Forum Moderators: phranque
Most of them don't understand that they would need at least basic programming and server administration skills, not to mention marketing, SEO and other subjects. Also I think people are confused by sensational "make money at home" infomercials on TV and spam they get in the mail.
It's especially bad when someone comes to me after they lose their job saying "well, no problem, I'm going to make money on the internet just like you" and I have to tell them "oh no you're not". They just assume I'm greedy and don't want to let them in on some secret.
Does anyone else ever deal with this problem?
He said he 'only' needed to make a few extra grand/month.
I explained that it is like working out. Everyone has there own way of doing things. You need to find a niche that works for you.
I sent him links to all the big forums and told him to read read read.
I haven't hear from him since. I think he was pissed that I did not share the 'secret recipe'. We didn't even get a Christmas card this year.
What a d*ck!
I remember ALLadvantage.com - I was a leader in referrals and made 1000's and people wanted for me to help them make 1000's too. They don't realize there is work to be done.
Kind of bothers me people think its easy when it not.
sdani
SOmetiems she asks if she can just sit and watch what I am doing. I say OK but you won't really learn anything like that.
What do I do? I flat out inform them that I do not help anyone because I do not have the time to help a million people, and if I help one I will have to help everyone.
What is funny is how easy everyone thinks it is!
"All you have to do is set up a site and then the money rolls in, right?" I wish it was that easy!
An engineering friend asks on how to build a website & make money. I counter with, "How do you make a bridge? Hammer some boards together and stretch it over the river, right?"
"Oh no, it's much more complex than that," I'm told. I counter that with a big smile & silence.
Point made & taken.
Most of them say they'd love to work for themselves and not be stuck in a 9-5 job, but none of them seems to think that they have the skills to do it, or the convicgtion to quit work, even when I remind them that 6 years ago I knew nothing more than them.
I started with some free web space, and a page saved in html from MS Word, and worked my way up from there. If I can do it I'm sure most of them could too.
d
For them to think I could just show them how things work in a few hours so that they can make a ton of money irritated the daylights out of me...
Now, like others have said, I send them a link or two to some books and forums.. So far I haven't heard back from anyone :)
same here, people amaze me sometimes: they assume that because X is doing great, they can just jump in and make just as much. Most would give up after a week of no money coming in.
Now, like others have said, I send them a link or two to some books and forums.. So far I haven't heard back from anyone :)
Here, I've been wondering if my standard "this is how you get started email" was too confusing, but it looks like others have the same issue.
My friends will get really interested in doing web work for a few days at most. They'll usually come over and spend an afternoon or two with me going over things, but then they never read up on any of the links I send them and never end up doing much of anything on their own. After a week or two they just lose interest.
After a week or two they just lose interest.
I have a few of those who still claim interest, but also claim a lack of time. They can come back whenever they like. Mostly, I got them to the point where I had them using a wysiwyg editor, toggling between that and html to figure out tags.
A few mentioned having a "fire" earlier in the thread. I think that really is true. Everyone I've met in this business is self taught to a huge extent.
I think the way to successfully do it would be more of a mentoring situation, where you get them started, keep someone from using outdated info, answer questions when they find conflicting answers, and give them a few minutes of simple help instead of making them take hours to figure out a problem. (For instance, how and why to chmod a free perl script that isn't working.) That's how I always envisioned it, anyway.
I sure wish I had an expert as a supplement to message boards back in the day. We really all learned from others... just not family or friends in many cases.
Point them to eBay - if they can still make money out of eBay in one years time, then they may have the ability to manage a site.
But immediately she started complaining about how much work it was. It was so tiring. It took so much time. I was shocked, actually. I realized that she had never listened when I'd talked about how much time I spent working. She only heard about me working at home on the computer and had this fantasy about it being something that you do for a few minutes between wasting hours and hours posting on forums.:)
A few months later, she asked me if I wanted to buy the site. I was shocked. I had helped her make this thing and now she wanted to sell it to me? And what about the whole thing with not being able to pay the mortgage? I guess it was a bunch of hooey. Eventually she sold the site to someone else. I no longer wanted to be friends with her, but I know she had no clue why. She just thought, I guess, that she deserved to make a profit off the help of her friends and relatives. Like we owed it to her.
