How to be self employed? I have been in two minds how to address my new self employed situation in this blog. It is hard calling yourself ‘self employed’ if you are not initially making loads of hard cash! Your friends and family may naturally ask the question, “when are you going to start making money?”, and it’s hard to explain that for the last 6 months you have been setting up a business, and the next 6 months the plan is to start ‘hoping’ that the ‘great idea’ you had, results in actual, real money.
At the moment, I am like an artist who’s painted a picture – but no one has seen it; a gardener who has landscaped his back lawn – but in secret; or a chef who has invented a new recipe, but no one has had the pleasure of tasting it…
So how to be self employed? This is really the problem of creating a business that is not actually tangible enough to easily describe to non ‘self starter’ people. It is easy to open a retail shop and sell products, you would hope that everyone would understand how you make a profit. It is easy if you decide to design a new product that could be sold in that shop – again most people would get the basics of how you would end up making money. But – if you were to design and build a website that was hoping to bring the retail community – shop keeper to product designer – together online, watch out for the look you get. This look equals, “But when and how do you make money from that!”
This is kind of the principle behind Startacus, the new platform that TheEmployable have been building for the last 6 months. Building ‘community’ websites can be a challenge, and it has been quite hard pigeon-holing what we have been doing. You build ‘community’ sites with the belief that the community that you are targeting is out there – but the next step is getting them on your site and not someone elses!
Pages: 1 2
Love it and exactly the kind of questions I’m having to field at the moment. I quit my full time job nearly 2 months ago and I don’t have anything tangible to show for it …. nerve wrecking!
Ps – Startacus.net = most awesome landing page I’ve seen in ages.
Posted by Jonathan Price | March 21, 2012, 1:19 pmCheers Jonathan and thank you for your cool comments on the landing page – we love it too!!
Good luck with the business and look forward to seeing you on Startacus too
Posted by theemployable | March 21, 2012, 8:15 pmWhile the Startacus website looks interesting, I have some critique (I hope it is OK, since it is a community project).
1. To have a image heavy page as the start (/only?) page makes loading the website very slow. I am on a slow connection, and I am not done opening the page yet (after more than a minute). It will also quickly loose its novelty and just be a nuisance when opening the page. There are of course many more people on fast connections, but generally it isn’t a good idea to fill a web page up with heavy elements.
2. Having the text as an image may decrease your SEO so you people don’t find the site as easily.
3. There is a sign-up form, but no information about the organisation/community directly on the website. It reads more like a declaration of intention. I think many people will be reluctant to sign up for something without more background information; they are afraid of spam.
Posted by Mados | March 21, 2012, 4:28 pmAnyway, your post is good… I know the dilemma.
Posted by Mados | March 21, 2012, 4:29 pmawesome
Posted by jason palmer | March 22, 2012, 6:33 pm