Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
Latest project: Database for users, items, payment, multiple expirations of service, routing etc. Custom image management, custom cart/checkout, complete user experience based on business plan.
I inherited this job from a fellow designer who got in over his head (just does template sites and rakes pretty good cash). Initially I got $300, then fanagled another $300. The problem is that this is quite a bit of code and logic for proper customer flow, lot's and lot's of testing. I can't even count the hours anymore. I guess 20-30 hours a week since early August.
Most of my projects come with the "portfolio building" potential, but this site had it's design complete when it got to me, and I wouldn't be happy to show it my portfolio. So some of the benefit is gone.
So now we're almost 4 months later and have a hit a roadblock with hosting/PCI compliance. Site is ready, but no funds to have PCI compliant hosting. So now it's possible the site may be scraped due to cost and return on investment with the PCI costs, and the fact that as a part timer, it's taking quite a bit of time complete.
I'm totally frustrated trying make the transition from part to full time. It's like a catch 22. I can't give customers my best having a day job, and I wouldn't be able to land any larger jobs with my delivery time. My specialty is on the backend, coding for business requirements, etc, and I'm just as capable in the graphics and layout area. I'm good at what I do as my day job has given me the opportunity to hone my skills over the years. I just can't translate skill into income. Although I watch others repackage templates and make more than I do for a fully custom solution.
I have several of my own projects that are rotting away, or have lost market potential because of no time to complete them because I'm working with clients on the cheap. I have one project that is 7 years old. When I get time to work on it, I'm changing it based on changes in the niche, never to be finished. I guess I could give up sleeping several days a week.
Do I need employees? Am I just not cut out for this? It depresses me so. I have gained so much experience, but there isn't enough time in a day to get off the ground.
You are asking what it takes to make that transition from captive employment to working for onesself. It's a big risk when you detach from the employment umbilicus! It's scary! It's exciting! Takes a lot of work!
I diagnose right away from your post that you are stuck in a creative compost heap. 7 years on a project, and it's not finished? Dude, just put it online. Get it finished "good enough" and make it live. Then once it's live, fix it. enhance it. When you get hatemail that something is fubar, fix it. When you notice a typo in the content, correct it. A website is a plastic medium; it evolves, and grows. It doesn't spring forth from the womb ready for grad school. If you wait for something to be perfect before publishing, it'll never happen. Then all the time you spent working on it are wasted. Wasted time is what will prevent you from transitioning to self-employment.
Here's an exercise that someone influential once taught me.
1) create an empty HTML file, like this:<html>
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>2) view it. Is it broken?
if broken, GOTO 6
else GOTO 33) No, it is not broken. It is merely missing some features. Therefore it is appropriate for public consumption. Publish that baby and put it on the web. Now.
4) Add something to that page.
5) GOTO 2.
6) fix it. GOTO 2.
The empty page is not a broken site. It's completely non-functional, but it is not dysfunctional. A link that doesn't exist is not dysfunctional, nor is an image placeholder, a page of content not written, or a feature unfinished. Unless something is dysfunctional, get that stuff off your hard drive and onto the web.
So to answer that other question,
The fastest site I ever created took about 2 hours from start to finish, including registering the domain and setting up the hosting. The longest time spent on one site is... almost 3 years so far, full time, 40hrs/week. Well in excess of 6000 hours for me alone, and I'm not the only one working on it. It's not finished yet, and it never will be.
One is finished, the other is not. They are both online, live, active, and earning revenue.
Get what I'm trying to say?
Latest project: Database for users, items, payment, multiple expirations of service, routing etc. Custom image management, custom cart/checkout, complete user experience based on business plan.I inherited this job from a fellow designer who got in over his head (just does template sites and rakes pretty good cash). Initially I got $300, then fanagled another $300. The problem is that this is quite a bit of code and logic for proper customer flow, lot's and lot's of testing. I can't even count the hours anymore. I guess 20-30 hours a week since early August.
