Lee Munroe is a web designer in every sense of the word.  He understands that the customer experience online is more than the prettiness of the website.  He designs and builds web tools that connect like minded people that share similar passions and allow them to amplify their collective voice and opinions.  He follows less than 300 people on Twitter yet more than 4000 follow him.  He is a web leader.

In Lee’s spare time he has constructed a website called lookaly.com, a Northern Ireland centric ‘rate your experience’ website.  It’s similar to TripAdvisor but region specific, not industry specific.  The site facilitates user contributed content and allows customers of businesses to rate their experience.  The businesses that are lucky enough to be rated can use the site to get honest and hard truths about their business and engage with customers that were moved enough to post a comment.

At a recent conference Lee was asked, “How do you intend to monetise the site?”.   Lee paused for a moment and looked mildly puzzled, almost as if he didn’t understand the question.  His response was “I am not a business man, I built lookaly.com because I am passionate about building great customer experiences online”.  The crowd looked puzzled.  Lee was then asked by a different attendee “Lee if I wanted you to design stuff for me could you?”.  Lee smiled and said, “I’m really sorry, but I am so backed up with work it would be at least 6 months before I could take on any new projects”.

Lee graduated one and a half years ago from university as a freelance web designer among thousands of freelance web designers.  What makes Lee different is that he has more commercial work offers than he can deal with primarily because of his reputation from building lookaly.com and donating it to the world.

I do lots of presenting to hundreds of people every month regarding online marketing.  I share my experiences with as many people as are willing to listen.  Sometimes, I am lucky and a wealthy organisation understands that 13 years of experience can’t be replicated in a 30 minute presentation and they ask me to come in and help them change their business or charity.

Others take my ideas and implement them into their business themselves.  I am flattered either way and I know that those that do it themselves were never likely to be customers but always likely to be advocates ensuring that my business, like Lee’s business, has an endless supply of those willing to
pay for expertise.

The new web economy doesn’t always support revenue streams via the normal channels of subscription, advertising or payment for news, information or services rendered.  This model of gaining revenues from the few and giving the masses the service for free is now becoming the norm.  As counter intuitive as it may seem the new internet revenue model favours those that bring gifts not those that charge for them.

Lee's Gift Leads to Profits