The ones that have been particularly challenging for me lately pertain to voice communications – inquiries from prospective clients, and support for existing clients. Up until recently, I didn’t find myself picking up the phone very often, so it was never really an issue. A half hour chat once or twice a month was nothing to really worry about. But in this past month alone, I’ve easily sunk upwards of 10-12 hours into phone chats with both prospective and existing clients. Every hour I spent on the phone, was an hour of billable time lost. So, now I find myself needing to figure out a way to accommodate phone calls without losing out on work time, which translates to losing money in the long run.

Option 1 – Raise My Rate, Add Time to Projects

When I’ve talked with other freelancers about rates and scheduling, I tend to come in at the low end of the spectrum. I charge less and have a quicker turn-around. This is because I tend to handle things like new project leads and existing client support after hours, so it doesn’t interfere with my 8 hour work day. Most people will tack on a few days to the project to allow for handling of other clients and things that may come up during that time.

Over the past few years, my rate has fluctuated quite a bit. But I feel that where I’m at now is perfect. It’s higher than some, but not high enough to deter most people. Raising my rate is not something I’m crazy about.

Option 2 – Charge for Phone Calls

I really didn’t like the idea of charging potential clients for initial phone calls, until I noticed that a lot of people were using me as a consultant of sorts. They would ask to chat about their project, which was very loosely formed. We would go over details, I’d explain how I would do things, and often enough, that would be the last I heard from them. In these cases, calls would range from 30-60 minutes, which is a decent length.

Other times, a potential client would want to speak with me merely to verify my expertise. Usually, they’ve spoken to someone else and have an opinion in mind. They run the details by me, which are usually fairly technical, and it’s obvious that they’re checking to see if I know what I’m talking about. I don’t blame people for doing this, as it’s very easy to fake who you are and what you’re capable of.

In either case, I’m spending time with people which is taking me away from my current paying client. And I would say that at least half the time, I don’t hear from the prospective client again. It’s to the point now, where I’m very hesitant to accept a phone meetings until I’ve received a deposit. But many people want to chat up front for various reasons, some of which I’ve already touched on. I fully understand this, but I’m looking for a happy medium that ensures I’m able to accept phone meetings without losing out of valuable work time.

These reasons have led me to believe that charging a set fee for a prospective client phone meetings and consultations wouldn’t be unreasonable. If anything, it could open up a whole new avenue as far as billable times goes. I could schedule a few calls back-to-back at a rate that at least matches my typical rate. If I end up landing a project, whatever amount was charged for phone calls would be subtracted from the project total.

Thoughts?

I’m looking for feedback here, as I’m still not 100% this is the right thing to do. What are other freelancers doing in this situation? Are there any huge downsides that I’m not seeing to charging for prospective client calls?

Blog

I didn’t really do much with my personal blog. I pretty much had things the way I wanted them with my previous design. So I basically just made some minor refinements and tidied up some things I had tacked on since my last redesign.

It’s now quicker and easier to find older content that may be of interest, via the tabbed box that sits in the top of the sidebar. It gives you quick access to related posts, the most recent posts, the most recent reviews, and the most popular posts.

Reviews have received the most love. Specifically, the review archive. The “wall of games” is sorted by date descending. But you can now filter them by platform.

On the topic of game reviews, I commissioned a fellow by the name of Jeff Jenkins to whip up some comic style character illustrations to coincide with my review scores. The idea was inspired by GiantBomb, but I wanted to do full body illustrations as opposed to waist up. Jeff exceeded my expectations and produced some brilliant work that can be seen at the bottom of every game review. You will be seeing more of Jeff’s work on this here website in the coming weeks.

Portfolio

I’m extremely happy to finally have a condensed portfolio that is flexible and allows me to share a bit more in the way of details for each project. At this time, I only have the services I provided, but I plan on writing a little descriptive paragraph for each down the road.

Marketplace

Having recently jumped on the digital goods train, I’m quite fond of having cash rolling in constantly from sales. I wanted to build a platform of my own that allowed me to sell digital goods of various shapes and sizes. ThemeForest has worked out really well for selling WordPress themes, and I intend to keep future theme releases on that platform. But I have plans to release add-on (expansion) packs for my existing themes, and ThemeForest doesn’t support that sort of thing. Through my own site, customers will be able to pick up things like additional colour schemes, added functionality, etc. at a reasonable cost.

