Thursday, January 25, 2007

It's all business

So I have decided to do two things for jobs at the same time. One for the short term (gata pay those bills now!) and one for the long term that probably won't be making much money right away.

First, I got a job at the caf for 15 hrs a week at 7.15 pr hr refilling milk and drinks three mornings a week. Some how this strikes me as much better than serving food to people, much less stressful. I for sure get a free lunch during my shift that will be great. Mmm variety.. I also bet I get to take home some left overs too, but I won't know about that until I start. I start after second semester does, so thats the 7th of February I think.

The second path I will be going down is starting my own business. I have always been toying with it, but now is the time to do it. We had a talk with the Northfield Arts Guild this morning and the graphic designer who will do part of our post card stuff get $60 pr hour. Now I knew that was the price range, but for some reason hearing it at that moment made me say, 'hey, I wana do that!.'

So, step one of course is finding a name. Here are a few that I brainstormed with Derek:

• "Feather Hat"
• "Bird's Eye"
• "Water Wheel"

What do you think? Favorites? New ideas? I tend to obsess about these things.

The URL becomes a problem. Since this would be a web based affair (doing mostly flash based web pages to start) I would need a good one, but all of those and more have been bought by squatters who just sit on 1,000s of them. Even if you add "design" to the end, only featherhatdesign works. So you have to do "designs" or something like that. What do you think? I like Feather Hat because it brings to mind "a feather in your hat" and its a nice short thing to say. Of course Google "Feather Hat" and you get all sort of sill hat photos....

If this works, I could feasibly work at home next year making my commute *zero* and get a new (tax deductible) computer. It would work well around the VRC too, because I could make all my own hours. We will see...

2 comments:

Bjorn Watland said...

SolarPanda
LizardNail
EyeJingo
LoudPlum
SplitLiquid

Just don't be something like an artist who's art I liked, who has some pieces at Galactic Pizza, who's email address is gumbypoop@yahoo.com. Don't be like gumby poop.

All of those names are available as domains.

Bjorn Watland said...

Also, on having your own business, it's great to set your own hours, charge what you'd like, but it can be hard to find the business sometimes, it's easy when you keep things under the table, like not reporting income for taxes, but trying to fill out taxes as a small business is a pain. Then, you may have to deal with businesses who won't want to pay, and you have to live with it and move on, or make sure you have good contracts. Always charge for your time, if a client wants something fixed a month later, charge them, or else you'll get walked on. I spent too much time worrying about the framework for a business, then actually getting out and marketing myself and doing the work. If you can worry about getting work before things like flashy business cards, you'll be better off, and have more money for flashier business cards.