Since then I have not had much appetite to help anyone who asks me about how to start a web business. I tell them things like, "It's really hard. You have to work 70 hours a week, and it takes years and years to make a profit. And most people fail at it." This is even though that like the person who mentioned sorting garbage, I think it is easy in comparison to working for the man every night and day.
If you have a 'tradesman' at your house (plumber, carpenter, electrician) and you tell them you produce web sites they all say... 'we want a web site'.
They then usually present you with their 100 page plus suppliers catalogue and say 'can you put this online for me'! The only satisfaction is that, after they have sucked their teeth and produced strange blowing noises after looking at the job in your house.... you can do the same! :)
1. "I want a website that looks great and costs me nothing". One guy I know literally pays $200+ dollars a year renewing OTHER PEOPLE's domains that had at one time asked him to make a site for them. Now they have forgotten the site exsists but he stills pays for it out of fear of them losing their "FirstandLastName.com" domain name.
2. "I see you making money at home, and I want to make free money also". These people relate "work at home" with "not working" and no matter how much I tell them how hard the work is, they just ignore it and assume I just watch TV and sleep all day. It is THESE people who really piss me off the most because I have had a few want to start a project with me and then after 2 articles they just stop... wasting my time.
Now they have forgotten the site exsists but he stills pays for it
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That's only happened to me twice; one time it was a site that I did pro bono for a friend. It had a really nice Art Deco design to it, and I used it often as a portfolio piece. Embarassingly, I first found it had disappeared when I was showing it to a potential employer.
</aside>
If family or friend asks me to help them move, drive them to the airport, babysit, or whatever, I would do it without a second thought. But I get my hackles in a knot being asked to build a website for free, even a little 4-page HTML layout I can whip together in an hour.
I have not fully contemplated the why that is annoying, but I see that it's a common sentiment. Is it merely irritation because I get asked so often? Annoyance because it's my most financially valuable skill, and I'm already sensitive to it because the industry is so saturated with 14-year-old webkiddies?
There's a topic for meditation...
If family or friend asks me to help them move, drive them to the airport, babysit, or whatever, I would do it without a second thought. But I get my hackles in a knot being asked to build a website for free, even a little 4-page HTML layout I can whip together in an hour.
I think that's a perfectly reasonable reaction. If you were a plumber, you'd probably be annoyed if someone asked you to fix their toilet for free. If you were a medical doctor, you'd probably be annoyed if someone wanted you to do a colonoscopy for free.
In both cases, it wouldn't take much more than an hour of the person's time, but it's their professional time! Why would someone expect them to do it for free?
I think the annoyance isn't so much the being asked, but the expectation that of course you'll do it. It implies that your professional skills aren't "real" or aren't really valuable.
At least, that's my personal feeling...
Back to the original topic, if someone wants to learn, I am thrilled to teach them stuff. Mostly, though, it is either "I have this great idea for a site: you do all the work and I'll split the money with you," or it's "I want to make money online. Can you do that for me?"
My general response is, I'll be happy to answer questions and offer pointers about how they can do it themselves. I'll also be happy to help them out if they get to a sticking point by explaining how to fix that issue. If they want me to do it FOR them, however, it's $200 an hour, one-hour minimum, payable in advance. A few people over the years have taken what I've taught them and run with it, and learned more, and far surpassed me, and that's a great feeling. The ones that wanted me to do it for them, I pretty much never hear from again. :-)
JK
I believe one poster mentioned earlier about trade-off when it comes to Google Adsense & Adwords. I sometimes use Adwords to publize my site because I got an adwords credit from my hosting company. I had used adsense for a few days when I was "testing" my site and took it down after it went live. When I went back yesterday to "maybe" try it again, I noticed I had a .12 cent credit! So I decided to try the "trade-off" theory and see how it works.
That was long wasn't it :-0
When I first started in web design almost a decade ago, it was all about the "look and feel". It's still somewhat about that today, but advertising has become such an integral part of websites and web design. Like you, I couldn't stand ugly sites with blaring ads, so I never included them on my nice, clean, cool-looking website. That is, of course, until I realized I was missing out on some serious money!