Additionally, I have partnered with some other designers and developers who will be selling all sorts of good stuff through my Marketplace in the coming months.

I have also opened the floodgates for theme customization. Anyone who has purchased one of my themes has the option of having it customized to their liking for a small fee.

Workshop

I have one more new addition that is still in the works which will be surfacing shortly. I’m calling it my Workshop, and it’s a place to get your hands on tools and tutorials on the topics of general web design and WordPress development. Much of this content will be free, but I am planning on doing some extensive screencasts which will mostly be premium (fancy word for paid) content.

The Kinks

Call me irresponsible, but I haven’t even looked at this new site in any version of Internet Explorer just yet. Quite frankly, I just don’t have it in me at the moment. After spending 5 solid weeks working on this site, the last thing I feel like doing is troubleshooting IE bugs. In time, I’ll make sure things are in order for IE8 and IE7, but IE6 can go to hell!

Moving Forward

This redesign is still very much a work in progress. These past few weeks have been spent setting the stage for great things to come in the weeks and months to follow. I’m super excited to see how things pan out, and I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone for their continued support over the years. It’s truly amazing to have some many people that I don’t even know buying my products, hiring me to redesign their website, or shouting words of encouragement via Twitter. Thank you!

Why ThemeForest?

Because they’re paying me. I was approached by the owner of the Envato network a few months back who offered to commission me to develop 5 themes for WordPress that would be released on ThemeForest. With no restrictions placed on our agreement and with the prospect of still retaining revenue generated from my theme sales, it would have been silly to pass this up. The bottom line is that I get to roll out a handful of themes at very reasonable prices – something I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. It always comes down to time, and my lack thereof. This is the perfect arrangement that allows me to get the passive income training rolling.

Black Aperture

My first theme caters to one of my favourite hobbies, video games. Black Aperture is a news and reviews theme that comes packed with a nifty options panel for basic customization out of the box, among other goodies. As you may have guessed, the name is a throwback to one of my all-time personal favourites, Half-Life 2. Black Mesa. Aperture Science. Get it? Good! Moving on…

Falling Back on Trends

Normally, I like to consider myself a “think outside of the box” kind of guy. But when it comes to creating something that needs to appeal to the masses, I bench my personal preferences and gut intuitions and start tapping into current trends.

For starters, gaming sites seem to inherit a dark colour scheme. I’m not talking just publications, but official game sites as well. I knew dark was the way to go with this and literally started with a black canvas. With this being my first theme release for ThemeForest , I knew it was going to take longer than the rest, so multiple colour schemes were out of the question. Instead, I opted for a neutral layout with a customizable accent colour. This would give the user a bit of freedom without having to tap into the CSS themselves. But of course, if someone would like to jump in and start making drastic changes, there’s no stopping them. And I welcome it, actually.

Gorgeous Featured Posts Showcase

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of the typical featured posts slideshow that every other website is sporting these days. I wanted to allow people to feature content, but needed to take a new approach to this popular method of displaying features. There is no slideshow – just three big square(ish) images with some nice effects overlayed and a title and tagline, also overlayed. Images are resized dynamically, so the author just has to meet the minimum size requirements.

Super Simple Reviews

Posting reviews with a set criteria isn’t the easiest task. I never bothered with criteria on my blog, but I do use custom fields to display the box art and 5-start rating. Similarly, I’ve done this for Black Aperture, but implemented a much more elegant solution than simply using custom fields.

When posting a review, you enter your title and main content just as you normally would. But under the main text area, there’s a new box called Additional Information which houses the review criteria, and images used through-out the site.

On the front-end, reviews are displayed unique from other posts in a few ways. For starters, when reading a review, you’ll notice a nice big area at the top which houses the box art, rating, and criteria.

Reviews are styled differently in post indexes as well. The thumbnail image is replaced by a smaller version of the box art and rating, and both are aligned to the left inside a grey box. Unlike the thumbnail which is floating right with a dropshadow.