So if I read that correctly it is a custom CMS and Cart for $600? I know people who wouldn't customize a Wordpress site or ZenCart for that much, let alone write them from scratch. The template site guy had it right.
Do I need employees? Am I just not cut out for this? It depresses me so. I have gained so much experience, but there isn't enough time in a day to get off the ground.
I don't know how you would afford any employees. This is a lot of work, and you price would need to be much higher. You need to change your work plan to either get paid for time spent, or to use some of the shelf code to make it work (WP, Zen etc).
As to being cut out for this, it seems that you have learned one of those valuable lessons - the estimator can make or break your profits. You will now be a much better estimator on a project I would guess. You need to change the deal or move on. Good luck with the project.
Ya, my 7 year project undergoes major changes every year based on the market, or what many folks like to call niche. But it's halfway through a major overhaul I started this past may. I like to call it my retirement project, since it will be another 10 years before it's complete I suppose. But the reason it isn't complete is because I'm working on projects for other folks. So I guess that is good.
So this estimating thing... Every project I do runs over by 4 1/2 times. Well, I had two sites that where just about on time and on the money, but everything else turns into a nightmare. I try to count my hours, but once I get under $8 an hour, I stop counting and just try to get it done as fast as I can. I get blinded by frustration.
Maybe I'll try the template route. I love challenges and problems to solve, but they are not worth the time anymore.
I posted this because I knew where I was going once I got into web design and after I gained useful experience with databases. But I'm easily 10 years into hoping I can be on my own one day. Well shoot, I'm getting older. I can't be starting a business in my 40's, but I'm starting to run out of my 30's.
I like the earning revenue part
Everyone does. That is the gravy.
I wish I could get to a point where I could focus on revenue
That should be your primary focus from the start, not a point you "get to" someday. Your every moment working should be focused on whether it will generate income. If you're not doing that, you're not working. You're playing.
There's nothing wrong with playing. I have lots of hobby sites that earn $0, and I spend lots of time on them because they're fun, challenging, charitable, or whatever. Do not confuse that with "work". Keep 'em separate.
The most I've made so far has been $35 between two site over 18 months
That's not enough to live off, or retire with. But it's better than $0. Do you think you can increase that tenfold this year? And then next year, increase it tenfold again?
You've been roaming around these forums reading - has WebmasterWorld given you any ideas how to do that?
I can't be starting a business in my 40's
poppycock! balogna! ridiculoso!
OF COURSE you can start a business in your 40s. Who told you otherwise? Why would you think that?
I can't be starting a business in my 40's
poppycock! balogna! ridiculoso!
OF COURSE you can start a business in your 40s. Who told you otherwise? Why would you think that?
It's like a catch 22. I can't give customers my best having a day job, and I wouldn't be able to land any larger jobs with my delivery time. ... I guess I could give up sleeping several days a week.
And if you can't even do that, then you should forget about trying to build up your business. For most people, working 7 days/week (and more than 8 hours/day) for the first year or 2 (or more) when they start their business is the norm.
But I need to be fresh when I sit down to work on these projects. I know I have to be different and exciting to succeed. That's why I'm worried about getting too old. I just can't get by on 2 or 3 hours of sleep like I used to. When I get home from work, I tend to work on mundane things since all my energy is zapped from my day job.
It all depends on how hungry you are and what your priorities are. Look at your life and prioritize things. Assuming you don't work at your day job during the weekend, that's 2 full days to devote to working on your own projects. Granted, working your day job 5 days then you other job 2 days, week in and week out has its limits. But you should be able to keep it up for several months to really build up your businesses.
I've been doing it for years. I missed the boat on one project. Took me almost two years to get the back end code complete and tested rock solid. I probably needed another developer. By then the market became more saturated, and the bar was raised, so back to the drawing board on some areas. That is one of my 7 year projects. Now the market is so saturated in this one area, it's not even worth my time. I'm trying to port the code over to some other idea.
