One month ago today I left my web developer position with TechTracker and immediately began focusing on building up client work. I’ve been doing web work in some form or another for others since 1998, and while it began as a hobby business it quickly evolved into a way to make some additional cash.

In 2001 I forced myself to keep up to date with the latest and greatest and managed to turn that knowledge into some basic web work. I formed a few relationships with marketing companies and graphic design firms, and suddenly found the business growing. In 2004 I really began paying attention to how well it was working out, and I began the first steps of planning to make it my full-time job.

In early 2006 it was clear that I was fast approaching the level necessary to sustain me full-time, but I was turning down a lot of work because I was working a full-time job, supporting a family, etc. I worked for several months revamping my website, forming a professional image, and trying to prepare myself for the eventual flip.

It came much earlier than anticipated, and the opportunity was a surprise. I began devoting my time to pulling in additional clients and I began working to forge new relationships with companies that would provide recurring work. It’s now been one month since I began and I’ve surprised myself with how much opportunity was out there.

I’ve gotten some excellent work and the variety of it has been enjoyable, and I’m about to begin some larger projects which will be nice. I’m beginning to figure out what type of project schedule works best and I’m slowly adapting to running everything full-time rather than just here-and-there. The technology and the development aspect is the easy part, it’s keep everything organized that’s the problem.

For seven years the work has been tightly integrated with my personal life because it was so minimal it didn’t matter. All of a sudden my leads, clients, estimates, projects, and invoices have snowballed into this giant mass of stuff. I realized right away that my existing methods of organization and project management were about to become seriously wiped out of existence.

Now that things are rolling along a bit I’m going to be posting more work-related entries. I may even need to separate this blog, one for personal and one for work. Right now, the News link on botsko.net leads to this work category only, however I’ll need to customize the rss feed so that it only pulls this category as well.

My future posts on work will be more technical and more enjoyable for clients and fellow developers. Next on my list is to share what I’ve learned about this type of work in the last four weeks.