If This, Else That

When it comes to general theme releases, there are a lot more things to take into consideration. I really have no idea how people are going to use my themes, and which parts they have no interest in. With Black Aperture, I included things like the social buttons in the header which may or may not be of use. Every unique bit like these buttons are wrapped in a conditional statement which tells the theme to only display them if there’s content entered. Same goes for image thumbnails in posts, even. If there’s no path entered for the post image, the thumbnail container doesn’t show up at all. I feel that this is a very important step to ensure my themes are easily implemented. The last thing I want, is for someone who has just purchased a theme to become frustrated while trying to remove an unneeded feature.

Much of Black Aperture is controlled from a settings panel within WP-Admin. From there, you can change the accent colour, remove the left sidebar entirely, construct the main navigation bar, and even manage ads.

Other Uses

I know many of my readers have their own blogs already and will have no use for Black Aperture as a theme. But perhaps as a learning tool? When you purchase Black Aperture, you have my source files for the entire project, including the original PSD . So if you’re wondering how I did something, or would like to use some of the code for your own work, it might be worth the $25.

Next Up

I’ve already begun working on my second theme. This one entitled Spectre, which is a reference to the fantastic sci-fi RPG game, Mass Effect. The original colour scheme I worked on reminded me of the armor your character wears at the beginning of the game. Spectre has an entirely different focus, and is aimed at the web professional. It’s a portfolio/showcase theme that will be based on the innards of Black Aperture, but you wouldn’t know that from looking at it. Expect Spectre to hit ThemeForest later this week, or early next. You can always follow me on Twitter if you don’t want to miss it.

How Write-offs Work

It took me a while to really grasp how you write things off, and when you actually save money. It’s not until you file your income tax that you get a break on the purchases you’ve made, and to sum it up – you take your total net income and subtract your deductibles. The new total is your taxable income. The more you spend, the less tax you have to pay. But at the same time, depending on the tax bracket you’re in, you’re spending a dollar to save 30-40 cents.

What You Can Write-off

There’s a great deal of things you can claim as tax write-offs, some of which are quite obvious. Others, likely not. Personally, I work from home and don’t do any traveling for business purposes. So I’m not able to write-off a percentage of my vehicle or gas expenses, as I otherwise would if I frequently had to travel to meet with clients. Some of the obvious deductibles that apply to freelance web design and development include…

• Computer Hardware
  desktop computer, laptop computer, monitor, etc.
• Computer Peripherals
  keyboards, mice, speakers, printers, external storage drives, etc.
• Computer Software
  OS upgrades, any apps specific to your work
• Web Services
  web hosting, domain registration, project management, invoicing, client management, etc.
• Office Furniture
  desk, desk chair, lighting, bookcases, end tables, lounge chair, etc.
• Office Supplies
  writing utensils, paper, ink, etc.
• Continued Learning
  magazine subscriptions, courses, seminars, conferences, etc.
• Self Promotion
  any kind of advertising – print or web, business cards, stationary, etc.
• Sub-Contracting
  anyone you hire to help with your work

And the not-so-obvious…

• Utilities
  percentage of rent/mortgage, electricity, gas, water, phone, mobile phone, cable, internet, etc.
• Dental & Medical
  regular dental visits, fillings, repairs, prescription drugs, hospital rooms, etc.
• Travel Expenses
  car payments, gas, hotels, dining
• Moving Expenses
  hired movers, truck and equipment rentals, etc.

Again, deductibles will vary depending on your profession and your position – whether you work from home or not. As a freelance web designer working from home, I’m able to take advantage of about 90% of the write-offs mentioned above.

Aside from these things, you’ll also catch a break the more dependents you have. Since I have a small family of my own, I get a few thousand taken off the top right out of the gate. I believe in total, my deductions this year were about $8,000.

Preparing for the Accountant

The worst thing you can do, is go to your accountant with a stack of receipts and invoices. Take a few hours and get yourself organized. Your accountant doesn’t actually need to see every single receipt and invoice you have, but you do need record of everything. As a general rule, I don’t write anything off unless I have proof of purchase.

