Poll: Can You Make Money Without the Internet?
Today, freelancers tend to rely on constant, always-on access to their Internet connection. Long gone — for most of us — are the slow and unreliable dial-up connections which we used to rely on, replaced by high-speed broadband and cable networks that we can take advantage of without tying up the phone.
Unfortunately, a perfectly functioning connection isn’t always possible — technical issues arise, infrastructure crashes, or simply doesn’t exist in rural areas. In Australia, we tend to think we’re trying to pick the best ISP out of a bunch of bad options, with my own experiences reflecting a mediocre but generally problem-free run with Exetel to a terrible experience with iiNet. I don’t know how it is in other parts of the world, but this week’s poll question is: do you depend on an Internet connection for your freelancing business or have you structured things so that you’re not at the whim of your provider’s reliability? Are you a true Web 2.0 worker or a more traditional businessperson?
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First of all, sorry for my bad english!
i can talk about my country: Italy.
Internet connection is much more expensive than other countries in Europe (or in the rest of the world, as i can read…) and the dial-up connection are quite slow but for what i need for my “business” is enough.
You can make a value change reading the price of the most important Italy broadband service (www.alice.it Telecom Italia company).
The real problems in Italy (not in the rest of Europe) is how freelance workers are considerate, but this is another point of discussion. ^_^
bye!
Wow… maybe I was too quick to say that Australia is getting more affordable. €29.95/month for ADSL2 unlimited (based on my limited understanding of the Italian language). That’s a pretty good deal. Unlimited plans do not really exist in Australia (Telstra has an unlimited ADSL2+ plan for $330/month). We have to be happy to get by on 50GB for $50/month plus line rental.
Be happy, I pay around 60€ for 6mg in Spain
Really??? Italy — almost center of Europe and connection is so expensive??? I can’t believe this!
In Russia I have 15mbit and private IP for $20 and waiting for more cheaper times
and i pay 20 euro for 512 kilobits in albania
how is the most f***ed now?
I do need the internet, I could probably get by for short stints without it, somehow but it really would be a pain.
The internet has become so omni present that we forget the olden days. Until something bad happens… dun dun duuuunnn…
I personally require an Internet connection 100% of the time. If my connection goes down, I immediately lose productivity. I share you thoughts on ISPs, here in Canada it is a matter of which one is less worse. Rogers and Bell unfortunately both have poor, almost annoying customer service, Rogers especially, and when service goes down it is anyone’s guess when it will be back up. They have the monopoly and get away with it.
I have even considered a second ISP connection just to have as a backup when my main one goes down (which happens once a week). I think the right focus for me isn’t how to become less reliant, but how to make sure I always have a connection.
You missed a poll option. Something like: “The internet is completely irrelevant to my business, so I’m not really bothered about it”. Option 3 comes close but still assumes that *everyone* has the internet whether for business or pleasure.
Freelancing needn’t involve communications technology. You could be a freelance blacksmith, or a freelance landscape gardener, getting as much business as you can handle via word of mouth…
Not saying I’m in that position (I’m a web developer!) but sometimes we need to think further outside our own boxes…
And I know that only people browsing the web will see this article, but it needn’t be on their own PC…
At first I had the poll option “I don’t have the Internet” included until I realized providing an option solely for those visiting via an Internet cafe was overkill.
I really rely on the Internet for everything. Everything I have is stored in the cloud (whether it is a public or personal cloud).
I’m from Australia and I really don’t find Internet connectivity here that expensive or complicated any more. I get by with two connections: home ADSL (unfortunately, can’t get ADSL2) through Internode and HSPA through Exetel. I mean, for $37.50/month you get a 5GB completely wireless, very fast, VoIP capable HSPA connection and 5GB is more than enough for me working remotely about 5 hours a day (I love the battery on the newest MacBook Pro 17″).
To me, my biggest enemy is the lack of publicly accessible power. I mean, more cafes have wireless Internet than they have a place to plug in and recharge.
I started freelancing as a sideline, and since I used oDesk, I need the Internet. However, I’ve started doing online jobs that require most work to be done offline. With that, I use the Internet only for communication and sending the work. There are other means to communicate, but it’s much faster and more convenient when done via the net. Although I definitely think that freelance work without the Internet is possible.
