***The Bored Thread.. hey, thats not a scooner its a sailboat!***

[lownslow95]

Originally Posted by scott8989

anyone else having facebook issues?

nope.

[schaffer]

Originally Posted by DPancoast

I'm using my phone and I keep getting connection errors

I was getting issues with my iPhone but now it seems to be okay. I have a spots where I loose 3G and and I wouldn't pick it back up unless I restated my phone.

[Big_Jim]

No FB errors for me..... oh wait......

[Scapegoat]

trying to gain some traction with freelance work so my commute is from my bed to my office.

debating on getting some t-shirts made up. any recommendations on sites for that? I found http://www.customink.com/. tempted to get some beer koozies done for becky's parents and their friends since they're always using those.

[jpalamar]

Hoping to have my work caught up by then end of the week and then I can focus on my business plan again. I have a little bit more market reserach to do and then I gotta work on a name/company logo.

[Big_Jim]

Originally Posted by Scapegoat

trying to gain some traction with freelance work so my commute is from my bed to my office.

debating on getting some t-shirts made up. any recommendations on sites for that? I found http://www.customink.com/. tempted to get some beer koozies done for becky's parents and their friends since they're always using those.

How many are you looking at doing and how in depth is the design?

[Scapegoat]

Originally Posted by Big_Jim

How many are you looking at doing and how in depth is the design?

not sure how many, not a large amount.

design would be the logo with website and slogan. and possibly the guy i'm using for my contact page and facebook page

http://bugeyedllc.com/get-bug-eyed/
http://www.facebook.com/BugEyedLLC

[grimm]

sigh* today is not going to be an easy skate thru day.

[piku]

Originally Posted by Scapegoat

trying to gain some traction with freelance work so my commute is from my bed to my office.

debating on getting some t-shirts made up. any recommendations on sites for that? I found http://www.customink.com/. tempted to get some beer koozies done for becky's parents and their friends since they're always using those.

There are four main issues:

1) You need to work with people sympathetic to you having a day job to get started. The only people sympathetic are small business owners. Small business owners aren't rich so you need to come up with affordable pricing. A guy I know just paid $3K for a (very) comprehensive wordpress site with ecommerce. That's the kind of pricing you have to hit for them to consider it. While a larger company will pay near $20K for the same site, you can't go after those fish until you're free during the day. Small business owners will be receptive to an 8pm meeting and are used to working long nights. It's an odd way of doing business but it can work. Anyway, that site is an honest 2 weeks of working every single night, 6 hours per night, 60 hours total. $50 an hour. Sounds good until you realize there is no benefits, and like 50% tax rate on that. It's mediocre money for the work involved and risk to you but it's a start. The less someone is paying with you, the more you should experiment on them. Try new technologies and techniques, etc.

You also need to build a library of precompleted frameworks and sell to that. Then you can charge the full amount but it takes you 1/4 the time. But nothing will ever save you much time of photographing and describing inventory or design work. It takes time.

2) You have to basically ignore your wife, kid, chores, and other projects. The business will take over if you let it, and you have to let it in order to have enough to quit the day job. They have to understand, they have to WANT whatever your goal is.

3) You have to stay seriously motivated, to the point where others will think you are nuts. When you become this motivated people will start fighting you. They'll start getting jealous. Look at Oakes. He never gives up, ever. I'm at the point where I think about very little other than the business... Which leads me to 4.

4) While being social and friendly, you have to always be thinking about business. You have to sell 24/7. You have to look at every contact, and encounter, be outwardly friendly and outgoing and think of ways that you can solve issues for them. For me this is a very serious personality change. I am pretty much exclusively hanging around business owners who are this way to help bring me around.

My **** blew up to the point where it is way too much work to do on nights and weekends and too little to live comfortably on. Now what do I do? Who knows. I wish you luck though. You're going to need it and I sure as **** do too.

[piku]

Oh yeah and don't be afraid to diversify. I'm doing about 10% of what I expected to be doing and 90% of weird ****. You envision yourself doing websites, but you might get jobs doing email templates and sending them with mailchimp and managing the mailing list. Just go with it ;)

[Scapegoat]

I realized that my quotes for custom work was way higher than what smaller businesses were able to spend. I'd get lucky every few years... but lucky don't cut it.