What I have found that works well, is coming up with summary lists for my accountant. I categorize my income and expenses and present her with lists of each, so she can see breakdowns without having to page through invoices and receipts, and has quick access to total amounts. This past year, I was in and out within half an hour and it cost me just over $100 for her time. Where as, had I gone in unprepared, it would have taken significantly longer and cost much more.

Hopefully this helps to shed some light for those not in the know. And perhaps even entice some who have been on the fence about freelancing. If I missed anything significant, do let me know by leaving a comment.

Stale. Wait, is that Mold?

The first thing I had to do, was get get people talking about my blog and my work again. It’s been a while since I’ve done something or rolled out a project that’s received a lot of attention, and my previous design was quickly approaching it’s three year anniversary (November 1). The response to this new design has been amazing and I’ve already been featured in a bunch of showcase galleries and mentioned in a handful of articles, which has resulted in a substantial increase in traffic. Whoo!

I Probably Should Have Hung Onto…

One thing I took for granted over the years was passive income – making money from projects that require little-to-no maintenance. When Feed Icons was in its prime and prior to the Google smack-down on the text link ad services, I was making $500-$600 each month from ads. Sure, those aren’t huge numbers, but that’s enough to cover a few bills or purchase eight or nine full priced games.

In the late months of 2007, shortly after launching a redesign, I decided to sell Feed Icons. I banked half of the money to help prepare for my wife’s maternity leave, and picked up a glorious 40″ Samsung TV. Clearly, I don’t regret making that move. But I soon realized just how nice it was to receive a couple hundred bucks each month from the AdSense on that site.

In my last post, many people suggested re-introducing ads by way of a service like BuySellAds.com. I signed up and was approved for a beta account the same day. After spending a bit of time setting things up, I thought it was foolish to use this service and lose 25% off the top of every sale, when I could host and manage the ads myself. Sure, there’s a bit more maintenance involved and I spent about 6 hours setting it all up, but I get to keep 100% of the profit. Once I found my way around, OpenX proved to be just what I needed to get the job done. Now it’s dead simple to swap ads in and out, and even schedule them so I don’t have to remember when to take them down. It’s been about 48 hours since I soft launched, and 6 of 8 of the ad spots are already reserved.

Keeping Up Appearances

When I made the switch to working for a design firm back in 2007, I stopped maintaining a lot of my online profiles on social networking sites. So, to anyone new that came across my blog, work, or caught wind of a project I was involved in, it appeared I had fallen off the internet. Again, I took services like Carbonmade and LinkedIn for granted. I’ve been using both for years now, and have made several connections with both new clients and freelance allies through them. But when I stopped maintaining them, I stopped making new connections. A couple days after giving my Carbonmade portfolio an overhaul, I received a very promising lead from someone who found me there. Granted, that was by way of the interview I just did a few days ago, but still. Had I not updated my portfolio, I doubt they would have wanted to speak me.

But Wait, There’s More…

I’m feeling pretty good about the progress I’ve made in improving my online presence and generating a passive income revenue stream. And that’s just in the span of a couple weeks. Here’s my short list of other ways to expand and grow…

Release Some WordPress Themes

I like to think that my rates are reasonable, but I don’t come cheap by any means. It’s always a drag when I’m replying to a new lead and I know full well I won’t be hearing from that person again. Although I’ve started offering customization of premium themes, there are still a lot of people who want something designed by me but don’t have the budget for it. I’m going to release both free and premium themes in the very near future. Some of which will be inspired heavily by some of my more popular work.

Start a New Side-Project

I thought this was going to be difficult, but I’ve already established a partnership relationship with a developer and we’re well on our way in the brainstorming stage. While this will be a side-project, it will be seeing some dedicated time from myself and the developer over the next couple months.

Share My Knowledge and Experience

I wish I had more tutorials and tips in my archives, but I’m lacking that department big time. I’m going to make an effort to release more of that sort of content in the form of articles and screencasts in the coming months. The topic of freelance seems to be one that many people are willing to chime in on, so I’m thinking of keeping the flow of posts like this coming as well.

What Do You Want to See From Me?

I can come up with whatever ideas I like, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to fly. After-all, most of them rely on you to accept and desire them to be truly successful.

