53 thoughts on “Work! – what is it good for?”

1. Another wonderful Shane post!!

   Is it a comfort to know we’re (many of us) in the same boat?

   Shane, I would love love love to see your t-shirts.

   AmyLee – I’d love to see your blogs. (maybe you could e-mail the addresses to me if it’s too public just to post links?) And I’d be glad if you’d do a post on the whole blogging/website situation. We have a small business, and we had a website for a few years that generated no interest, and now we’re trying to transfer everything to a wordpress blog, because we can control it better, but we’re still very confused.

   DsD – I’m afraid I’m too far away to help you!

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   • sorry – i got to the Spill late here, and i have to head off to work in awhile. But sometime after Saturday (when the work week is over) I will do a Spill post since there seems to be interest.

     steen-

     I wouldn’t rush to switch your blog to WordPress, because Blogger just seriously upgraded the site, and it’s still free. Mimimal coding needed. A quick something to chew on till then, if you’re unaware of it – I remember you said that you wrote children’s books – do you know about lulu.com? I have friends that have put out photography books on there, they were very happy with quality. I know a few other similar companies.

     Shane, don’t know how much you know about t shirt marketing, but i know kind of a lot. So i will do a post.

     I started university as an art major, but ended up with a marketing degree. I’ve never used it in a job, but it’s become quite useful in running my own biz. So if i can pass anything along that helps anyone, it’s worth it.

     And great post, Shane.

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     • Thanks Amy! We’re not switching to wordpress from Blogger, but from a regular website that a friend set up for us that we have no control over at all. So far I’m very happy with WordPress.

       A marketing degree would come in handy! Don’t know a thing about it, and neither does mr.Steenbeck, making the dream of getting by on doing our own thing immensely impractical.

       Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

       And I’ve looked into Lulu. We opted for apple to make similar books of photographs of our wares. I don’t want to self-publish, though, I want to find an agent or a publisher that wants to take me on. I want a career! Sigh. I can dream, can’t I? The problem these days is to get anything looked at. If you don’t know somebody in the business (which I don’t) they’ll just put your manuscript/illustrations into the shredder, so that you can’t sue them later. Same stuff I was up against trying to get anyone to look at an independent feature. You just get tired of banging your head against the wall after a while.

       Whoa! I wasn’t going to go on and on like this. Sorry everyone. If it’s on my mind it’s on my tongue.

     • Steen-

       I don’t want to self-publish, though, I want to find an agent or a publisher that wants to take me on. I want a career! Sigh. I can dream, can’t I? The problem these days is to get anything looked at.

       This is where marketing and social networks and POD’s come in handy. You can self – publish a mockup to promote. If you’re an illustrator for the books, you can do greeting cards and t shirts based on the illustration. And a lot of other products too. Promote via Twitter, Facebook, etc. And generate interest by going to the market for your stuff, and get it out there, as opposed to waiting for the middleman to get you out there.

   • Steen-

     Being a nosy parker sort (i’m usually not!), i clicked on your other link to see your WP site. It’s beautiful! First thing i notice right off, it’s stand alone. Meaning no social network links, add this links or bookmaking links, client lists, or any way for other visitors to the blog to promote or share the site.

     Twitter is an easy way to promote a blog or site. It takes time, but it’s a good way to hook up with people, and get your site out there. People on Twitter are very generous about retweeting and promoting other people. You would probably want to follow architects and interior designers, home decorators, people like that for starters.

     Let’s see if i can get this up here properly – here’s what i have on the corner of my nav bars –

     And Shane, Twitter has a really great online t shirt community. Everyone promotes each other’s stuff on there.

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     • nope, my image didn’t work. But i have icons on my nav bar for addthis, twitter, facebook page, blog, and youtube channel.

     • Here’s the AddThis site – they’ll give you code to copy to put an addthis button in your nav bar or on your site. That way people can bookmark it, share it on Facebook or Twitter, Google, Stumbleupon, and other sites.

       Add This

     • Thank you so much, Amylee! You’re invigorating the whole ‘Spill set with your wisdom.

       I’ll look into adding the nav bar when the site is done. (We have to add a lot of pictures).

       I’ve never ventured into the twitter waters, but it makes sense, when you say it. I had thought about contacting architects, interior designers, etc, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. I don’t think people look in the yellow pages and use a telephone anymore, do they?

     • @Steen- maybe everyone in Europe is just backward, but nobody seeks bidders or awards contracts via twitter or the internet here, at least in the building design and related industries. It’s all phone and fax. But most of all, word of mouth. My stressful pre-holiday week involved getting documents for an interior construction tender out to bidders. I had about two hours to assemble a group of 15+ firms to whom we’d send bidding documents. Some were recommended by the client, most were known to us through previous projects, one walked onto the building site and handed over a portfolio to our site supervisor. None were selected on the basis of a web search or similar.

