Leaving the day job....

Just curious... What was everybody's experience (good or bad) with leaving their day job to pursue seo, web stuff or other outside work? What were the biggest challenges? Did you have to go back or did things work out?

Thanks in advance...

I have a web-based biz and a day job. I love both of them and would do them without pay because they are fun. I could easily quit the day job and make it on the web-biz. However, I have just a few more years to retire with a good pension and life-long health insurance - so I am doing both right now. My web-biz has a couple of emplyees who keep the battles moving forward and my sister runs my shopping cart and customer care.

While your knowledge, skill, and experience is always important... the greatest concern leaving the security of 'day job' is marketing yourself.

You will likely never survive if you are not "always be selling".

Current projects help to provide credibility, building your reputation but reputation alone will not likely bring in new business without serious thought to all facets of marketing.

rtheodorow

Here is my 5 cents...

Well the most important part of going on your own is the financial management of your new venture and as fathom stated, getting the always selling attitude. In my case I have always managed people soo I wasn't used to selling myself. In consulting business owners with their ventures I also see how many of them do not manage their finances correctly. There is a clear distinction between the people that have long term success and people living from hand to mouth in the way they manage their finances. But I guess you have to be mentally prepared to go on your own in order to be succeessfull anyway.

A further chalange is managing debtors and having a solid payment strategy. Especially with website designing and development. Steer clear from once off quotations and rather look at hourly fees. It happens to many times that you spent more time on a project than it is worth. You will often find that customers cannot make up there minds on what they want, regardless of the planning and preparation you put into it.

I totally agree. Early on when we were first starting out we gave fixed prices but we realized that clients want more in the end then they tell us and get upset when we refer back to our original conversation. With hourly fees they either stick to what was originally mentioned for fear of going over budget or come to the understanding that more features means more money.