Saturday, March 12, 2005
Time to put up or shut up
I'm embarrassed. It's been a year since my last post and, as I look back at the three posts I first wrote before I got sidetracked, I find that I've turned my back on everything was saying in them.
It was a year ago that I first made arrangements to split off from my employer whose website I had developed and maintained to start my own business. Unfortunately, I got too comfortable in the arrangement he and I made and I never went forward with my plans.
The arrangement we made was that I would continue to maintain the website as a part-time employee and part-time consultant. This half-and-half arrangement was supposed to give me time to work up my own e-commerce business.
But with both him and me being guys who never met an idea we didn't feel like running with, we eventually found me working for him nearly full-time at consultant's prices, often doing routine maintenance that he could have had someone else do a lot less expensively.
He recognized that this week and informed me that he wanted me to tie up loose ends on the daily work, get him up to speed on how to do the routine things so he can assign them to someone in-house, and cut back to specific projects on which the amount he pays me is in line with the skills I have that he couldn't do in-house.
After an early panic attack over the loss of pretty much guaranteed income passed, I have to say I'm a bit relieved he decided to push me out of the nest. I've been growing increasingly frustrated with a lot of the routine things and, as hard as it is for me to give up control of the two websites that have been my babies, it will be good to let go of some of the things I felt locked into.
So I return to the websites my wife, Joanne, and I originally intended to create and the weblog I drifted away from a year ago. Our plans have changed a little. Our intended Hearts and Roses.com has shifted to the back burner.
The one thing I've actually accomplished for our business in the past year is getting up a store on eBay. I've had a little success with it with very little effort and plan to ramp up the intensity on that a notch to build some more income from it in the short term.
I also plan to use the web marketing skills I've developed to build my One Stop Web Support website so it can be a benefit to others, offering tips and tools to help others succeed at e-commerce.
I'll still be working some for Mark, both as an employee and as a consultant, but on a smaller scale that we plan to determine this week. And I'm open to doing SEO work for other businesses, as well.
But in all I do as I take these new steps, I want to stick to writing this weblog to give you a chance to see what I do in building our business online. Come along with me. Bet on me to succeed, or bet on me to crash and burn. I can't guarantee what we'll find along the way, but I can guarantee you it will be an interesting ride.
Jeff
I'm embarrassed. It's been a year since my last post and, as I look back at the three posts I first wrote before I got sidetracked, I find that I've turned my back on everything was saying in them.
It was a year ago that I first made arrangements to split off from my employer whose website I had developed and maintained to start my own business. Unfortunately, I got too comfortable in the arrangement he and I made and I never went forward with my plans.
The arrangement we made was that I would continue to maintain the website as a part-time employee and part-time consultant. This half-and-half arrangement was supposed to give me time to work up my own e-commerce business.
But with both him and me being guys who never met an idea we didn't feel like running with, we eventually found me working for him nearly full-time at consultant's prices, often doing routine maintenance that he could have had someone else do a lot less expensively.
He recognized that this week and informed me that he wanted me to tie up loose ends on the daily work, get him up to speed on how to do the routine things so he can assign them to someone in-house, and cut back to specific projects on which the amount he pays me is in line with the skills I have that he couldn't do in-house.
After an early panic attack over the loss of pretty much guaranteed income passed, I have to say I'm a bit relieved he decided to push me out of the nest. I've been growing increasingly frustrated with a lot of the routine things and, as hard as it is for me to give up control of the two websites that have been my babies, it will be good to let go of some of the things I felt locked into.
So I return to the websites my wife, Joanne, and I originally intended to create and the weblog I drifted away from a year ago. Our plans have changed a little. Our intended Hearts and Roses.com has shifted to the back burner.
The one thing I've actually accomplished for our business in the past year is getting up a store on eBay. I've had a little success with it with very little effort and plan to ramp up the intensity on that a notch to build some more income from it in the short term.
I also plan to use the web marketing skills I've developed to build my One Stop Web Support website so it can be a benefit to others, offering tips and tools to help others succeed at e-commerce.
I'll still be working some for Mark, both as an employee and as a consultant, but on a smaller scale that we plan to determine this week. And I'm open to doing SEO work for other businesses, as well.
But in all I do as I take these new steps, I want to stick to writing this weblog to give you a chance to see what I do in building our business online. Come along with me. Bet on me to succeed, or bet on me to crash and burn. I can't guarantee what we'll find along the way, but I can guarantee you it will be an interesting ride.
Jeff
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 Jeff Baas, One Stop Web Support
