Free from 9 to 5

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who has had to put on hold the journey to freedom from 9 to 5; Cubicle Coder also has other higher priorities in his life right now. But the keyword for me is “on hold”. Not abandoned nor forgotten. Just delayed. Unless you’re capable of intense unwavering focus, as Steve Pavlina seems to be (just read his blog and you’ll see what I mean), the path to your goals usually isn’t as straightforward as you would hope; sometimes it’s more circuitous and takes longer. I say, unless you’re in dire straits, don’t worry about it. Enjoy the scenery wherever you are.

This blog is suffering the fate of most new blogs, namely, wavering motivation and less frequent postings. There’s a common saying that 95% of new businesses fail within 5 years. This probably also applies to new blogs: 95% of new blogs fold within the first 5 months.

My time has been consumed by wedding planning and new home ownership duties. I also got an intra-company transfer to a nearby location that cut my commute from 30 miles to 7 miles. Timewise, it went from 1 hour to 15 minutes. And I’m loving it. No rush hour madness. No being stuck on the freeway. I didn’t realize until now how much the commute drained me. I now feel like I have a life again.

My 9-to-5 isn’t feeling as onerous now, but I’m still staying on the path to being free from 9 to 5. Not much progress has been made in the past month, hence no new postings, but I mean to stay on this path, however long it takes.

I have noticed that quite a few fellow bloggers and micro-ISV owners have made great progress on their products. I envy them and I wish them the very best:
Userscape
Ataraxis Software
Component Factory
NGEDIT

During the course of the past few months, I’ve been reading, researching and experimenting with various ways to reduce my dependence on a regular dayjob. It was slow going at first, but as I took baby steps towards my goal, things started to accelerate. I started trying things just for the sake of try them. My previous post summarized my activities.

But I have been, to say the least, unfocused. The process of doing all this has, however, exercised my mind to be more receptive to and cognizant of new business ideas; ones that I would have not recognized if not for my trials and errors these past few months.

I expect to remain partially unfocused until I find the right fit for me. I will continue to devote time to TempestBlue Software, the best idea I came up with thus far, but my research will continue until I find something that screams out, “This is it!” A comment by John Kwarsick on my previous post sums things up very well:

… remember it is all about sowing and reaping, most people are concerned about the reaping, that is, what am going to get/or make. In order to get some fruit, you have to plant some seeds and that is what you are doing right here, right now!

When I started this blog in March 2005, I knew I wanted to make a living outside of Corporate America for various reasons, including the ones I blogged about here. But I had no idea what to do. Since then, through personal introspection, daily research on the web and just plain serendipity, I’ve embarked on several ventures of my own.

First is my microISV, TempestBlue Software. I wrote an editor tailored towards SEO and released it several weeks ago. Sales have been modest (read, more than 2, less than 7), but I’m far from discouraged and actually did a little jig around the room when the first order came in . I’ve just begun to market this and I know the marketers will say this is backwards, but I’m learning!

Second is Elegant Wedding Shoppe, an online wedding supply retail site. This started when my fiance made a flower girl basket, ring bearer pillow and bridal garter set for a close friend. Through word of mouth, she got requests for another 2 sets, and I saw an opportunity and pounced on it. I opened accounts with drop-shipping wedding suppliers and added their products into the mix. Through eBay and the online storefront, only another 2 orders came in so far, with pre-sales inquiries numbering in the teens. I’ve since learned that the wedding supplies market is pretty saturated and I may have jumped the gun on this one. But I did learn how to use Zencart and Paypal very well, so it isn’t a total loss.

Third, I succumbed to what I consider a pretty cheesy money-making tactic; I’m almost embarrassed to mention it. Following a process I found in an internet marketing forum (sorry, couldn’t find the link again), I created EnchantingWeddingFavors.com. It is nothing more than a Google Adsense flycatching site. I bombarded the site with pseudo-content using keywords “wedding favors”, signed up to exchange reciprocal links with other wedding websites and waited for unsuspecting visitors to come and click on the prominently placed Google Adsense links. Believe it or not, the Adsense revenue from EnchantingWeddingFavors.com surpasses that of FreeFrom9to5.com. This was really just an experiment though. I’ve covered my only expense here (the domain name) and then some, but I don’t intend to go into this line of business.

Finally, I added Google ads to FreeFrom9to5.com and signed up to be an affiliate for several related products. Although this affiliate income has been the easiest to earn, in terms of time spent vs. return, income from Kwedit sales has been the most gratifying.

