In the meanwhile, you might want to check Basecamp (from 37signals) it’s very simple and has its uses.

In the meanwhile, you might want to check Basecamp (from 37signals) it’s very simple and has its uses.

First, I love the page layout of Octabox’s site, for whatever this thing becomes. Nice big font, no completely black font, and the rest of the Web 2.0 look. You’ve got it down.

I see where you’re going with Octabox. I mean, one thing I’ve learned here is that I need to get a project management tool online in order to interact with my clients, but everything I’ve seen either costs a lot of money per month, is downright ugly, or makes things too complicated. So I’m writing one of my own called TabTool, and it’s really simplistic. As a client, you login, choose the project you’re working on with me as your freelancer, and see a set of admin-definable area tabs on the top and category tabs on the left. Once you choose these, you can then place “items” in an AJAX and jQuery based grid control. In the “items”, you can use them as holders for project tasks, calendar events, documents, to do lists, and so on. It uses an extremely KISS principle and also is zippy fast because of it. And after awhile if this thing works, I might sell it as a sitescript for $50 on something like ClickBank, and give it a great landing page and an AdWords ad occasionally.

Now, on the career discussion. As for me, a PHP Freelancer, I tried going the retainer route for 100 hours a month, but that was brutal and didn’t work out. It paid the bills for a bit, but I was glad to get out — unreasonable expectations abound there. I’m also 40 years old, and have worked many, many years in the IT industry in a cubicle, and was downright sick of having to work for someone else and being belittled occasionally. I also don’t like working for a permanent boss over the Internet, either. So, for me, the only way to survive in this industry is to think of freelancing as primary income and bootstrap income for awhile, but then switch to it as secondary income and gap filler income eventually. Instead, primary income should eventually come from residual income projects. That way, you can charge a higher price for SEO and PHP dev work, and catch only the big fish for that, and meanwhile your focus is on residual income.

For residual income, I mean building websites and/or doing affiliate marketing to the point where this stuff makes income for you while you sleep and needs very little tending to except, for instance, to handle chargebacks/refunds on PayPal or moderate volunteer moderators of your forums where you might collect ad revenue.

It’s also good that you found some other partners. I have found some too and it sure does help.

Good luck in your endeavours, and you know how to find me if you want to interact or sublet work to me.

First, I love the page layout of Octabox’s site, for whatever this thing becomes. Nice big font, no completely black font, and the rest of the Web 2.0 look. You’ve got it down.

I see where you’re going with Octabox. I mean, one thing I’ve learned here is that I need to get a project management tool online in order to interact with my clients, but everything I’ve seen either costs a lot of money per month, is downright ugly, or makes things too complicated. So I’m writing one of my own called TabTool, and it’s really simplistic. As a client, you login, choose the project you’re working on with me as your freelancer, and see a set of admin-definable area tabs on the top and category tabs on the left. Once you choose these, you can then place “items” in an AJAX and jQuery based grid control. In the “items”, you can use them as holders for project tasks, calendar events, documents, to do lists, and so on. It uses an extremely KISS principle and also is zippy fast because of it. And after awhile if this thing works, I might sell it as a sitescript for $50 on something like ClickBank, and give it a great landing page and an AdWords ad occasionally.

Now, on the career discussion. As for me, a PHP Freelancer, I tried going the retainer route for 100 hours a month, but that was brutal and didn’t work out. It paid the bills for a bit, but I was glad to get out — unreasonable expectations abound there. I’m also 40 years old, and have worked many, many years in the IT industry in a cubicle, and was downright sick of having to work for someone else and being belittled occasionally. I also don’t like working for a permanent boss over the Internet, either. So, for me, the only way to survive in this industry is to think of freelancing as primary income and bootstrap income for awhile, but then switch to it as secondary income and gap filler income eventually. Instead, primary income should eventually come from residual income projects. That way, you can charge a higher price for SEO and PHP dev work, and catch only the big fish for that, and meanwhile your focus is on residual income.

For residual income, I mean building websites and/or doing affiliate marketing to the point where this stuff makes income for you while you sleep and needs very little tending to except, for instance, to handle chargebacks/refunds on PayPal or moderate volunteer moderators of your forums where you might collect ad revenue.

It’s also good that you found some other partners. I have found some too and it sure does help.

Good luck in your endeavours, and you know how to find me if you want to interact or sublet work to me.

I received a call from RealCommerce’s human resource and they interviewed me for almost 30 minutes. I have to say that the interview over the phone is a nice thing to do, but offer little value when conducted by someone who doesn’t have any experience in the field of the job position.

Questions were general and I felt that the CTO or whoever makes the call to hire you would have learn very little about you when reading the “report”.

I think recommendations call are important when conducted by the right person who can ask challenging questions and thus get to know more about the candidates but when asked by an HR representative I think it is almost a waste of time.

openIT – score two.

I received a call from RealCommerce’s human resource and they interviewed me for almost 30 minutes. I have to say that the interview over the phone is a nice thing to do, but offer little value when conducted by someone who doesn’t have any experience in the field of the job position.

Questions were general and I felt that the CTO or whoever makes the call to hire you would have learn very little about you when reading the “report”.

I think recommendations call are important when conducted by the right person who can ask challenging questions and thus get to know more about the candidates but when asked by an HR representative I think it is almost a waste of time.

openIT – score two.