I’ve thought of taking my design skills in different directions, like branching out into the real world and trying my hand at some posters, buttons, and other geek merchandise. But would anyone want that sort of thing? Perhaps there’s something else you would love to see my trademark grunge style inflicted on?

Client Handling Know-How

Handling clients can be tricky business. There are many different breeds of client, and identifying them early on is key in how you handle them moving forward. I’ve heard of some people taking the “all clients are equal” approach, but I really don’t understand how that would work. You wouldn’t handhold a client who is well informed in the area you’re dealing with. And at the opposite end of the spectrum, you wouldn’t skip over the basics with a low-tech client. Determining what type of client you’re dealing with and addressing their needs accordingly can make our break your relationship.

There may very well be certain clients that you don’t want to deal with at all. Personally, the “always urgent” client really gets under my skin. But unfortunately, they’re probably the hardest to feel out in the beginning. It’s usually not until the project is live that you start hearing from them at all hours of the day (or night) in a panic. Generally, I’ve been open to working with people of all flavors and haven’t discriminated against those that might not be ideal.

Picking & Choosing Projects

Being a web designer with front end development skills, I’m able to take on projects of all shapes and sizes. From design jobs, to churning out (awesome) standards compliant XHTML/CSS templates, to full-blow blog design from start to finish. I can do it all, which gives me the flexibility to take on whichever I’m feeling most inclined to work on at the time, or arrange my calendar in a way that gives me a nice variation in the type of work I’m doing.

Like clients, there are projects that are less desirable and realizing which aren’t your favourite is just as important as sniffing out a potential problem client. For me, I avoid start-ups and larger corporate jobs like the plague, which are often very similar when it comes to paper work and politics. Being a solo freelancer, smaller projects work best for me – anything that would require more than a month of my time needs to be seriously considered. And this isn’t due to the workload – regardless of if I’m working on a single project over a couple months, or 2 or 3 smaller projects, I’m working all the same. Simply put, I need variety. Every time I’ve been on a project for more than 3 or 4 weeks, I’ve started to lose interest toward the end, which drags down motivation in a big way. So what is normally the most exciting part of the project, turns out being borefest and something I can’t get away from soon enough. The odd time it has worked out and I’ve enjoyed my time on a larger project right to the end, but I steer clear from them for the most part.

Another down side to taking on bigger projects, is having to miss out on many projects with short(er) timelines. Or even worse, not being able to help a previous client in a time of need.

Premature Panic Attack

Nearly 6 months ago I made a triumphant return to freelance web design. I had been working with a design studio for a year prior and was eager to jump back into some exciting projects with previous clients. Right out of the gate, I was booked for 2 months solid, and within a week of making my announcement, I found myself with no availability until the middle of the summer. This was great! I was excited to have so many people eager to have work done by me, and my calendar was full of projects that I was really looking forward to being a part of. During that time, I continued to receive work inquiries, but since my availability was so scarce, not many of them panned out. Regardless, I always sent a fully detailed reply with my rates and an estimate for the job in question.

A couple months in, leads started to slow down and I found that I was getting more “tire kickers” than anything else. Many people would write just to ask my rate and availability and that was the end of it. But again, I continued to send detailed replies to each and every one. It got to the point where I was starting to get nervous about not having enough work lined up. Granted, at the time I still had 5 or 6 weeks booked, but I have always been used to 2 or 3 months of projects lined up in my calendar at any given time. In this situation, I ignored my better judgment in an attempt to line up some new work, and it came back to kick my ass like I feared it would.

Making Mistakes

A rather large project for one of the world’s leading car manufacturers came my way. It was a big project, with a big budget, and it was just what I needed to fill my calendar for a couple months to come. Mistake number 1. I setup a call with them to get all the details and line up some dates. It went very well and I was lead to believe we would be starting the project on September 1. Since this was a decent sized project, I wanted to get a formal outline of all of the required components so I could prepare a comprehensive time estimate and quote. They needed some time to get that together, so I agreed to give them 2 weeks to sort things out. In the mean time, I would keep September 1 through October open for them. Mistake number 2. During that 2 weeks, I had several new leads come in, all of which I had to inform that I didn’t have exact dates open as I had a large project pending. Mistake number 3. Unsurprisingly, I heard back from very few of them.

