Web Worker Daily

In an effort to curtail my disastrous gadget spending habits, I’ve decided to take a look at devices I’ve purchased with the stated intent of increasing my productivity, to see if intentions and reality reflect each other at all. Today, I’m turning my critical gaze on my netbook, which I picked up just over half a year ago.

My particular netbook is the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but the model doesn’t really matter. It’s a light device with a 10-inch screen, a small keyboard and an all-day eight hour battery. When I bought it, it was freshly released, and was generating quite a bit of buzz among the mobile computing crowd. One of the first things I did with the Eee PC was to install the Windows 7 beta, and it’s still running the release candidate today. Read the rest of this entry »

While not all web worker are freelancers, a good portion of them are — and a freelance lifestyle is part of the appeal of working from home. The fact is, working as an independent contractor is not all wine and roses. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but there are some key facts people should consider before leaving more permanent work situations for the freelance world.

I spend a lot of time on this site talking directly or indirectly about why I love freelancing, or what makes it so great, but in the interest of being fair and balanced, I want to take a break from my regularly scheduled gushing to point out some very serious pitfalls about working on your own. Many may seem like common sense, but it’s amazing how often it happens that people forget to consider these downsides when choosing to pursue this lifestyle. Read the rest of this entry »

As I sit down each day to do my work, the vast majority of which involves writing (articles, web site content, tweets and blog posts), I can’t help but think about the writing rules drilled into me by past English teachers. In most cases, their advice is still very pertinent, and I write better by adhering to it. But there are a few rules that would prove detrimental to my online work if I continued to follow them. Read the rest of this entry »

Because of its recent return to my working methodology, I want to take a moment to single out a very low-tech web working tool for praise. I’m talking about the sketchbook, that handy little tome in which we can capture and generate some of our best ideas. Not to be confused with the writer’s notebook, mind you, which is a great tool, too, but a different kind of beast.

The sketchbook is a free space for your ideas to play, unbound by lines and ruled margins. It’s a laboratory, a playground, a testing facility and a sounding board. And perhaps best of all, it requires no batteries and can go pretty much anywhere you do. Here’s why I love mine so much, and why any web worker would do well to have their own on hand. Read the rest of this entry »

I was very eager to get in on the Google Wave beta. So much so that I solicited invites from pretty much anyone who even mentioned it on Twitter for about two solid weeks. Eventually, my constant pestering paid off, and I was rewarded with an invite. After the standard delay period before my invite actually came through, I got to waving.

That was roughly a month ago. In the intervening time, I’ve been using Google Wave with a fair degree of consistency, although my time spent with the beta product from Google has dropped off significantly in recent days. I have a fair number of contacts, mostly professional, and it seems like the perfect tool for me, considering the nature of my work, which at the moment is exclusively based online.

So what did I do with Google Wave during the month I had access to it? The answer, sadly, is not much. Not much that I couldn’t already do better elsewhere, anyway. For whatever reason, I just can’t seem to surf the Wave. Read the rest of this entry »

So you’re well into your web working career (hopefully thanks, in part, to the posts featured in our just-released free “Web Work 101″ e-book), and you’ve gotten off to a great start, but after a certain amount of time (it will differ from person to person), things start to lose their zest. The honeymoon is over, so to speak, and it’s time to dig in and build a solid foundation upon which a long lasting career can be built. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, my inbox has been filling up with notices. Notices about the impending renewal date of my web-based server space, and the domain names attached to said space. Which means, as the emails ominously remind me, that once it lapses, neither I nor anyone else will be able to get at that data. I know I’m meant to be terrified of this possibility, but I just can’t muster an appropriate degree of fear.

I thought about it long and hard, but in then end, there were just too many reasons against keeping my own server space in operation, and too many reasons for storing and publishing my data, portfolio, and contact information elsewhere. Here’s what convinced me to stop the madness and save a little money in the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Even in the best of times, a freelance web worker’s income can be spotty and irregular at times. Unlike salaried employees, contractors are subject to sudden and frequent variations in the amount of revenue they can generate at any given time. Those variances can be mitigated, however, by buttressing your revenue through a few out of the ordinary sources. Read the rest of this entry »