to full four-color artwork and corporate identity and corporate annual reports. As well as design, they can handle the printing for anything they design. Along with the design work, they do full and custom web site designs and maintenance, as well as virtual web hosting. SonDesign's strength in web creation is their design of custom graphics due to their graphic design specialty.

Company owner David Whitmyre states: "CCC components are vital to my success. I use many of the components in each site I design. Nearly all of my buttons for a site are custom created and I have used the RollOver component since it was only one of three. The versatility of the components and the way CCC listens to their customer base has created an incredibly useful array of tools for use in NetObjects Fusion."

RDCollins.net
R. D. Collins, founder of RDCollins.net, states: "RDCollins.net is associated with a public relations firm in Monterey, California (Communication Planners). The focus of that firm had previously been print media: newsletters, annual reports, brochures, etc. I did the writing and page layout. About two years ago, it occured to me that all the PR clients also either had or needed web sites. I learned how to design and build them, and then I set up a reseller account with VServers (now part of HostPro) so I could host them. Today, Communication Planners' revenue is about half from print, half from Internet related services. Today, my work is about 80 percent Internet related. Quite a change over the past two years.

We are always busy. The only web services marketing we do is word-of-mouth. I don't even keep my web site updated regularly. There's just no need. I use my server mostly as a testing grounds for clients' web sites.

I don't think I could have built my web business so quickly (and learned how to make a web site) without NetObjects Fusion and Coolmaps components. Though NOF seems to be experiencing difficulties, I still love it. Coolmaps has been an essential part, even if not always a large part, of most sites I've built. I rely on components such as RollOver and LinkMaster. I think I'm going on my third year as a Gold member. That membership has paid for itself many times over."