Net profit over the last 5 months? About $70. Not an especially auspicious start, but a start nonetheless. And I’m learning, having fun, hopeful and slowly preparing for a future free from 9 to 5.

A few weeks ago, I released the software product I’ve been writing the past few months. Kwedit is an editor tailored for writing website content. Features include a realtime word count and realtime keyword density/count. Go check it out and let me know what you think! Sales have been very modest thus far, but I’m hoping it’ll pick up as the marketing picks up.

I mentioned before that I got the idea for this software from a fellow blogger. That would be Star of astepcloser.com. Star’s beta testing abilities really helped to make Kwedit a better product and I owe her a big debt of gratitude.

In researching drop shippers for my wedding accessories website, I paid $69.95 for access to Chris Malta’s Drop Ship Source Directory (Disclaimer: this is an affiliate link). This directory is amazing. It contains listings of drop shippers for almost any product you might want to sell. This is where I found drop shippers for the wedding accessories you see on www.elegantweddingshoppe.com.

I can imagine using this directory to create multiple retail storefronts for multiple streams of income. Even if each site only earns $500 a month, with 10 sites, that’s $5,000 a month! Almost enough for me to quit the 9 to 5 job.

I’ve learned how to use Zencart to the point where I can get a storefront up and running in less than a day. So between this directory, Zencart and PayPal, it is almost trivial to get an Internet storefront up and running. In fact, I already have another retail website in the works.

The hard part, though, is choosing products that sell and the marketing of the website. That I still have to work on. I bought an eBook, Yahoo Store Profits, that addresses this issue (Disclaimer: also an affiliate link). This eBook is also excellent and although I’m not using Yahoo Store, I will write about it and why I bought this particular eBook in another posting shortly.

Day job is still as tedious as always, but at least the pressure crunch of a looming deadline has passed. As I mentioned before, we were late, but it’s over. I’ve moved on to another project and the cycle begins again.

The software I’m writing is real close to official release now. (Those who want a sneak preview, please email me!) Just putting on the finishing touches to the website and affiliate program and working on the marketing plan. I probably should have the marketing plan finished first, but what can I say? This is my first time doing this and I’m a techie at heart.

This past week, I also opened accounts with several wholesale suppliers of wedding accessories. I’m in the midst of adding their products to Elegant Wedding Shoppe, along with my fiance’s hand-crafted products. You may notice that I ported the website over to Zencart. I was using a home grown system before, but with the addition of more products, it was necessary to use a database-backed website. My home grown system was adequate for half a dozen products or so, but did not scale well to dozens or hundreds of products. Zencart makes it very easy to add products to the site, change pricing and, with its shopping cart, I no longer have to use Paypal’s shopping cart which made for an awkward user experience anyway.

Between Zencart and drop shipping suppliers, it is so easy to open up a retail shop on the Internet with no need for inventory that I’m considering other retail niches. As Mark Cuban said, “You only have to be right once!”

I think there’s currently a mini-meme going on in the blogosphere about networking:
Ripples - Wake up call! Time to build a support network!
Soul in the Sky - Your relationships, your future

My project at the Corporation is over. It was completed about a week and a half late but the bigwigs still seemed satisfied that it is done. I move on to a new project next week, and look forward to having new fodder to blog about. I can already tell I will be dealing with a micromanager, albeit an affable one. I have already put out feelers in my network for job openings and have my resume circulating out there.

My network is not as strong or wide as it can be though, because I’m just not a very sociable person. My saving grace is that I am connected to 2 or 3 people who do have strong and wide network of contacts that I can draw upon. That’s how I’ve gotten my past 2 jobs, but I know I should develop a better network of my own. ( Does anyone in my blogging network need some programming work done? ) And simply sending out a resume is one of the most ineffective ways to find a new job.

Besides networking and resume sending, what else is there? You can try to make your own living, which is what I’m trying to do with my microISV and wedding accessories website. One other tactic I can see is becoming a known expert on a subject matter through blogging. People like Robert Scoble, Dan Gillmor and Jeremy Zawodny seem to have solidified their expertise on a subject matter through blogging, and would have no trouble finding a job ever. Something to consider.

Update: Coincidently, after publishing this post, I ran across this post over at Slacker Manager describing how he applied for (and got) a job in an industry he didn’t have much experience in. A very creative first. Congratulations!