How about this:

-I will be right back after some maintenance.

Sorry, but we (visitors) don't want to see YOU, we want to see the site and pages.

-I am working on updating this site.

In other words, you're a busy guy running a huge site all by yourself, resulting in many mistakes, missed deadlines, etc.

-I appreciate your comments.

Heck, I don't want to talk to YOU, I wanna talk to the pages on this site! They should take up my suggestions! What? There's a human in charge of this site? Forget it, then! I don't know you!!

Basically, we is just so much more professional.  

on the site i am building, the company is owned, run, and created by me. I still say we becuase i am writing it as the company and not the employee or owner. I prefer saying "we ship that" than "The comapny ships that." and "I ship that" does not make it seem like a company.

Bear in mind, this not a personaly site; rather an online store. (and my creator of pocket change and gas money)

Mussavcom, Cute!!!!

That it does


I'm never going to put on my website " I am a graphic professional working in the...."

Whereas "We are graphics pro..." just make it sound so much more professional and make it seems you can do more because you have a team.

What people won't know won't hurt them

How about this for a solution?

Where adjacentidea was talking about a "personal" site which whether "I" or "we" is really not very important to (as Autarkis put it) the "professionalism", I think when you talk about a "commercial" site, using "we" is definitely a better way to advertise your company/business for viewers/potential customers to take you seriously, especially if you have not yet established a relationship with them, or built up a good enough reputation where people know your reliability, integrity, quality and service, etc.

People have a "mindset" and even a "prejudgement" when it comes to doing business with "a company/business" versus knowing that it's being run as a one-person operation.  For one, they want to know that they will be serviced well and in a timely manner, and this may be questionable if only one person has to tend to all the tasks/duties involved.

Now, being a bigger company with more than one person, doesn't mean that they will be more reputable, reliable or give better service, etc., but in people's minds, they just feel better doing business with a company of more than one person.  Again, it's just a mindset and prejudgement thing.

Doctors, Lawyers, Consultants, etc. can get away with advertising with "I" because those professions are known to be one-person operations, but with other types of businesses, it's not so easily accepted.

That's my take, anyway, on why "we" is acceptable when marketing yourself even though you are a one-person company/business.  Like Justin said, his "company" is representing the "we" part, so I don't see anything wrong with it.  If you get more customers because of it, then that's great!

Obviously, it's not how many people run the company, but how well the company is run.  Even a one-person operation can give better products/service than a huge corporation of 1000 employees (as I'm sure we've all experienced doing business with any of these types in the past - I know I have).

Ryan - it's not a matter of us winning and you losing.  You said what you did regarding "personal" sites and that's valid an arguement if it's something that annoys you.  

We are just explaining why "commercial" type sites need to say "we" even if they are an entity of ONE.  We are really talking about apples and oranges here, so you can keep getting annoyed with personal sites that say "we" instead of "I" if you want to.