I too receive Adwords credits from hosting companies...(maybe even the same one!)...so there is that, "trade-off".
Anyway, back to the subject: I don't encourage anyone who doesn't have that, "fire" to become a good web developer. It's easy to determine whether they are sincere about webmastering, or sincere about making money.
If the sincerity is for webmastering first, then there may be a "fire".
If the sincerity is for money first, then..... well..... anyone can be sincere about making money, in any field.
My usual job is as a manager for large companies, and I do roughly a 40 hour week. It took me roughly 3 years to just study the subject of Management which at the end, entitles the student to use letters after their name. I consider the hours that I work as 'professional time' and any time spent on 'the job' beyond that, I take it as 'helping out the company and getting noticed' - to hopefully further my promotional prospects etc etc. So I don't mind doing the extra few hours a week, as this is pretty much accepted by most 'white collar' workers in the UK.
If a friend wants advice on anything 'managerial' then I'll quite happily spend whatever many hours advising them - but I wouldn't charge them - they are my friends, and as such the thought of me 'giving away' my skills for no gain wouldn't even enter my head. And I like to think this would be reciprocated by them when I need help.
After all 'one favour, deserves another' - if you catch my drift... But from reading these posts, it seems more like people's egos are somehow being stroked.
"oh no, sorry but I can't advise you as my fee is £200 per hour. Even though your being bullied at work and it's ripping you apart and you're about to be fired on constructive dismissal" Sorry but I'm a professional and I only do it for cold hard cash....
Okay, so you guys do web design - some professionally, and others as amateurs, so tell me what harm can come by designing a web site or SEOing for a friend? Surely you wouldn't charge your mates for something you could knock up in a few hours, which would save them a lot of cash had they went to a contractor?
Even for a friend of a friend - I'd still do the very best job I could for no cash or strings attached - because it's expected and they want help. Can't charge your mates!
They are mates.....
My cousin also wanted to learn PHP and he asked me to teach him web development. I gave him a 12MB ebook about web development and he stopped bothering me after that.
What frustrates me more than those who think they want to get into the game are those who have asite already and want to get more from it, but don't want to change a single thing to make that happen.
" the guy who loans tools and works for free is no longer here , he went bust , he had too many "friends"!"..
( main business was and still is art and sculpture .."we" get even more people who ask for something to be knocked off in our "spare time" .."can you do me one" is hardly ever accompanied by "how much would I have to pay" ;)
I mention this sign to those who ask to be shown anything that I can do and they cant ..if they want it for free ..
I learned to make sites because I was shocked at how much someone wanted to put my first one together for me ..then I learned what It took and how long to learn to do it and the cost of the apps etc ..and realised they were quoting pretty cheap for a huge amount of time spent learning ..plus the work involved ..
Now I know how to do some of this stuff I can use it to pay for even more time to do the creative stuff that I want ..and not be too interested in it's "saleable value" ..and the sale of the creative stuff lets me say NO to IT /Web customers that I can't be bothered with ;)
We've had a few threads since I've been here on the theme of the $5,000.oo charge for a single hammer blow to fix a machine ..it's not the blow you pay for ..it's the knowing where and how hard to hit ..and the time spent learning that.
But like httpwebwitch..I'll fix flat tires at the roadside for stranded perfect strangers for free ..or do most anything for *family* and friends for free ..
Except I won't do for free any of the things I do to earn my money ..making this clear to all avoids HRoth's experience ..and means your real friends are just that ..
<added( just realised ..I don't charge for short translations ..Like when someone says how would you say .......maybe I should as I make reasonable money translating and correcting the translations or sites of others )/added>
*Family* are to be avoided at all cost and have been for years now ..so I never have that particular problem ;)
And I just finished the new sign for the new studio/workshop ..added .."no free quotes for anything" ..
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, Teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime"
From my experience it doesn't take any programming skills to do this (although I'm aware that I'd be much more successful now if I had these skills). What it does take is patience and ambition. And I think it's important to like doing this. I know people who are intelligent enough to understand how it all works but they simply don't enjoy sitting in front of a computer all day.