       I’d say it’s definitely worth while calling architects and interior designers- they don’t have time to surf the net to vet potential firms. When they need them, if you happen to call, they’ll take you. And if they don’t, keep calling back, every couple of months. Do you need someone, should I get back in touch in a couple of months, etc. It doesn’t have to be pushy, just a brief inquiry each time, aimed at planning offices who build nearby.
       If you have a website you can refer to with references and work examples that’s fine, but the initial contact is best made directly. When we send out documentation to bidders, we don’t really care about the firms concerned until we get the bids in. Then it’s down to the cheapest 4 or 5, where we need to check the firm’s ability to deliver on schedule, their qualifications, capacity, etc.
       I don’t want to bore you further with the insalubrious world of selecting building contractors, most of which you probably already know, but if there’s any value in knowing what goes on on the other side of the fence give me a shout.

     • It’s definitely worthwhile contacting the interior designers/home decorator around you (not architects they’ll all be drinking wine and listening to jazz)- I just did a search and your area is teaming with them.

       1 – look at what they do – if antique cabinets isn’t their style,, get them off the list.

       2 – as nilpferd points out(ish) sometimes putting something under their noses, works better. Busy people might not stumble on that perfect cabinet via the net….

       (as you can’t carry these cabinet around – design one of the apple photo books of the carpentry/cabinets – it works being different to than a portfolio… if you’ve designed it well and shows you really care about detail.. (use the photos that you are putting on your site… so it all links)

       as this is a one off to show and make an impression (and an expense)- leave them with a smaller booklet and card/slither of wood ‘branded’- linking to your site.

       3 – don’t pound the streets forever – soul destroying – research 5 and focus on them getting to know you… if you get one thing wanted in their interiors – take the time out to help move it there – put it in place and re-polish it to perfection.. but not getting in their way. Ta da – they remember you.. you leave them another slither of wood with your site address on it..and you get more work… or David does.. leaving you to make movies and publish books to wild acclaim.

       PS – all of that may be a rubbish idea…

     • but nobody seeks bidders or awards contracts via twitter or the internet here

       But most of all, word of mouth.

       Which is what the internet is for, and awareness. You do have to do you calls and mailings and contacts. But there are a lot of designers online looking for clients too, not just for suppliers. For me, (and a lot of people who aren’t flush with cash), paying for advertising is the last step ( i just ran my first paid ads this week). But i get an awful lot of awareness and business from social networks, as well as Google web and image hits.

     • Steen-

       An old friend of mine runs a window dressing and drapery business. She gets most of her work via interior designers and decorators, but she says that you have to have a website now. Potential clients want to have a look at her portfolio / work online, and see client references. Upside to that too is that she gets some well paid jobs in other states as well.

     • Thanks, everyone! I think it makes sense to try everything and see what works. In the 7 years we’ve been open, our best customers have come from the least likely places – mostly random meetings or word or mouth. Not really from the internet or advertising. And we have a storefront, which has generated some business. I think – you never know what will work. It is hard sometimes to know where to focus your energy and money, especially if these are scarce, as they always seem to be. I really appreciate your thoughts.

     • Yeah, as the economy is difficult, i’m taking the shotgun approach now. As i’m not sure of the best place to aim a rifle.

2. I’m not much use in terms of local support either, for anyone not resident in southern Germany, and I already know how to drive a forklift (though I’m not licensed, so don’t tell anyone)

   However in terms of long-range services for needy spillers we can offer English/German/Romanian translation as well as interior design or building advice, plus I’m the locally acknowledged expert at unfiddling hopelessly tangled bits of string, cable, necklaces etc. (Just mail me the offending object in a s.a.e. and I’ll have it straightened out and back to you in a jiffy, no fee)

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   • Nilpferd!!

     Hope you had a restful holiday.

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     • Nope, that’s me, Steenbeck.

       Damn.

     • Thanks Ms Cabinet! It was actually even better than I expected.
       Sorry to be back so soon though. How was your week- hopefully not as stressful as last week?

     • Well, we’ve got beautiful crisp whether after a miserably hot summer, and the boys are back in school (Isaac started preschool for the first time!) and seem very happy, so it has been a nice week, despite all the usual stresses.

     • hey nilpferd – glad you had a good break

       is that a clever pun “back to you in a jiffy”
       (we have a brand name for padded envelopes – called Jiffy Bags – don’t know if they are universal)

       hey ms cabinet/steen – I’m getting so confused with who people are around here.. was hoping you are ok.. the Jeff Lewis songs made me feel like you might not be seeing your loved ones enough.

