One of my biggest dreams has always been to work for myself. I’ve tried almost every thing and been suckered by all of the scams at least once… pyramid scams, having my own eBay store, “Work From Home! Make $XXXX A WEEK!”
That dream is finally starting to happen with freelancing. My wife and I have enjoyed a certain level of success for the last year or so, but I will say that it hasn’t been the walk on the beach that we’ve always wanted.
I still say it’s worth every bit of time that we’ve put into it, but there are several things I wish I had thought of ahead of time. Time management would be one of those things.
We thought we could make our own hours because we would be our own boss. Well, that’s not true. Have you heard “The Customer Is Always Right”? What about “The Customer Is Your Boss And Signs Your Checks”? Yes, that’s right. Money doesn’t just magically appear once we’re done with a project, like we thought it would. Instead we’re forced to constantly walk on eggshells in order to keep clients happy. And they’re not all bad, really. In fact, most are actually quite pleasant. But all it takes is one bad email to ruin an entire day, or even entire weeks.
It starts out with deadlines. Usually those are reasonable unless we’re desperate for a new project (this is putting bread on the table after all). But the worst consumers of my time have been problems due to the hosting we provide as well. There is no one to leave in charge when we need a break or a vacation. I am always on call. If something is wrong with the server or a customer is not receiving certain emails, I have to be ready to respond at a moment’s notice, and that has happened while we were on vacation (that’s a nightmare for another post).
With all of that said, I will repeat myself and say that it’s been worth it every step of the way. Some days are definitely better than others, but there is great fulfillment in seeing your creations become reality.
Amazon recently released Kindle, a wireless reading device where you can download books from their website at a cheaper rate. At first, I thought this sounded like a really cool idea. I could have access to almost anything right at my fingertips. My wife can tell you, I buy A LOT of books.
I’ll start off with what I think is cool about it.
When I said wireless, I meant totally wireless. No routers or wifi internet access needed. After buying the device, it comes with a wireless service similar to what we use with cell phones. I can be almost anywhere and buy a book to read, which is pretty cool. The service requires no monthly plan unless you want to use it to read many of the preselected blogs that they have allowed access too.
The prices of books seems to be fairly reasonable too. It looks like Amazon is offering books for around $10. My technical books can get fairly expensive. If you have bought any, you know that they can sometimes be up to $50-60. Even though publishers are allowing PDF downloads now, a $35 book is still as much as $20 just to download it online.
Another plus to having books in a digital format is the ability to be able to search and add digital bookmarks, so that is also really a nice feature.
Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve got a new direction for my blog. It’s me! Like it? My marketing team thought it was an awesome idea. I’m making a fresh start, and new commitment: to keep writing, not matter what. That’s a promise to all of my readers… or… umm… reader (Hi Mom!)
I’ve started a lot of new projects recently. None of which I can really claim to be awesome at, but if I’m having fun, who the heck cares? I’ll go ahead an mention a few of them that I’m pretty excited about:
- DiscGolfr - I’ve been planning this one out for a while now. The last several weeks I’ve actually started to flesh out my ideas into actual code. Basically this is a site for anyone who plays disc golf to look up courses or other players. I want to allow users to submit their own photos and also keep track of their scores for different rounds.
- Music - I’ve spent a little money on getting a super cheap recording setup in my house. And when I say cheap, I mean cheap! (USB microphone anyone?) I told myself that I’d start cheap until I know that I’m going to stick with it. I’ve had a few ideas that I’ve worked on, so I’ll be writing about me experiences with that and hopefully posting some MP3s
- Video - This is the one that I probably know the least about. I just know that I find it interesting so I’m jumping in. It started with making a home movie in iMovie on my computer, but I’m moving up in the world. I’m waiting on Final Cut Express to come in the mail so that I can start using that. Along with video stuff, I’m wanting to also take a lot more photos. I’m in the middle of organizing my flickr account, so once I do, I’ll probably sync those with my Wordpress feed somehow.
- Web Development - The wife and I run a small web development company, and I enjoy writing about the goings on with that too. Shameless plug in 3… 2… 1… What? Are we available for hire you ask? Why of course we are! You can view some of our work at MediaGlo.com. You can contact us by filling out the Request a Quote form on the site.
Originally I was considering separate blogs for all of these things, but since these things are all a part of me and what I do, I am keeping it all in the same place.
I’ve read about customizing Wordpress templates for different categories. I might experiment with that a little bit just to give some parts of the site their own look and feel, but we’ll see.
That’s about it for now. peace
