Archives for September 2013

Auditing Yourself – a Suggestion from Chris Guillebeau

Chris Guillebeau had a great post recently about auditing yourself from time to time. Good advice.

If you are doing any type of freelance work – freelance writing, blogging, design, development – it is always good to take some time for introspection and reflection. This keeps us grounded, on target, and generally satisfied.

Chris starts the process with these two hard hitting questions, “Are you happy? Are you doing something you enjoy?”

If you are freelance writing or are otherwise self employed, I would hope that you can answer this in the affirmative. If you are spending the majority of your time on things you do not enjoy and very little on the things that you do, you probably cannot affirm these two questions. And if you can’t, I would say that it is time for some serious soul searching.

If you are not happy and doing something you enjoy, why is that? What is holding you back?

The whole point of freelancing is to do what you enjoy, be it writing, design work, blogging, etc. If you aren’t enjoying it, what is the difference between that and punching a clock for someone else every day?

A common trap holding back many people is money. One of the biggest things holding people back from becoming self employed or freelancing is that the culture (especially the media) has promoted a lifestyle that is generally unsustainable and unachievable for most people without taking on debt. But with cheap and readily available debt service, what we can afford has changed from what we can pay for now to what monthly payment fits our present income.

Following that approach is a recipe for personal fiscal disaster and many people become enslaved to their debt. Debt bondage is a trap that is difficult to escape. But it is this very trap that prevents people from breaking free to do what they truly desire because they must continue to be a cog in the machine in order to service their debt. In becomes a never-ending hamster wheel that they can’t get off of.

Breaking free starts with recognizing your bondage. I think taking an audit of yourself is a good first step.

If you want to pursue your dream of freelance writing, this is good advice.

By the way, I definitely recommend The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Conformity, both by Chris Guillebeau and available in a variety of formats.

Pressgram, iOS, and choosing your market

By Chad Butler 2 Comments

Important update to this post. John Saddington does want to release an Android version (that is good), but he’s going need your help. Read the update to find out what you can do.

A few days ago, I was excited to hear about Pressgram. It is an app developed by John Saddington with a WordPress plugin that will break you free of Instagram. I think Instagram is pretty cool, but it does make total sense to me to control the content. This leads into the debate you will hear from blogging heavyweights like Copyblogger about “owning” versus “renting” (read Sonia Simone’s article on Digital Sharecropping).

Think of Instagram as renting whereas Pressgram is owning. Instagram is digital sharecropping, Pressgram makes you the landowner.

All in all, it’s a cool app with some great opportunities for users including more active content control and brand management. Unfortunately, that opportunity is presently limited to iOS users – read: iPhone/iPad – leaving me out as a potential heavy user. My personal tech arsenal does not include a single Apple product.

Yes, I do prefer my Android devices. But, this is not intended as a debate over what is better – Apple or Android. My point is about market share. The numbers don’t lie – Android far outstrips iOS in this area.

Might I make a suggestion to Pressgram? Consider launching an Android app. I know there are more people than just me that would use it.

Maybe it’s just me, but wouldn’t you want to go for the largest possible audience? Is it that Apple users are so much more hip? Or perhaps it’s a better (more controlled) distribution network?

Fortunately for me, there are multiple devices around my house. My wife is an avid iPad and iPhone user, and the kids have some iOS devices as well, so I’ve got access to try it out. Yet, as much as I’d love to participate in the upcoming Pressgram Revolution, I’ll be on the sidelines (or at least limited to borrowing my wife’s phone from time-to-time).

Now before people go off telling me I’m a hater or something, that’s not my point at all. I understand this was a kickstarted campaign with limited development resources so you kind of have to pick an initial market. And I get the fact that the developer is probably going to develop for the environment that they use. But I also know there is a big hole in market opportunity when Android is overlooked.

If I’m wrong – convince me otherwise or tell me what I’m missing.

UPDATE: So, this post is less than half an hour old and Pressgram developer John Saddington has informed me that an Android version of Pressgram is on the project list. He confirms my thoughts that the developer is going to work in the ecosystem in which they are most comfortable, but when they release a really cool product, other users outside the fold are going to want it. I hope you will join me in supporting John in further developing Pressgram – both for Apple AND Android – that means time, talent, and treasure. Learn more about what you can do here. You can subscribe to his update list here, and you should.

InfoGraphic: Why All Marketers Should Be Thinking Mobile

By Chad Butler Leave a Comment

Here is a great infographic from Quick Sprout: Why all marketers should be thinking mobile. Today’s web is growing in mobile. If you are not considering mobile devices in your marketing strategy, you are missing a huge piece of the market. By 2014 (just next year), 1 in 3 U.S. Internet users will have a tablet device.

Be sure to take a hard look at some of the stats toward the bottom – a large percentage of mobile shoppers will leave a site if it is not optimized for mobile devices, and they will abandon a site if it takes too long to load. Also, a surprising number of users prefer their tablet over their PC for online shopping. [Read more…]