CDSmith

Yep, that's a big annoyance at times. People think you can drop everything anytime for them, yet one of the big perks for me is that I CAN take a day (or month) off whenever I want to. Thing is, I can take time off for ME anytime, heh heh. It sucks when people assume that includes them too.

It's a catch-22. Your family obviously will want to know what you're doing and how you're earning your living, at least with my family. So they all know (sort of) what I'm doing. The pre-conceived ideas about running an online business simply amaze me sometimes. Little by little they are starting to ask more questions, and I can see where this is going. They want in. 3 years ago some of them were snickering, but now they aren't.

I've got my nephew phoning me now (he's 3 years younger than me), he's finally clued in that there is money in this. I wish him well, really I do, but I set up an advert page a long time ago that says if anyone wants to learn from ground zero how to "get going" in this biz they must pay me $500 bucks for my time. I can show them all the shortcuts I've found on my own, and teaching someone to use an html editor (like composer or dreamweaver) doesn't take all that long. I've shown a few people how to set up a basic free site in less than a week (3 hours a day for about 4-5 days), and after that I charge them an ongoing fee for any extra support they need. Sorry, time is money, chit-chat is not money. Problem is, most people that think this is *easy* are also those that are too cheap and short-sighted to see the worth of paying out $500 to gain the skills to earn that weekly (or daily). Duh.

The other option is for them to just PAY you a few thousand bucks to build them a web page. In this scenario, since after the page is made, since they still don't know jack, you charge them an ongoing fee for webmastering and maintenance. Sign them up for all the usual sponsors, they get the checks, and you can keep tabs on their stats too, heh heh. This I've done as well, just not that often.

I too got tired of hearing all the usual shit, like from a sister who once said "ya, but we WORK for a living. You just sit at home" .... The same sister to whom I once showed one of my i-bill cheques to and then she whined about how everyone in the family makes more money than her, hee hee. She's been working for Centra Gas for about 25 years now. I love it.

Slick, tell em you'll train them for a fair price, otherwise they're on their own. I mean, YOU didn't have any meeting with anyone to discuss "how to get started" when YOU got started, right? Neither did I. We just got busy and learned on our own, the long way for sure, but it was fun just the same, and worth it.
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CD
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