Freelancing in Real Life

One of the best parts of spending so much time on the web is meeting people through a casual tweet or blog comment, then later exploring more about who they are and finding out you’ve got a lot in common.

I think I first met Brian Casel because he left a comment here on AnywhereMan. It turns out Brian is a lot like me. We both do web design/development, are both heavily into WordPress, we both play guitar, and we both run our businesses from home. We’ve since interacted quite a bit, and I’ve even used one of his WordPress themes in a client project. He builds AWESOME themes by the way.

Find out more about Brian and his business-from-home life in today’s interview. He discusses his company, CasJam, his premium WordPress theme site, ThemeJam, and his brand-spankin’ new WordPress theme for building proposals that is especially useful to freelancers and small business owners, WPBids. Look for a full AnywhereMan review of WPBids in the near future.

I appreciate Brian taking the time to chat with me today and wish him continued success in all of his ventures!

PS – Brian also occasionally blogs on sites like Freelance Switch and Mashable. Nice!

Here is part two of my first “Startup Saturday” in which I built and launched a new business/site in a day. That site is TweakMyTheme.com.

Please note that some of the steps in this process are simple enough for anybody who has the ability to place orders online to complete, i.e. ordering a domain, ordering a hosting account, etc. You’ll see me flash a link in the video, but here’s a link to my exact steps for launching a theme-based WordPress website fast.

Amazing enough, I just publicized this launch for the first time yesterday and I’ve already gotten an overwhelmingly positive response and some potential business.

What kind of business are you thinking of launching? Would the ability to get it off the ground on a single Saturday motivate you to pursuit it?

I love throwing new business ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.This mentality has led me to practice something I call “Startup Saturday” where I essentially launch new web business ventures in a day. Here’s part one of the vlog for my latest launch: TweakMyTheme.com.

TweakMyTheme.com is a WordPress theme customization service. I’ve customized quite a few WP themes in the past, so the service itself is nothing new. However, lately I’ve felt that it’s important to package certain skills into “products” and give them their own website. Sometimes listing everything I do (design, ASP.NET programming, video, SQL design, etc) on a single site results in a watered-down offering. Maybe I should just focus on one of those skills altogether, but that’s another story…

I spent a Saturday a few weeks ago putting the site, plan, and content together. To further complicate my life, while working on the TweakMyTheme site I also came up with two more startup-in-a-day ideas, so I’m already looking for the next free Saturday to launch another one. It’s a lot of fun and I’m getting good practice, if nothing else.

Am I off my rocker? Is it better to launch a lot of “small” businesses and see what works, or do you think one well-planned venture is more powerful?