July 31 rolls around, which is the deadline I had given this client to produce their specs. I actually touched base with them a couple days prior to ensure they were on track to deliver, to which I was assured they were. I didn’t hear from them. I gave them 24 hours leeway, but they failed to come through. I followed up and was met with a half-assed apology, a mediocre excuse, and a promise that the specs would surface within 24 hours. At this point, I wrote them off and began to kick myself for ever having dealt with them. I’ve checked in with them a couple times since, and even just last week I was reassured that I would receive the specs – still nothing.

Once I realized that things weren’t going to pan out with this client, I started trying to fill the rather large gap I had left for them in my calendar. Another large project came along with a near identical scope and budget. “Perfect!” I thought. Mistake number 4. This time around, I identified the client as being low-tech and proceed with caution. There were many email exchanges, which were mostly of the question and answer variety. Very time consuming and a little on the frustrating side, but I was determined to land this project. A couple weeks passed, when all of the sudden communication stopped. I followed up asking what had happened, assuming that they might have been talking to a few designers and had decided to go with someone else. But instead was told that the client had actually “given up” on this phase of the project and had passed the torch to her partner, whom I haven’t heard from to this day.

Hanging in the Balance

I’m at a point now where I’m doubting that freelance work is going to cut it. I’m down to only a couple weeks of work lined up, and only a handful of potential projects pending. The really strange part of all this, is how exchanges between myself and potential clients have gone. It’s pretty easy to pick out the copy-pasters, and I’ve had my share of those. But even the people that have clearly written directly to me and seem genuinely excited and ready to move forward on their project have been falling flat. In many cases, I’ve been able to accommodate their timeline and my quote has been within their budget. I can’t help but wonder where the disconnect is?

With my freelance career hanging in the balance, I decided to crank out my redesign in hopes of re-igniting the flame. I realize that my blog has been feeling stale, with a nearly 3 old design. And with my side projects all having been shut down or sold off, I don’t have a lot on the go to get people excited about. So again, it’s my own fault that things have gone the way they have, and no matter how awesome my redesign is (fuck, I love it!), it may be too late.

Normally, I hesitate to be so open about things like this. Especially when it leaves me vulnerable. But I’ve dropped some hints that the waters are choppy on Twitter, and people have expressed genuine concern. I also felt like a douche for being all dramatic with cryptic messages, so here it is. How I may have sabotaged my freelance career. Learn from my mistakes, and don’t be a Twitter douche.

Meet WicketPixie

Named after his two dogs Wicket and Pixie, this WordPress theme pushes the boundaries in more than one direction. At first glance, it might look pretty ordinary. But what’s under the hood is anything but ordinary.

Sources

The bulk of the development went into the Source Manager. Built from the ground up by Chris J. Davis, the Source Manager gives you the ability to catalog all of the social networks you take part in. The data is gathered via RSS feeds and stored in the WordPress database. Once a Source has been added, a widget is automatically created that displays the most recent 5 items. You can place the widgets in one of the 6 dynamic sidebars which make up the right side of the theme. One widget in particular called My Profiles, is a compiled list of all of your sources. Sorted by name and listed with the source’s favicon, which is fetched and stored on your server.

Activity Stream

But that’s not the only use for Sources. One of the options when adding a source, is “Include in Activity Stream?” The Activity Stream grabs the content stored in the database and displays it in typical lifestream fashion. The difference here, is with the content being pulled from the database, your Activity Stream is archived from the date the first source was created. Typically, lifestreams only grab whatever data is available in RSS feeds, which is normally 10-20 items per feed. WicketPixie’s Activity Stream is paginated, with 50 items per page.

Faves

Aggregating your own content is great, but Chris also wanted to display recent items from his favourite sites. Faves is a quick and dirty aggregator that lets you do just that. To create a Fave, only the title of the site and the feed URL are entered. From there, the most recent 5 items are displayed for each feed. And just like Sources, the favicon is grabbed as well. Faves can be sorted quickly via an auto-populated dropdown menu which is displayed for logged in users.