Getting burned out without seeing any real reward.
need to be fresh
Don't create mental obstacles for yourself. You don't have to feel fabulous when you do the work, you just have to get needful things done.
get at least one of these sites
PICK ONE. Do what it takes to clear up other obligations, then pick one thing to work on for yourself. Focus on it to the fullest extent you can, given the realities of your life. Some days that might be ten minutes, on weekends it might be ten hours, but resolve to do something practical every single day that will help to advance your vision.
Invest some time to create a master to-do list that identifies what activities will advance your goals, and breaks down big jobs into lots of component tasks that you can do in small chunks of time if need be. Small steps can cover a lot of ground, as long as you keep taking them.
The biggest dream killer is working on random things, a bit here, a bit there, changing direction too often and not seeing anything through to completion, or at least to a workable pausing point.
Draw inspiration from the old fable of the tortoise and the hare: the tortoise wasn't fast but he reached the finish line because he was headed the right direction and he just kept going.
almost two years to get the back end code complete
Consider a project that would be a lot smaller in scope, something you could finish in a few weeks.
Sounds to me like you've way over promised on the site. Site like that I'd expect to pay tens of thousands of $s for not $600. Whenever you get work passed from some other designer you should look at it with a very skeptical eye because there's usually a reason why somebody is passing up the "golden opportunity".
So this estimating thing... Every project I do runs over by 4 1/2 times.
There's your solution. For every new project you are offered, figure out how long it would take....then multiply that number by 5 to get the number of hours. Know how much your time is worth and multiply that number by the number of hours. Done!
The biggest problem with estimates however is not a faulty estimate, but a poor specification and/or scope creep. Some clients, and not just the ones experienced with such work, are expert at adding little request after little request until the job ends up much larger than expected.
This is where you need to put your foot down. You must have a specification. The easiest, in my experience, is just a bulleted/hierarchical list by section, page, unit and function:
* User login page
- * Common sitewide top menu
- * One introductory paragraph, editable
- * Form fields: username, password (*s), login button
- * Link to 'recover password'
- * Feedback message if incorrect data supplied
- * Javascript validation for non-completed field with alert() error
* Recover password page
- * Common sitewide top menu
- * One introductory paragraph, editable
- * Form fields: username, email address, recover button
- * Feedback message if incorrect data supplied
- * Javascript validation for non-completed field with alert() error
- * On submit: email link to user, with encrypted security code to allow change
- * Emailed link to be valid for 30 minutes
* Recover password stage 2 (link from email)
- * Form fields: username, password (*s), password confirmation (*s), change button
- * One introductory paragraph, editable
- * Feedback message if incorrect data supplied
- * Javascript validation for non-completed field with alert() error
- * On submit: change user's password to specified password
- * On submit: send email to user informing them that their password was changed (not including pw)
Send that list when you finalise the price, have them agree to it. Now, the moment that they ask you to do something which is not listed, tell them (even the very first time they ask):
"Yes, there's no problem with adding a 'remember me' function to the login system - the estimated additional cost will be $50 and the functionality will be as follows:
* - Remember me (checkbox) on login form
* - If checked, 30 day cookie set for user
* - Returning users with valid cookie automatically log in
* - Modification of 'log out' to clear this cookie as well as session cookie
Does that seem okay?That is all it takes!
Be content and move on but it is good to reflect on the project and think of how it could have been done better and how it could still be improved.
Its good because it can be used to help sell more work to the client and because it can help you do the next project better.
But dont dwell for too long because we could all improve all our sites given unlimited time/money. If you regularly get swamped - start with budget & timescale not the spec.
But ya, I'm just complaining now. Thanks for the great advice! Once this site is done I'm going to spend time finishing up a site that has major functionality and should prove that end of my portfolio, with progressive enhancement and the whole bit. Then I'll hit it again.
