I ‘ve had a brilliant first month working for myself and running this blog, and as it’s the last day of February tomorrow I thought I’d take a quick look back at what I have and haven’t managed to do, what’s succeeded and what hasn’t. I’ll also take a quick look at my plans for the coming month!
The Business
I had so much to do in setting up to become self employed on a full time basis, and while it’s been an enjoyable month, it’s been pretty stressful at times too. Here are most of the things that I managed to get done business wise.
- Set up my home office (though there’s still room for improvement)
- Started using DropBox to access all clients files from multiple computers
- Started working with a great accounting company
- Set up Lyrical Media Ltd (very proud of this one!)
- Organised all my invoices and expenses up till now
- Purchased SitePoint’s Web Design Business Kit (review when it arrives!)
- Joined up to offer my SEO services as part of the Poppen Design team
- Networked with a lot of really great people!
- Completed one large client site, and acquired 2 new (small) projects
- Finished designing a brand new version of Lyrical Media (live next month)
What I haven’t had much luck with yet
- Getting help with any sort of finance, thanks to the ever ridiculous Natwest who screwed up my credit rating and refuse to fix it!
- Finding an invoicing / project management app that I really like
- Establishing a work/life balance (more on this on Monday)
The Blog
I set this little site up on the 2nd of February and it’s been the most successful site launch I’ve ever had. Comparing my 1st month stats to the logo designer blog 1st week stats, it seems pretty pitiful – but I’m pretty happy with everything and I’m looking forward to growing this site throughout the year.
Here’s what this site’s managed in its first month
- 5,000+ visits
- 20,000+ page views
- 2gb of bandwidth
- 20 posts
- 3 great interviews
- 1 competition and software giveaway
- 127 comments
- 120 spam comments blocked
- 150,000 average alexa rank
- 556 inbound links
- 74 pages indexed in google
- 12 features on css showcase websites
- 1 feature on Smashing Magazine
- 440 followers on twitter (250 new this month)
- 27 rss subscribers
And here are a couple of things planned for this blog “coming soon”
- Lots more interviews web design business owners
- Some more free software and ebooks in competitions
- Some extensive reviews of freelancers books and software
- Some video based content (maybe)
- A fresh design (eventually)
Plans for March
So that brings us promptly to the coming month! I’m quite excited to get cracking this month, now that I’ve got most of the ‘set up’ done I really want to start churning out some awsome client sites. I’ve got a couple of small sites lined up for the beginning of the month, but I need to actively start finding some more big projects. Here are some of the things on my to-do list for March:
- Grow my twitter account to 700 followers
- Grow my rss subscribers to 60
- Look into an advertising budget with BuySellAds
- Set up a monthly newsletter with Campaign Monitor
- Complete and release the Neophyte wordpress theme
- Learn some more PHP, Javascript, and Ruby
What About You?
If you’ve recently gone freelance or started your own company what are you doing to grow your business? Let me know in the comments!
Hi John,
I took the plunge some years ago and started Able Net Design. I too had to find a balance between work and life, and that line seems to have been faded out more and more over the years.
Good Luck!
I love that you do this kind of post. Super useful resource for others who want to do the same thing :)
The key thing is that you have a plan if action. Most people start out with nothing. At least with Allan you can adjust your work when things around you change. Another good write-up John.
Great to see that you’ve made such a positive start. You really have managed to get a lot done… hoping that when the time comes I’ll be able to achieve similar!
Damn iPhone keyboard – what I should have said was “At least with a plan”. A plan! not Allan.
Try Basecamp for project management.
Really interesting read.
There’s some greats posts on this blog.
Your certainly a do-er John, I wish I was as motivated as you!
Cheers Mark! I’m certainly driven, no doubt about that :P – if there’s anything that I could do to give you a hand, do let me know! :)
Agree with Mark – with your motivation I am sure you will be a success. There comes a time when I guess you just have to DO rather than THINK about DOING!
Thanks Richard!! Really appreciate all the support, I’m definitely not stopping either, going to work work work! I’m a huge believe in “life is what you make of it” – so I’m trying to make something of it! :)
Hi,
Neat article. Thanks for publishing it.
With regards to finding a project management application that you like, have you tried Toggl?
http://www.toggl.com/en_US/public/
It’s a project management/time-tracker web application (I think they also have a desktop version but I haven’t tried that yet). I’m trying it out myself and it seems to work well and doesn’t cost too much. They have a limited free plan and they have monthly subscription plans starting from $5/mo. Might be worth a gander if you haven’t tried it already?
Thanks Gemma, I’ll take a look
I’d really be interested if you found a good web based invoicing / project management application. I’ve been looking, and just have had no luck!
If you don’t get on with Basecamp for Project Management, try http://www.5pmweb.com
This is great mate, keep up the good work.
:)
Thank you for sharing this great suggestions! I appreciate it! Thank you so much John