I’m a web designer. No web, no business.
I too have limited choices available. We do have cable broadband, but it’s very, very flaky and cuts out for hours at a time. Satellite’s not an option — there’s a big honkin’ mountain between me and the downlink. Since it’s a business expense, I went with wireless broadband as a backup. Plug a modem into a USB port and connect through the cell phone system. It’s much slower but it’s better than being totally dead in the water when cable’s down.
So I suppose my answer is: both. I am dependent on the internet but have tried to structure it so I’m not dependent on the reliability of one provider.
I’m a web developer, so you’d kinda think I would be stuck without internet… but… I do all my development on a server I have located within my office.
So although if the net it down, I wouldn’t be able to send emails, do research or upload finished work, I could still work – probably more productively if the truth was known because I wouldn’t be constantly distracted!
Worst case scenario I can pop whatever I need to upload onto my laptop and head home or somewhere with public wifi… failing that I have a pay as you go mobile broadband dongle
I don’t think i can do business without internet. May be for 1 or 2 days max, but not beyond that.
I guess the second part to the question that important to me is… “how long does it have to be down before it affects my business.”
As a web developer, obviously… a good, reliable internet connection is key.
However, if I didn’t have it 24/7, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Most of my development and code writing can be done on my local machine, which I have setup as a server as well. So, I can do pretty much everything I need locally, then upload it when it’s ready to go live.
As a web developer I need the internet for my business to function… should the internet become unavailable my business stops. I have been working professionally on the internet for 3 years now.
I in the same boat as Carol – I always have multiple computers, including my laptops, setup with the server elements I need (sendmail, mysql, php, apache, etc). That was I can do development work when I’m on the road.
It’s interesting that you list Exetel as mediocre but reliable. I’ve been with them for several years now (for ADSL1 – no ADSL2 here in the stix), and while once every few weeks the upstream service goes down for a couple of hours, in general i’ve been exceptionally pleased with their package (if not their service). Every now and then I’ll compare them to the best of the other packages out there… and I’m still with them.
Exetel’s packages are great and they always seemed to be able to provide a connection, though I almost never got the 8,000 speeds I was paying for with them. What annoyed me is that when I did have minor problems I got no response to my support tickets and there’s no phone number to call. Other than that they’re not bad. Though if serious, income-destroying connection problems arose and were not answered then who knows if I’d hold the same opinion!
Very few people get the 8Mbps speeds with ADSL1.
The reason why Telstra only offered 1.5Mbps is that is all they could safely guarantee. With 8Mbps, they were giving in to the demand of ADSL2 without having to upgrade their network.
8Mbps is a theoretical maximum, but this varies with distance from the exchange. For instance, my average sync speed to the exchange is around 5.6Mbps on my 8Mbps line (although actual download speeds obviously vary with everything else that limits the connection speed on the Internet).
I have no conclusive evidence that the speed was Exetel’s fault since I was never on another 8Mpbs connection at that location, though it wasn’t the real problem for me, and I was fairly satisfied with Exetel overall at least as far as Australian ISPs go. Where I am now, I’m further from the exchange than I was before and getting closer to 8Mpbs than ever — whether that it was Exetel’s fault at the last address or the exchanges are just made better in Melbourne than on the Gold Coast I don’t know
.
You were probably on a RIM, there are a lot of RIMs on the Gold Coast. Good ‘ole Ron Clarke is petitioning the Government to get us early-trial access to the new NBN programme. Let’s see how that turns out.
Couldn’t do without the internet, full stop.
If your internet goes down there is always a local coffee shop or Barnes n Noble.
in italy free wi-fi is a mirage!…no coffee’s, no “bar” or other public place with free public connection.
I saw in Paris 3 years ago it’s a normal way to stay in a cofee and working with your laptop and being on the net…like we see in american movies at Starbucks or other….
I was wondering of that!….
I’m a web developer. And as Carol Logan Newbill above says: No web, no business.
But currently I’m tending to say: No web, MORE business – the option to use an internet connection whenever you need it (or rather NOT need it) does lead to problems like trying to avoid important work or finishing your current project. So during the last few weeks I somtimes took my netbook and sat down someplace else, where net connectivity is rare, and got a lot of pressing work done.
cu, w0lf.