       ( I’ve been logged on elsewhere so I hope I post as me)

       back later with links and things after I’ve cooked for the family – hope this is going to work… and help people out.

     • I’m fine, Shane. Just feeling that old end-of-summer melancholy. And discouraged about not having the skills to pay the bills. And completely fed up with depressing news about idiots burning Qur’ans and nothing but bad news everywhere. I’m going to bury my head in something. Not sand, because it’s irksome in your eyes and nose. Something more pleasant.

     • Ms Cabinet, I hear putting your head into your water dish is very relaxing. (This courtesy of some sixties Peanuts albums I’m currently nostalgicking out on)
       Glad you had a nice week.
       (Sorry about the threadjack shane)
       Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a very alluring bottle of brought-back-from-holiday wine to attend to.
       [ed- sounds like you've already drunk most of it]
       But first, my two cents on earning money..

       If you want to earn via the web I think it depends on your skills, there needs to be a substantial and reliable online market. We are both self-employed and toyed with the idea of a website when work threatened to run out, but it’s really only an ad venue for us as we don’t provide online services- as architects we need clients, concrete projects so to speak. These clients don’t hire via the internet- they ask their neighbours, friends, others who have recently built. In the end it turned out that word of mouth (and luck) played a much bigger role for us in terms of getting long-term paid work. There is a risk online of investing a lot of effort for little return, or worse of being ripped off, especially in creative fields- it’s very hard to assert copyright, and when you’re vending ideas you don’t have much else to offer besides. Fine in a moneyless society, of course, but who is paying your food bill? Self-publishing is obviously a way to retain control, but again if costs are involved for you in setting up, you may just be a pawn in someone else’s game. At what point do you recoup these costs, and can you make a living from it? I suspect barter societies- and there are many successful ones around the world- work better face-to-face than on the internet, as the potential for exchange is so much greater, even if the market is much smaller.

       Not that that is much use I guess, except perhaps in terms of putting two basic economic questions- who is prepared to pay for what you do? Corollary- How can you best (and most economically) make them aware you exist, and convince them to engage your skills?

       Ali- regardless of where you see your skills, what would you most love to do? I think it helps to have a focus. My mother re-entered employment in her mid thirties firstly by working voluntarily in marriage guidance, it took her five years to get paid anything worthwhile for her work, and she undertook a series of courses and self-education as well as case work. In the meantime she’s very high up in the psychotherapy heirarchy and playing a major role in administering the profession. I guess I’m saying it’s never to late to start a completely new career, whatever you really feel drawn to.

       Dsd- you have presumably advertised in trade magazines, particularly those aimed at areas which require your training skills? We found a single month of ads placed in magazines brought far more job offers than any other method. It can be costly, but if you word your ad concisely and tailor it to the sort of job you really want, results can surprise.

       I’m starting to sound like George Clooney in Up in the air here, so I’ll retire to my wine.

3. Jiffy bags are a brand of garbage bags here. (bin bags to you lot i think).

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4. Steenbeck, have you heard of Mslexia? It’s a quarterly magazine for “women who write”:

   http://www.mslexia.co.uk/index.php

   It gives all sorts of publishing advice, mostly for ‘adult’ books but also for childrens stories, etc. It’s usually a good read, and they do all sorts of short fiction and poetry competitions, they commission photographs and artwork too, sometimes. They have contributors from all over the world.

   They’ve never published anything from me yet but we live in hope …

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5. PS: Bury your head in Mslexia!

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6. PPS: You are all such nice people, thanks for posting this SaneShane … and DsD I’ll see if I can think of anyone local.

   I write a bit, draw a bit, sew a bit … but nothing likely to generate any income. So if anyone wants an administrator … I just put my CV on Guardian Jobs today but am not holding my breath, particularly after seeing a video of myself at a mock interview … OMG, who is that depressing woman? Give her some Prozac!!! It was like “Why accountancy is boring”, only worse!

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   • AliM – I’ll look for mslexia, it sounds good thanks. I also write a bit draw a bit and sew a bit.

     And for what it’s worth, it always cheers me up to see your name, and I miss your contributions when you’re not around. I haven’t seen your video, obviously, but “depressing” is the last word I would think of in connection to you.

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7. DsD – Maki is still trying – give me time. Give me time. Things move slowly over here and the plant I told you about isn’t up and running yet. Don’t lose hope!

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   • DsD -

     Do you have a website?

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8. We could launch a record label…..