I'm moving away from building things in django and working towards wordpress. I'll be redoing bugeyedllc.com into a wordpress site as a sample, along with, potentially, a client i'm doing maintenance for who really does need to move to worpdress.

the benefit to that is that wordpress is cheap, and so are a number of plugins. I can get a site up and running in a weekend and it won't break someone's bank. If i could get 3-4 1-2k site launches a month I'd be good. That'll allow me to work on larger, time consuming, projects. facebook integration, javascript applications, custom backend sites, etc.

50% taxes sounds a bit high though. I was always told take a 3rd away in taxes? I have to talk to poolmike's tax guy if things start coming in more.

I'd love to get to the point where it's all business all the time. Then i can hire becky to handle the books haha

Originally Posted by piku

Oh yeah and don't be afraid to diversify. I'm doing about 10% of what I expected to be doing and 90% of weird ****. You envision yourself doing websites, but you might get jobs doing email templates and sending them with mailchimp and managing the mailing list. Just go with it ;)

yeah, i'm doing site maintenance right now... not something i want to do exactly. but it's money, and it builds a client relationship that could lead to websites. I've gotten rid of the idea that i'm going to do exactly what I want to do. But i'm happy doing it because these people notice even the smallest changes and are happy. and that makes me happy.

I'd gladly do email templates for a small business.

[piku]

I've also learned the value of templates. Spending $30 on a banging responsive template is a whole hell of a lot cheaper than spending hours trying to throw together a **** design and then all I have to sub out are the graphics.

Oh and RE the taxes, it all comes down to what you can write off. A work from home freelancer is going to get ****ed. A pool service guy with trucks and equipment is going to do better. You have to be meticulous and always look for and record writeoffs. I've been slacking, it's really annoying.

[Scapegoat]

yeah, i'm learning the value of templates as well. since i'm not exactly a designer, i'm able to take a template that is prebuilt, and precoded, and modify it to suite a client's needs. much faster than i would be if i did it from scratch

[jpalamar]

I don't agree with #2. Your family should ALWAYS come before work. If you have to work 90 hours a week to be successful you aren't really successful. I can see for a short time working hard to get strarted, but you need to be able to even out business and personal.

[piku]

Originally Posted by jpalamar

I don't agree with #2. Your family should ALWAYS come before work. If you have to work 90 hours a week to be successful you aren't really successful.

Of course but to make the transition without going hungry you have to work your normal 40 PLUS an additional 40-50. You HAVE to, or else you're quitting your job for an uncertainty.

[Scapegoat]

Originally Posted by jpalamar

I don't agree with #2. Your family should ALWAYS come before work. If you have to work 90 hours a week to be successful you aren't really successful. I can see for a short time working hard to get strarted, but you need to be able to even out business and personal.

I'm pretty sure those are the kinds of hours Nick was, or is, putting in.

90 hours is feasible if it's you alone trying to get a business started. that is the reality of startups and being the person behind it.

[jpalamar]

If you have to work 90 hours a week then you under-capitalized at start-up.

[grimm]

I only re-work templates to fit the clients needs now a days. Much cheaper/faster/ and both of those makes clients happy. I also strictly use wordpress. It's free and 90% of the plugins are free, templates are cheap, and custom coding isn't that hard. I'm by no means a programmer, much more graphics oriented, but this structure allows me to produce sites quickly and easily.

[piku]

Originally Posted by jpalamar

If you have to work 90 hours a week then you under-capitalized at start-up.

I could have $200K sitting away but I'm not going to commit to a failure when I could just spend a little time on it and my family could STFU for a month or two.

[piku]

Originally Posted by grimm

I only re-work templates to fit the clients needs now a days. Much cheaper/faster/ and both of those makes clients happy. I also strictly use wordpress. It's free and 90% of the plugins are free, templates are cheap, and custom coding isn't that hard. I'm by no means a programmer, much more graphics oriented, but this structure allows me to produce sites quickly and easily.

I *love* drupal but it's crazy.