Working at Home on the Internet

Interview… Steve Remington from Inside Fatherhood

Steve Remington has been Blogging for a long time now and is one of my good blogging friends.  I first met Steve at an Open Comment Night at Successful Blog.  That is when I began reading some of his work at Why My Blog Stinks and met his sidekick Milton the Moose.

He has since changed course a little and became a Stay at Home Dad (SAHD) and began writing Inside Fatherhood.  It is the antithesis of a WAHM, but if you think about it, they really have a lot in common.  He has a lot of good articles on Fatherhood, Husbandry, and a myriad of other helpful insight.

 

So, grab a cup of java, kick-back and enjoy a peek into the life of a SAHD…

 

Me… What was the major factor in the decision for you to become a Stay at Home Dad?

Steve… This is usually the most popular question among people who ask questions regarding me staying home. Well, second most popular to “Are you nuts?” There are two major factors that played a huge role in me and my wife’s decision for dad to be the one to stay home with the kiddos. She makes more money and we prefer that one parent be home with the kids during the day.

Financial Responsibility

Whether I am working or not, my wife makes about 4 times the amount I do. It wasn’t even a close decision when it came to finances. I do work from home now but at the time of the decision I was not, and so it made more sense for me to be home, and still does. With 4 kids in the house and soon to be 5, the cost of daycare would far exceed the annual income I would make in the workplace. So, in a sense I am contributing financially, in that I am not running up daycare costs. This gives us no daycare costs and an opportunity for me to make a small supplemental income from home.

Moral Responsibility

As a parent I feel a moral responsibility towards my children to raise them myself. Raising children is a responsibility and not a luxury, therefore I feel that it is important for one parent to stay home if it is financially possible. I know that not in every situation either parent has that option to stay home. I would think it morally irresponsible to stay home with a child and not pay the bills. So in my current situation, we could afford for me to stay home. So it works for us and I feel that moral responsibility to be there for my children.

 

Me…  Could you give us an idea of what your day is like?

Steve…  My day can be real hectic with 4 kids in the house. Right now 2 of them are off to school but weekends, afternoons, vacations, and summers I get them all. In all honesty, the day usually goes well, but really depends on how I feel. In other words, my mood and attitude can really make a difference on the attitudes of my own kids. Being healthy and well rested can give you a great edge on the day.

In the typical stereotype of a parent caring for several kids you imagine a scene of complete chaos. There is a woman in an apron with flour all over herself, and in her messy, knotted up hair. The kids are playing pass with the eggs, the telephone is ringing in the background, the dog is pooping in the corner, the cat is meowing, the pie is burning in the oven as the burner catches fire, and the woman is chasing after the kids, trying to put out the fire, answer the phone, and trying to get the dog to go outside all at the same time. 

Well, that just doesn’t happen in my routine day. There are moments from time to time I do feel overwhelmed, trying to multitask and make everybody happy. Doing chores, cooking, and keeping an eye on 4 kids can be real challenging. But my day is a bit structured. I will give you an idea of what it is like personally.  » continue reading »

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November 2nd, 2006 at 07:06am | Posted by Joe | Blogging, Community, Interviews, Work at Home | 5 reader remarks | Print This Post

My Fun Interview of Myself

 

I have interviewed a few people who Work at Home on the Internet for this Blog.  It’s always a fun thing to find out what others do in their work at home life.

No one has ever asked me for an interview, so I thought it might be fun to inverview myself.  Self will ask the questions and Me will do the answering.  I hope I don’t get too confused.

 

Self… What made you decide or enticed you into working at home on the internet?

Me… Well, I had a background as a fairly good user of computers in a job I had long ago.  I basically hacked my way into management and ended up running an intergrated MainFrame and AutoDialer system for the company.  When they found out I was starting my own (related) business, I got involuntarily resigned.  Unfortunately, that business didn’t take off, so I closed it.

I decided to take on a job as a subcontractor doing tree work, pruning, clearing property, and the like because I loved working outside.  I was tired of working in an office.  Then I got hurt, and my leg hasn’t worked right since.