I never had issues with my internet connection. Now that I think about it, my business relies a 100% on this. Fortunately, here in France we have unlimited ADSL2 (phone, net and tv) with free international calls to phone lines for 29.90€/month.
Without Internet I was unemployed, actually I never had consider working like designer, in my country Spain) and specially in my city (Malaga) designers starve.
Here from South Africa,
Very slow and expensive. We live in hopes of a better internet connection future.
I always laugh at the story that my boyfriend tells of some French consultants at his office. One of the French guys kept on opening and closing his email. Someone eventually asked what was wrong. He said that “it keeps hanging”. The South African reply? No, wait, it’s still opening!
Says it all,
Juliet
As a web developer, I can’t do anything without the Internet. But sometimes it’s good to go down the route of “what would I be doing for work if there was no Internet?” Sometimes the answers I come up with can be pretty interesting.
i thought the poll is about what if the internet does not exist ? .. wow .. i don’t want to imagine .. !!
I know I can live without the internet, I have. I have been a designer for 25 years, I’ve lived without a computer. Do I want to still? No, not really. The convenience of uploading comps and email communication make my life a lot easier. Lately I have been diving deep into Social Networking, for my clients and marketing myself. I must admit on particularly busy days sending messages, reading blogs and trying to keep up with all my messages, I long for an x-acto, a steal edged ruler and a can of rubber cement.
I live in such a rural area that the local business would be too small and not very profitable. If my personal (home office) internet went out I would probably just go to the local library or community college to do any file transfer or email, etc. If ALL internet went out? I think I’d be a carpenter
Freelancers we do heavily rely on the internet but the basics we practice could be used elsewhere in Business. I think that all of us can work without the internet, just it would be bumpy ride to start with.
I feel if you are a web designer, you are an artist, you may suit interior design, for example. I feel every field of expertise on the internet have also a counterpart in the real world and the people who do things online could easily adapt.
Could not do my work without internet connection. Luckily we have pretty good ISPs here in Finland but it really depends where you live. Big cities always have the cheapest and best connections. I just moved and had to cut my lovely 100/100 connection (33e/mo) and buy 8 meg for 39e/mo. Good thing is there’s no limits how much data you can transfer.
As a web designer/developer with clients all over the world, I would say that an Internet connection is pretty important.
Not so much for the actual developing, I can do that locally. But for communication, reference (php.net, w3c, etc.) and all the awesome online tools it’s really nice.
If I couldn’t have access to the Internet for some weird reason, I would find another thing to do with my life. There are so many interesting things to do out there.
At the moment I live in Bangkok, Thailand and my connection is pretty decent and not too expensive. Not too fast, but reliable.
Internet varies by region in the US. I have no problems in the Chicago area, but my mom, one state over in Michigan, even in an urban area, can’t get DSL at all. So it’s uneven. Prices are not bad, however — I pay $25 per month for DSL — though prices too are uneven and regional.
As for my need of the Internet, I fall somewhere between the first option and the second. I can work without the Internet, but not for long. I’m a freelance writer, and I do a huge amount of research online. However, communication (including getting and submitting assignments) and marketing (including my blog) are the main online time-consumers, because I can do a lot of writing without being online. So while it’s true that work would be impossible without the Internet, I can work for short bursts without the Internet.
Also in Aus, I telework full time so have a prepaid 3g usb modem as a backup to my ADSL connection. The downside is that it costs me $15 if the net goes down.
I chose the second option, however I do need the internet when I’m uploading websites or I am coding an internet based program.
In VietNam, I use service ADSL download 5120kbps, upload 640kbps with price 10EUR/Month.
I rely on the internet for my income and writing gigs. Although I have published work through magazines that did not require the use of the internet, I prefer to use it as my main income and revenue source.
I work for a company that makes Signal Boosters and Antennas for Wi-Fi networks. It’s not always an ISP issue. The weakest link in any Wi-Fi network is the client device. Laptop and handheld device often don’t have the power to reach back to the WAP, (Wireless Access Point). Our Signal boosters reach out and actually use digital technology to increase the incoming signal. It’s great technology, check it out, Luxul Wireless.
I use the Internet for marketing and communication, but do most real work offline
Maybe !