[thelist] Fulltime to freelance

Ben Joyce ben.joyce at gmail.com
Mon Nov 24 16:56:48 CST 2008


I ended up working ALL the time, but most of it in my underwear so it
wasn't all that bad.

On as serious note, get everything spec'd and signed off before
starting work.  Nothing worse than a runaway project when you're on
your own.

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 10:27 PM, patrick <pms at stoutstreet.com> wrote:
> Nan Harbison wrote:
>> I work for myself and have almost quit all the other part time jobs I had
>> pieced together in order to survive. Here are the two most important tips I
>> can give you:
>>
>> If you are in the US, join your local Chamber of Commerce because you can
>> get job references from it, mine has a "Business After Hours" once a month
>> where members meet in the office or shop of a member, have some wine and
>> snacks and we all get a chance to say who we are and what we do, I always
>> get some work from these, sometimes just fixing or adding something on a
>> website, which can thenn leac to doing a new website down the road. Also you
>> can get a cheaper rate on health insurance, if you need it. (There are other
>> business organizations as well, for example, Boston, MA has a PHP developers
>> group that meets and often someone is looking for a developer.)
>>
>> You have to be 100% accessible to clients, returning their emails or phone
>> calls even when you don't want to, and do what they ask you to do in a
>> reasonable amount of time. I can't tell you how many websites I have taken
>> over because the business/owner was sick of the web guy they used who now
>> seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. This is how I bill
>> myself now, that "I am happy to take over for the web guy who abandoned
>> you". And boy, do people relate to this!
>>
>> Good luck,
>> Nan
>
>
> Seconding these tips wholeheartedly.
>
> You might also consider pairing up -- however informally -- with someone
> who has a complementary skill set. I do mostly site production and dev
> stuff, and work with a graphic designer who makes with the pretty better
> than I can.
>
> And something I heard when I started on my own still rings true: you
> either work all the time or none of the time.
>
> Try to balance that.
>
>
> --
>
> patrick
> --
>
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