 

Self… Yeah, but how did you start a Work at Home Business???

Me… I was getting to that.  Since I couldn’t do the physical labor any longer, I decided to fall back on what (I thought) I knew.  I started the same way a lot of others do, I went to the “Take a Survey” route.  That was a joke, I could get credit or free samples for spending an hour taking a stupid survey.  But No Money.

Then I tried all of the other scam programs they have out there.  “Invest in your Future” or “Buy this Book, Guaranteed to Make Millions”.  They all got dropped pretty quick.

Somewhere along the line, I came across an Affiliate Program (that has gone out of business since) and they suggested writing a Blog to Promote their Product.  I tried that, you can go look at my first couple of posts to see what a dismal failure that was.  But, I started to like the Blogging part and continued with that.  I decided to give it a go, to see how far it would take me.

 

Self… What did you do to make money, since that Affiliate you were using failed?

Me… I kept writing about my experiences, and researching other types of programs I might use to secure an income.  I visited other Blogs, went into Forums, Read anything I could find regarding Working at Home on the Internet.  Eventually, after joining in on the Forums and commenting (read asking questions) on Blogs, I got some really good suggestions.

 

Self… Would you like to share some of them?

Me… Sure. Some of the first were for different affiliates, but then I heard about things like AdSense, Commission Junction, Chitika and ClickBank (aff links in sidebar).  I joined all of them and had various amounts of success depending on the Advertiser.

 

Self… Which of them shows the most promise for you?

Me… Well, I know that the old addage is “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”, but AdSense has been very good for me.  I have had limited success with the Affiliate links with the others I mentioned, but not much at all on the Ads themselves.  I am looking for new things like sponsors and other type of affiliate programs that are in the Work at Home genre, maybe some books or programs.  Know anyone interested?

 

Self… Finding something new everyday must be difficult, how do you keep things fresh?

Me… It is difficult sometimes, but I try to keep up with what’s going on in the Blogosphere.  Sometimes I see the same thing written about on different Blogs, different voice, same message.  I like to use my own experiences in this endeavor, working at home on the internet (am I using that too much), relating what I have learned.  Good, bad or indifferent.

Sometimes I do run into writers block, I think everyone does.  Then something tickles my fancy, or I have something happen that seems unique and I write about that.

 

Self… How are things going with Miss K’s new Work at Home Business?

Me… Things are progressing slowly, you can follow that adventure in the Working Together (Separately) series in the sidebar.

 

Self… Well, Me, We’ll be following your Working at Home on the Internet Adventure closely.  Thanks for the interview.

Me… No, Thank You, Self.

 

I hope you enjoyed my little jaunt into the world of humor.  Everything in this interview is true, only the names were changed to protect the innocent.  I don’t know if it came off as well as I thought, but it was fun to do.

October 4th, 2006 at 03:49pm | Posted by Joe | Fun, Interviews, Work at Home | 6 reader remarks | Print This Post

Interview… Darren Rowse of ProBlogger

Darren Rowse is probably the main reason I didn’t give up on Blogging. Long ago, I was searching for various ways to improve my work at home situation. In surfing through different websites, forums and blogs I was continually coming across ProBlogger and some guy from Australia named Darren Rowse. In visiting and reading some of the posts Darren had written, I became a regular reader.

That was back in October, and since then I have found enough information on his Blog to encourage me to continue with my efforts.

So, may I present my interview with Darren Rowse…

Me… Could you give us a short description of your workday?

Darren… I work at home so work generally starts a few minutes after waking up with a coffee in hand.I’ve experimented with different workflows but am slowly moving towards a new weekly rhythm where I focus upon a different task each day of the week.

