Affiliate Income In The New Year
I don’t know if it’s just us, but based on traffic to our sites this week has been a big ‘net use week. Obviously the holidays were very slow as far as traffic goes. If only people were as bored with their families as they are with their jobs maybe they’d surf more at home, but that’s a different topic for a different day.
Back to this week. As slow as the holidays were for us we’ve made up for it this week. Are we the only ones who have seen that? This being our first holiday season as affiliates we’re not sure if it’s standard. If you know please let us know.
That being said things have picked up a bit. Our affiliate income is showing signs of growth. This week we’re pushing $100. More importantly however we’ve landed a couple of solid consulting contracts that will cover us for a couple more months of not finding real jobs.
I hope that your new year was as good as mine. I wish everyone a happy and profitable 2008.
A special thanks goes to iPhoneMatters for linking to our iPhone Gloves article. It is much appreciated.
The Three Types of Corporate IT Jobs
In my time working in many different types of IT environments I’ve realized that you can really boil all IT departments down to just three categories. There are a few gray areas, but for the most part your department will fit one of these.
1. The True Tech Shop
Companies that are very technology focused fall into this category. This includes software firms and IT services firms. I would also put large banks and other uber corporations in here because they have the cash to run very large IT shops. These departments are run by technical people who have been promoted. They tend to be efficient and cutting edge. The driving factor here is that either the bread and butter of your corporation is in technology (software and IT services firms) or your department is big enough that influential members of upper management are former technical people. In other words there are decision makers who actually care about technology This is the best place to work for both career advancement and enjoyment of day to day work. All of our modern day “utopia” engineering departments are in here as well.
2. The Wall of Mis-Information
Mid-size companies will sometimes have sizable IT departments. These departments preform a myriad of tasks from e-mail server maintenance to the development of internal websites and software. This can be a good place to come and hide for a while in your career. There can be very interesting work here, but the running theme is often poor management. These departments are plagued by their lack of upper management support. The company is too small to have a technical person in the inner circle. The claim to care about technology, but they really just want it to work as quickly as possible. This comes through in decisions where long term consequences are ignored in the face of short term gain. The managers of these departments are often former business people who the executives feel are technical in some way. The “Wall of Mis-Information” comes into play because at some point in the command chain things will land in the lap of someone who is only semi-technical. There is ample room for creative spin in the information that is passed up to that person and technology decisions are driven from the bottom up while meeting constant conflict from the “get it done now” crowd. The lack of anyone who understands the whole picture is the downfall.
These departments are populated by middle of the road IT people. There are usually a couple of smart people, but the majority of the department is just happy to get a paycheck. There’s little passion for the work so spending a lot of time in one of these places can be very draining.
3. The “Shouldn’t Be An IT Department” IT Department
Then we come to the final rung on the ladder. This situation comes up with a small to mid-size company decides that they need an IT department when they actually don’t. People are hired in the minimum number that can be found to cover the necessary skill sets rather than based on work loads. There generally isn’t enough work to keep everyone busy. You’ll find many people idling away in these places. The wall of mis-information is more like a chasm here. No one with any technical understanding is pulling any of the strings. Techies can make up all kinds of stuff to cover their own asses and keep from having to work too hard. An advantage here is that upper management will genuinely try to do the right thing if you present it to them. This place is largely what you and your co-workers make of it. So if you’re dedicated and intelligent enough to make it a great place then it can be. However the temptation to idle away behind your veil of bullshit always lurking.
Motivational Posters
I recently decorated my home office with a few motivational posters. They keep me going during the tough times while I work by myself. I took a little break today and had some fun with Photoshop. I hope you like it. I’ve got some more ideas so I may post a couple more of these.
A Re-Focusing of Effort
So as posted previously you know that our 9-5 company has gone bankrupt (If you’re completely lost go to the about us page). This has put more urgency on our activities and caused a shift in our priorities. Before we were focusing almost entirely on internet marketing in the hopes to make that our long term business model. The slow growth of that along with the need to make money now has us more concentrated on our consulting business. Hence the silence in this blog…
For the last two weeks we’ve been going full force on trying to get new consulting and web design jobs. We had a few contracts that were close to being signed when this all happened. We’ve been pushing those along and searching for new leads on the numerous internet boards out there.
We have nothing solid yet, but have a whole pile of work that is so close we can taste it. The day is fast approaching that we’re going to go from finding enough leads to do proposals on to fill our time to being booked at 150%. That’s going to mean a lot of work, but it’s a very good thing and a very exciting time to say the least.
As far as the life goes it’s great. It’s easy to say, but I highly recommend working for yourself. The schedule freedom is even better than I had hoped. If nothing else comes out of this experience there will, at least, be some very good memories of how sweet life can be.
The slower the posts come on here the better you’ll know what we’re doing. I’ll get on and write whenever I can.
iPhone texting gloves
So if you’ve seen my other iPhone posts you know that I’ve pointed out some flaws in the device. However, overall I love my iPhone.
One issue that didn’t really come up until the temperature here in NY dipped down is the skin only touch sensitivity. In case you haven’t noticed your iPhone only works with your naked fingers. That’s not an issue when it’s warm, but if it’s cold and you’re wearing gloves then it poses a bit of an issue. The prospect of removing my right glove, holding it in my left hand while retrieving my phone, and then balancing the two while I try to do some one handed typing before my fingers freeze isn’t a good one. That’s why I love the idea of texting gloves.
I came across this pair the other day and immediately ordered a pair.
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