Also, Patrick, you may wish to keep yourself more anonymous with your indie business identity. How would you feel Nortel would have reacted if they learned you were doing web site work on the side while working on the Dallas Cowboys' or Indie Racing League's sites, especially with such a unique name as yours?
- Gary On 02/16/2010 12:15 PM, "Patrick Burleson" <[email protected]> wrote: > Manton, > > On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Manton Reece <[email protected]> wrote: > >> This is a pretty timely question because I just drafted a blog post >> yesterday answering the same thing, which I hope to post real soon now (i.e. >> realistically, months from now). Because I usually write and talk about my >> indie business, a lot of people are surprised that I have a "regular" job as >> well (and some client work, and too much other stuff for my own good). >> > > I look forward to your post. I confess I sometimes forget that you do have a > regular day job as well. > > >> >> The important thing to me is just that you consider your indie software a >> real business, not a hobby. I can only speak for myself, but I treat my side >> business as if it was a full time job, regardless of hours. Some weeks the >> revenue matches a great salary and the hours are long into the night, and >> other weeks it doesn't and they aren't, and that's fine. >> >> Not being a hobby means acting professionally, responding to support email >> quickly, and definitely not making excuses for why there aren't more >> software releases. There are plenty of reasons why software is late even for >> larger companies! As long as you can keep up with the support load, you >> shouldn't feel guilty if you don't live up to your own personal standards. >> >> I certainly don't see BitBQ as a hobby. I see it as my escape from the > cubical world. But it does have to take a backseat sometimes to day job and > my family. One of the trickiest things I've found so far is getting my > spouse on board with the amount of time I need to dedicate to BitBQ to make > it happen. She's starting to come around, but that's a tricky minefield > right now since it's our busiest time of the year at work and I usually > don't get home till well after 9 PM most nights. And I'm on call all > weekend. > > I've been lucky that my support load has been low. I have an upcoming > product release that could increase that, but responding as fast as possible > is my highest priority. Having watched other indies run their support, it's > something I've noted most handle it very quickly and well. > > Patrick > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] >