Design Customization

One downside of using a theme, is that it’s hard for your site to stand out in the crowd. While you can’t give it a complete visually overhaul from the WP-Admin, we’ve packed in a handful of design options that let the user quickly and easily change the background image, how it’s positioned, and if it scrolls with the page or is fixed at the top. Wolfgang Bartelme agreed to let us bundle his gorgeous Solid Wood wallpaper with the theme, and there are four variations to choose from. Also, font families and colours can be changed across the board by using the built-in colour picker, or entering a hex value. Of course, if you want to really customize the design, you can dive right into the hand-coded CSS and start hacking away.

More to Come

I’ve actually only given you a quick overview of the theme and it’s capabilities. It can really do a lot out of the box, and judging by the response on Chris’ blog already, this is the sort of thing people have been waiting for. I can’t take the credit for coming up with the concept, but I’m very proud of the final product Chris J. Davis and I were able to fabricate from Chris’ vision. There’s no exact date for a public release yet, but Chris has mentioned in the next few weeks. So I would assume by July at the latest. Stay tuned to his blog for an official release.

And for those interested in learning more about WicketPixie and want to see it in action, check out Chris’ screencast.

This is definitely not news for those following me on Twitter, as I’ve been dropping hints over the past couple weeks and finally came right out and said it a few nights ago. But for everyone else, I’m pleased to announce that I’ve journeyed back to the land of freelance web design and I have no intentions on leaving.

A Better Fit

It’s all about timing, and at this time I need flexibility most of all. I can’t imagine having a new baby and being away for 8-10 hours a day, leaving my wife Deanna to fend for herself. While I know she could get through it, that’s beside the point. I love that I’m able to leave my desk at any time to lend a hand or relieve Deanna of baby duties if need be. Working with a team and having a boss and managers to answer to doesn’t leave that sort of breathing room.

Family isn’t the only reason for this change, though. In my previous role, I hardly spent any time doing design work, which was entirely by choice. The vast majority of projects that I was involved in were large corporate websites. When you see photos of me, or you look at my work, do you think “corporate”? Clearly, it wasn’t a good fit. But aside from the type of work, I missed being one-on-one with clients. And I really missed handling projects all the way from the initial quote request through to completion. The sense of pride I would feel after 2 or 3 weeks of putting my all into something, and having clients tell me how much they appreciate my work and effort.

Correcting Past Mistakes

I was very successfully doing freelance design work previously. But there were many things I could have done better, which lead to tight budgets, consecutive late nights, and not nearly enough time set aside for gaming family. Before I started doing any work, I laid down some ground rules that I intend to follow and started taking steps to ensure I didn’t get myself into the same bad habits.

One of the biggest steps I’ve taken so far, was bringing in a partner to help with some of the administrative stuff. My beautiful wife Deanna has willingly assumed many roles that have taken a lot of the pressure off, and given me a bit more breathing room. It’s a pretty sweet setup we’ve come up with – since one of us always has the baby (unless she’s sleeping), the other can be working. Regardless of who that might be, shit is still getting done.

Open for Business

I’m actually nearing the end of my third week already. And having just opened the floodgates yesterday, I’ve found myself booked until May. Which is actually really good, if you’re looking to get some work done as I was typically booked 3-5 months in advance last time I was freelancing. If you are in the market for a new blog or a redesign, be sure to get in touch and we’ll see if we can work together.

On the Side

Client work isn’t all I have on the go right now. For months, I’ve been plugging away on a redesign for my blog. I finalized the homepage design some time ago and have moved onto the article layout. It’s coming along great and speed has picked up significantly as of late. The design is merely a small portion of the job, though. I’m working on building out a more intuitive portfolio among other new additions. In case you missed it, I posted some teasers on Flickr a while back.

Additionally, I’m going to make an effort to write more about web design and WordPress based development. I’ve got a couple drafts started already and a few more topics in mind. Stay tuned for those.

And finally, it looks like I’m going to venture into an area I said I would never get into it – I’m going to release some free WordPress themes. At this point, you’re not getting any more details. But I will say that they’ll be based on some of my previous work.