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   • shoey – I don’t know what you do, but dropbox are hiring:

     http://www.dropbox.com/jobs

     you get as much storage as you need for the largest albums of the month posts!!!!

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     • Nice thought. Dropbox is a great product & a lousy business model – just wait ’til the lawyers figure out how it’s used. Enjoy it while you can.

9. Anyone who fancies teaching English in Madrid should email me!

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   • hay – kan eye?

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     • coarse yew khan!

   • I’m not joking here, btw – I am in a position to offer work and am currently looking for teachers. Probably a bit late to up sticks and come over now. We tend to hire in Jan and Sept.

     This is our crappy website which is currently getting an overhaul – we’re also changing our hosting service soon as some browsers tend to distrust our current one!

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     • Maki – that is one ‘interesting’ website.

       Not for me though – i still have to build my straw bale extension and music shack on my place here (and my Ms. has taught in China and Russia and other countries she tell me exist)

       Could have done with knowing you a few years back.. had to keep finding info about where to teach for friends. .. think they would have liked Madrid.

     • “Interesting”? Euphemisms abound! The owner of the school (I freelance as teacher and Director of Studies for them) is very into retro Hollywood stuff – she used to work in the film industry – and there’s no way we can get her to change the aesthetics of the place but we’re trying to make it a little more user friendly. An uphill struggle as it happens!

10. Still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. It’s a problem.

    Like to solve other people’s problems – it’s so much easier.

    Am an Olympic level procrastinator.

    Newest new skill is ability to append almost-in-time drum loops to low-fi acoustic indie tunes.

    (Not being much help am I?)

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    • ahhh – that’s what you do.

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11. Amy – I will be very pleased to see your post some time over the weekend – think it will help a few of us.

    http://saneasylum.spreadshirt.co.uk/

    the sane asylum on spreadshirt – but I’m drifting a lot with it – I use it mostly for one offs – (the max baby grow and monsters of rob need to be removed) but even though I’ve used it for two years I haven’t got around to setting it up properly.
    Mostly because it doesn’t quite do what I want – (I will be contacting a printer in England soon who can get the feel I want on the designs…)

    but I did want to set up something just to say – have a look there – (as Amy says about the self publishing books.. being able to show examples – and do one offs – without having to stump up for a print run is a pleasure in modern the modern world….)

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    • Shane -

      Have you looked at Zazzle’s Artsprojekt? I bet you could get your stuff accepted there. The Emptees site is a great resource for independent and arty designers.
      I effing hate Spreadshirt (too many reasons to get into it!) but i do use their marketplace. I didn’t want to put my websites up here, i wanted to keep my business separate from all of my Guardian (and especially CiF posts!) so i could be free to speak my mind on there without worrying about how it looked for business. But since everyone else is, i guess will too. I started doing t shirts because i wanted to develop a line of yogawear, so that’s the focus of my business, it’s geared to a specific market, which makes things a bit easier. It’s not fine art. I have slacked a lot on Twitter and networks over the summer, so trying to get back into the swing of it again. So here is one of my sites (but they’re all hooked up together in there. And some sites and blogs are kind of in tatters, i have a lot of catch up to do now that summer is over. I made $13 at work tonight, so i guess i had best get on the goodfoot here!

      Shane, etc-

      Does anyone have any specific topic that you want a post to focus on? I don’t know what anyone knows or doesn’t, and what your goals are. Now is a good time to get going on it too, before holiday season.

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      • oops, i forgot to post my site

12. Steenbeck — aww, shucks …

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13. BLIMEY!

    Here you all are.

    Er, right then –

    DarceysMam ( a now ex-Marketing Director / Senior Brand Manger since Darcey was born) is writing the website for my business, which funded her college course to do precisely that. It’s not ready for launching yet, and we only have ourselves to blame for that – the business is ten years old!

    I also persist in tying one hand behind my back by refusing to open a training centre. The fixed costs of having a centre, and one of each type of truck, are a “speculate-to-accumulate” gamble that I’m simply not prepared to take. Given the last couple of years, we’d have gone bust bigtime! But it does mean that all of those ‘JobSeekers’ out there who want to get themselves FLT-trained have to be turned away, because by definition they don’t have an employer whose site & trucks we can use.

    I won’t panic-discount, and I’m not cheap. We’re a quality product (fully accredited, fully insured, never no-show, never slope off early, unofficially recommended by both our accrediting body & the local HSE inspector, etc., etc.) The good news is I maintain a profit margin when I do get work. The bad news is in the recession I’m getting regularly undercut by unaccredited cowboys, often by as much as 40%.

