Another benefit of this model is to help allow time for researching other services you may wish to provide. Instead of having to focus on the work piece, you can focus strategically on learning new skills and researching other possible service offerings. If you are a great web designer, why not learn more about video production, etc.

Anyway, just my two cents. I enjoyed the article. Thanks!

As a freelancer and a consultant I usually visit my clients, so I don´t miss that “office environment” that much. I love searching the web for inspiration and I like to discuss with my friends that work on areas that are are also creative-related. But I want to grow in my career, be more.

This article shows an interesting direction.

I’d like to be part of an environment like that.

http://www.helvecio.com

Thanks for the information; I’ll definitely be sharing it with the rest of our small business market.

http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/story.php?title=Starting_a_Remote_Business_Remotely

Second, I wish you luck. As a successful freelancer now, I’ve found that it’s incredibly easy to make money in this business if you know what you’re doing. But your enemy is time and getting tasks accomplished in the timeframe of many clients. And, sad to say, you’ll occasionally bump into bad freelancers out there who want you to do a project estimate and perhaps a 20 minute screen mockup — just so they can stop talking to you and can take your estimate and 20 minute screen mockup as inspiration for how they will respond to the client. You’ll also encounter clients who are what I call “children” — for instance, young, ambitious guys who want you to build them a video sharing site for $500 USD, which is completely unrealistic.

On this site, the cartoons and the 12 Breeds of Clients — those are so true.

The only thing which I question (and this has been mentioned many times previously) is quality, both front and back end. A website can look great at the front but the code can be an absolute dog when you get into it, conversely an outsourced front end design (in my opinion) often simply lacks creative flare.

And no offense meant at all but Bullet Web Studio kind of falls into that category, this website (freelanceswitch) is superbly designed, and you can see the quality oozing out of every corner. I feel that the sites listed on Bullet lack the attention to detail and perfection of the increasingly high web standards these days.

I could be totally off the mark, and my comment could be irrelevant to outsourcing as some might argue that quality control is down to you, not the outsourced company/individual. But those were the first things that came to mind.

There are two great books on the subject (not necessarily for web work, but automating business in general):

E-Myth, by Michael Gerber
The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris

You might check them out.

Good on you for making a business out of this Andrew – I don’t for one minute see this as an ‘easy’ way to make money