Mondays tend to be “writing day” where I leave the house and camp out at my favorite cafe with my laptop and just write. My goal of Mondays is to write enough quality content for two of my main blogs that I don’t really need to write much else for them during the rest of the week.Tuesday through to Thursday I tend to work on updating my news oriented blogs in the mornings and use afternoons to… respond to emails, network, work on b5media etc. In the evenings I also tend to do newsy type posts as they are less demanding and I can do them while watching TV with my wife.Fridays are becoming a day that I try to spend more time with my wife in the mornings. We go for breakfast and sometimes a movie in the mornings and in the afternoons I usually get back to work.Weekends I work intermittently throughout the weekend depending upon what else we’ve got on and what is happening on the blogs.For a fuller description of the types of things that are in my workflow you can read my ‘Day in the Life of a ProBlogger‘ post. It is obviously a little different these days but the tasks that I try to achieve are all in there.

Me… How many projects do you work on in any given day?

Darren… I have 10 or so blogs that I personally write on at this point. I’m also a director of b5media which is an increasingly large focus for me and am involved in a number of other writing projects. Most days I would do some work on virtually all of these tasks (some of them would only take 5 or so minutes though).

Me… Do you have any special way to schedule so many projects?

Darren… Not really. I am a pretty spontaneous guy and go with the flow a fair bit. I do use the calendar feature on my email client (Entourage) to schedule meetings (mainly for b5 or my collaborative writing projects) but much of the rest of my work is scheduled largely upon what hits my news aggregator (Bloglines). As things come into that I tend to write posts that bounce of it.

Me… Have you had any projects that you gave up on for whatever reason? Not profitable, loss of interest?

Darren… Sure there are a number of blogs I’ve stopped posting to in the past 6 or so months. This was mainly because the amount of time I was putting into them was not justified by the returns. It probably also reflected my own waning interest in them.

Me… With a baby coming soon (congrats by the way) have you thought about what type of adjustments you’ll have to make?

Darren… This has been something that we’ve been pondering for the last few months. I guess as first time parents we don’t really know the pressures that having a baby at home in the same space as a home business will bring. I’m really looking forward to it on one hand as I’ve always wanted to be quite involved in the lives of my kids growing up. On the other hand it’s a bit daunting as I look at how much I already pack into my life and wonder how I can possibly sustain the levels of work. My wife’s been at home for a couple of weeks now and we’ve begun to work through how to make that work (it’s odd having someone here all day) but having a baby home as well will be more of a challenge I guess. For one I know I’ll be tempted to want to be pretty involved (a good thing) but also know that there will also be times of real distraction. I suspect I’ll take my work on the road a little more to give us all some space but am not terribly worried because the nature of my workflow is that my day is very ‘bitsy’ and I’m moving quickly from one task to another all day. I think this could lend itself to having interruptions all day…. But then again I could be kidding myself!

Me… What do you do when you just need a break?

Darren… I’m an avid photographer so a lot of my relaxation happens around that. I also enjoy movies, reading, gardening and some mates and I occasionally have a poker night which is fun.

I should also mention that in my ’spare time’ I run a small church which we started 3 years ago (it’s how I actually got into blogging). So time each week is devoted to that. I used to be a minister as a job but these days it’s just a voluntary thing.

Me… Any new projects in the offing?

Darren… I started Digital Photography School a few weeks back so that’s taking a lot of my creative energy at the moment. I’m also working on an e-resource and we’re working hard at taking b5media to the next level which will involve quite a few new things.

Me… Do you have any advice to share with people that work at home on the internet?

Darren… Probably the main thing I’d advise is to take a long term approach. While many claim that you can make quick and easy money online I’ve found that it’s anything but quick. I’ve been at it for over three years and have worked very long hours to get to the point that we’re at.

The early days didn’t pay much at all and I could easily have given up, but I’m very glad I stuck at it!

I really enjoyed this whole experience, from asking Darren to do the interview to being able to give you an insight into the work at home life of Darren Rowse, THE ProBlogger.I hope you found this as rewarding as I have. Comments are always open, so let me know what you think. Darren Blogs at:
ProBlogger
Digital Photography Blog
Digital Photography School Blog
b5media

June 7th, 2006 at 08:00am | Posted by Joe | Blogging, Interviews, Work at Home | 10 reader remarks | Print This Post