Some advice would be nice

[marknutter]

I just read the 4 hour work week and it was an eye opener for me as I'm sure it was for many of you. I quit my job selling Apple computers a year ago to go full time as a freelance web developer and I love it. I'm at the point now, though, where I make a decent living doing it but I've reached capacity. I do everything; the design, the css/html markup, the app development, etc. This is obviously not a scalable situation.

I've been lucky enough to garner enough leads via repeat business and word of mouth that I haven't had to go out looking for work or spend any money on advertising yet. But again, there is no growth, just one project to the next. So the natural progression would be to start advertising and building up leads, and then outsourcing the work as necessary. Standard business building stuff.

It wasn't until I read this book though that I really realized that I'm ready to take this next step, and to my astonishment I also realized that it can be done in some very interesting ways indeed. As a web developer I could create all sorts of interesting information based products/services online and design good pitches and websites to push them. The problem is my mind is boggling at the possibilities. So I'm looking for some advice about what you think would be some interesting ways of leveraging my web development/design knowledge into an automated "muse." Thanks in advance!

[Jon Alan]

Dude, I know people would pay for that. There are a ton of people out there who do this siteflipping stuff where they buy and sell websites. You could have a membership site built with camtasia videos on how to build websites, membership ones which people can sell for profits or manage. It would be huge. I know I could have used something like a that when I started my business.

[DaveCraige.com]

Mark,

Feel free to drop a link to your portfolio if you would like. Also I have some guys you can outsource to for PSD to HTML slicing. I believe they cost only about $140.

[kevingc]

Perhaps you should start thinking about what portions of your operation you'd be willing to outsource.

[kamakiri]

Do you specialize in spamming as well over there at butterfly?

Seriously, spamming forums can't be an effective marketing strategy can it?

[Sven]

Webby, please kick out butterfly, both posts are the same spam...

[jakediddy]

Hey Mark,

It sounds to me like you have an excellent opportunity to get into the groove of outsourcing and batching in your current line of work. If you do that now, you'll be less at risk to start your muses with the wrong use of time.

Do you work from home? If so, do you ever move between project work and everyday home tasks? That might feel like a convenience to you, but perhaps you could try working from Starbucks or a bookstore. I'm going to try this approach with my coursework this weekend at Borders. I'd be willing to guess that 3 dedicated hours of work at another location might be equivalent to 4 hours (when totalled) at home, unless you have amazing discipline.

Just don't fill up that theoretical extra hour with a new project - use it to start your muse!

With regards to muse ideas and ebooks - how about brushing up on your business skills/lingo by getting a book from Borders on small/personal businesses and write an ebook about running a business like you did and marketing via word-of-mouth?

It's a slightly larger niche than what Tim suggests, but it'll get your ideas flowing hopefully.

[webgal]

Thanks to the membership for flagging spam.

Now back to the thread in progress.