Wait, That Can’t be the Only Reason

Oh, a clever one you are! No, time is not the only factor here. This site has always sat kind of awkwardly with me. As much as I’m proud of the work I’ve done and the service Andrew and I have brought to the community, I’ve always had this negativity surrounding the whole ordeal. Think of why we built this site to begin with. Because Microsoft has a store with invisible products that you can’t return if you don’t like them. The fact that we’re nearing the two year anniversary of the Xbox 360 and there’s still no way to preview themes on the Marketplace makes me fucking irate! Where else is this sort of scheme acceptable? It’s bad enough that we have to pay for what is essentially desktop wallpaper which is freely available on every other platform that makes use of them, but we can’t even see what we’re buying until it’s paid for. And finally – there’s absolutely no refunds for dissatisfied customers. Now that’s a great commerce model. Yes, I am bitter – we’ve been through this.

Busted Consoles Take Their Toll

I tried to take the death of my Xbox 360 lightly. After all, I absolutely love the Xbox 360 and will defend it in the “this console is better than that console” debate any day of the week. But I will admit, that having two consoles die on me within a two week period definitely took a toll on me. Having a shiny PlayStation 3 in my living room helped ease my nerves, but also leveled the playing field quite a bit. I never thought I would own a PS3. Not to mention, be stoked to own a PS3. But I totally am. And because of that, I think I’ve lost a lot of my enthusiasm toward Xbox 360. You have to admit, it’s fully ironic that the only reason I even own a PS3 is because of Microsoft and their shitty hardware.

Oh, and There’s Also That Other Thing…

Unless you follow me on Twitter or Flickr, you may not have caught wind that my wife is pregnant and we’re due at the end of January! This has given me good reason to really shape up and clear some things off my plate. I’ve had a couple projects lingering for months and I’m finally motivated to do something with them. Passing them off to someone else is ideal, since I won’t have to deal with them at all any more and the extra income from the sale(s) could definitely be put to use – doing a baby’s room is not cheap! Most importantly, I’m going to need time. Currently, I’m busy from the time I wake up until I go to bed – which is normally around or after mid-night. I’m simply not going to be able to do that in a few months, so I’m making an effort to tie up those loose ends and get my shit in order.

Interested in Buying?

If you or someone you know is interested in taking Dashboard Themes off our hands, be sure to head over to the auction for all the details. We’re really not sure how we’re going to do here and are totally open to negotiations.

As of now, we have two full weeks left with the site. That’s if it sells. In the mean time, I’ll continue to update it with new themes. We haven’t discussed what we’ll do if it doesn’t sell and I really have no idea at this point.

1. Don’t swear online.
2. Don’t discuss politics online (especially if your views are controversial).
3. Avoid personal blogs under your trading name – that’s what aliases are for!
4. Definitely avoid having your personal blog on your business website unless it’s about business (trust me, your clients are not interested in many beers you had on the weekend).
5. Don’t post any photos or videos of yourself that you wouldn’t want your mother to see (and if you have a really liberal mother then insert the name of someone more conservative into that sentence!).
6. Avoid inflammatory comments (including jokes) about sex, race or religion.
7. Don’t join any controversial websites under your name or your trading name.

If you’ve been a reader for a while, or even a month for that matter, you’d know why I found this funny. I’ve broken several of their key guidelines and yet, I find myself booked for months on end. Why is that? Not everyone lives their lives “by the book.” And I’m not just talking about myself here, but my clients as well. Over the past 2 years I’ve had the pleasure of working with dozens of amazing people that have come to me via my blog. I’ve been told countless times that people appreciate my openness and honesty and they feel they know me before we even start working on their project. And wouldn’t you know it – I’ve only had a single sour experience and if I were to tell you the profession of all of the people I’ve worked with, this person would probably be your least likely candidate for turning out to be a bag of shit.

Honestly, I’m not worried about making the wrong impression or turning off a potential client. This blog is who I am and what I’m about. I couldn’t care less if you think my work or work ethics are sub par because I swear or post pictures of my cats ballsack on Flickr. If that kind of thing would turn you off working with me, you’re probably not the kind of person I would want to deal with anyway.