    I subscribe to most of those trade magazines, attend the fairs and exhibitions, keep up to all the latest tweaks to the relevant legislation, and so on. As far as it’s possible to do without the aforementioned website, I’m listed on as many free business listings as I can find. What I admit I don’t do is do enough paid advertising, which is where Julie comes back in …

    Because of her Direct Marketing history (that’s “major purveyor of junk mail” to the rest of you!), DsMam has in the past warned me off a couple of the mailings I wanted to do, but sod it, there are several thousand full-colour A6 mail cards sat in a corner of the office now waiting for the right trade-mag insert.

    Yellow Pages was a TOTAL waste of money, in spite of spending a premium to be highlighted as the accrediting body’s recommended supplier for the area.

    I’ve tried ingratiating myself with some of the FLT manufacturers that don’t have their own training departments; that one has had some success.

    I’ve tried to access / partner the various government bodies that fund industrial training. Fell on my feet once, and occasionally get jobs by helping clients seek funding, but have had the door slammed in my face several times by the big boys in that playground (eg Learning & Skills Councils).

    I’ve looked at a couple of the Business Networking clubs, but the joining fees for those are a joke: the only people who make money from those are the Network Club themselves.

    The bottom line is that Production Managers [for the improved efficiency] and Training Departments [for the paperwork support] love me; Finance Directors [for the cost] and shopfloor Supervisors [for the amount of time I insist I keep their staff] hate me. 99.9% of companies don’t know about me. I have no Sales background or skills, and I’m awful at cold-calling. I used to be able to claim that “when I get clients, I keep ‘em”, and apart from on cost, it’s true. But the pressure to keep costs down mean a couple of customers have taken £10-15k annual business away recently, and that’s why I’m struggling.

    I’ve tried branching out to fill the void, both logically (eg. Logistics Consultancy, other industrial training) and laterally (independent copychecking was a spectacular failure!), but it’s all a bloody struggle these days, much more so than 4or5 years back.

    Anyhoo, enough of a whinge. I’ll take contacts from anywhere via my DsD email address (I won’t burden you with the work one – I read them both equally), or if anyone doesn’t have my mobile number, just ask. And I’ll leave it at that for now.

    A(nother) big “Cheers” at Shane; now let’s go see what PaulMac picked for the 5th Anniversary RR Ten, shall we?

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    • DsD I had to put this up – and i hope we all get some good ideas and help out of it – but yep…. time for an RR Anniversary Ten.

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    • Is there an opportunity for selling training DVDs? If you’ve got an ‘in’ with fork lift manufacturers, it could be something for them to add value to their product and it would be more attractive to the FDs of the companies you’re trying to get into, sold as a Beginner Level Course. Obviously, you have to leave enough out of the DVD to enable you to supply Intermediate Level and Advanced Level Courses on-site (or whatever names DsM can come up with for ‘training with an actual fork lift truck’). It’s obviously a different skill-set to create a video record – and maybe someone around here might advise – but video can also be viewed over t’net, so it could be something to add to your website.
      But I’m sure you’ve mulled over this idea already at some point…

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14. How on earth do you do that quotey highlighty thing? Once more am reeling from Shane’s advanced computing skills. You’re not as mad as you would have us believe really are you? Haven’t even got to the tunes yet – this post has legs! & this all comes on the back of finding out what the likey button does (some extra horizontal icons, basically). My head hurts.

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    • Shoey-

      It looks like Shane just used the
      

      tags, and WP may have automatically added the graphic.

      The likey button is what gets your site links spread around Facebook (and twitter, etc) when people click on it.

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      • oops, i just did it too. The blockquote tags are what make the quote things.

    • shoey-
      ..as amy says – just click the quote button.

      the songs – seem to have got lost haven’t they.
      I did a big playlist just in case this fell on it’s arse.. but it seems to have taken off.

      Amy – I’m going to look through the artsprojekt and emptees- and I have looked at your site before..

      (with the spreadshirt it’s a German company – so one offs to friends their worked well/cheap and quick…. but it isn’t right for what I want eventually – it could be an advert space – because it’s free.. but I will try and work my practice blog for here:
      http://saneshane.wordpress.com/
      …into a T-shirt showcase too..

      as for your post – just go for it – some people will know more than others – and also have their own ways of doing things.. once it’s up – we can discuss and add again.

      especially as it all getting a bit confused here with the reply button…..

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15. Just dropping in to say that there are kind thoughts coming to Darce and his family from Strasbourg. I was out the other night and heard that Bertignac song you liked so much – ces idées-la. Made me think of the wonderful RR crowd. Hope you all have a peaceful w/e with ssome sun. FP

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    • You have a lovely w/e too FP.

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