I had a comment left last week on my latest post about additional income from Fortuna Finds with an inquiry as to how I broke into freelance web-design and photography and I go about doing it in a non-infringing way. So here goes my attempt at writing about how it all started:
I started University in the year 2000, in first year I met another student in my program called T. The two of us began doing photography together at local shows, shooting local musicians which eventually led to shooting international musicians. The fans really enjoyed our photos and at their urging we began to put them online on a website that we had created (I believe flickr etc had not yet been created). This was essentially the beginning of my career in software development, and really the time where the web development and photography came together for me as a freelance opportunity.
We were shooting so many musicians, that we needed an easy to update website, we were both in school for computer science and had a limited knowledge of web development and design. With some research we built ourselves a CMS (content management system) written in PHP and using a MY SQL database. We kept playing with it and tweaking it as best we could, until we were happy we had a product we both understood, and could use easily.
Because we knew so many musicians in the local scene, and had our new found skills to create websites with CMS’s, we began to offer some friends in bands websites for relatively cheap, with easy to update content management systems. We did a couple of websites a month, and eventually landed some bigger contracts doing websites for a promotion company, record store and a computer store. We usually worked it out to about 1 big project per semester, and it was enough to fully pay both our tuition’s for that semester, and somewhat fund our photography habit.
Fast forward about 7 years, and I was working at a Web Design firm doing software development, I continued to do a few projects here and there, but was more focused on photography. It was tough while working at the Web Design Firm to do web contracts as it was deemed somewhat inappropriate since I was indirectly competing with my work. I left that position 2 years ago, and moved to where I am now, doing software development for a company who’s business is a couple of online applications.
One of my previous co-workers from the Web Firm quit to pursue her own freelance graphic design, and hence needed a web developer. So for the past year I’ve been doing development for her, and since the product doesn’t compete with my office, it’s not anything I have to worry about. One thing that is often tricky is to leave the freelancing until I get home, having a blackberry and the internet in front of you it’s very easy to start answering emails etc, when you shouldn’t be.
The photography is another passion that I have, and I’m fortunate enough to often have a few photos published in some international action sports magazines, which results in a couple of hundred dollars here and there. I also have the occasional musician photo shoot or event photo shoot as well. Most of these I acquire again through word of mouth, my photography portfolio website, or through contacts that I’ve made over the last couple of years. I believe being nice to people, regardless if you like them or not, goes a long long way. Also I treat each job that I get with the same level of importance, and always do my best to ensure a speedy delivery and a kick ass product.
And that’s basically how I got into freelance photography and web development.
I’d sum it up with some difficult aspects of freelance work while maintaining a full time job:
- finding the time (or ambition) to work after work on a side project, even an extra 2 hours is a lot when you’re tired from a full day of work.
- actually finding the work, a big network of acquaintances is key.
- meeting deadlines and budgetting your time