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Wage Slave Rebel Dispatch
Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
4 Excellent Resources for Digital Product Creation
Since the last post I’ve had quite a few people comment and email me saying they were sold on creating digital products, but they had no idea how to create them. I’d like to address them all in this post.
These are some of the resources I used at the beginning of my digital product development journey. If these help you out in anyway, let me know in the comments or feel free to send me an email. If you actually get a product developed, I ask that you contact me! I’d love to see (and possibly promote) anything WSR readers create.
So, start creating!
Selling Your Time is Overrated: Experiments in Digital Product Creation
Just a little note before I get started. You might have noticed that Wage Slave Rebel has been a little quiet and a little inconsistent over the last month. This ends today! I’ll be going back to a Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve been working since mid-December (which is why the blog has been less active) to develop a handful of digital products, including a weight loss ebook and a web design how-to video course. I’m happy to say that my first product (the ebook) is completely finished and is currently undergoing some final reviewing and last minute tweaking! As it is, we’re currently looking at a Friday or Monday launch.
Keep checking WSR over the next couple weeks because I’d like to get you guys involved as much as possible and maybe even give you a chance to make some money of your own. Look for the announcement soon!
Most of you know that I am a freelance web designer. I’ve mentioned it here and there over the last few months. I want to take this opportunity to let it be known that this is no longer the case. I’m officially retiring as a freelancer.
Why? Because freelancing just doesn’t make sense! If you are a freelancer, that’s all good and fine. If you enjoy it, great! But if you aren’t already freelancing, don’t bother starting unless you are absolutely in love with the work you do. And you should realize that just because you like doing something for yourself, doesn’t mean you’ll like doing it for other people. Freelancing has the ability to feel almost as oppressive as 9-to-5 wage slavery. It can be more soulless unrewarding work wrapped up in a prettier package.
No. If you want to live your life on your terms and have enough money to do what you want to do and go where you want to go, you need to focus on making your primary source of income completely passive. You need to focus on digital product creation!
The Architect and the Slave
I’ve not been living long enough to be able to put forth much experiential or historical evidence in support of this, but over the last two years as a freelancer I’ve come to reluctantly accept that capitalism has nearly killed the artisan. In its place we find soulless laborers, toiling robots, cheap conformists with idle hands and mouths to feed. This is the most difficult thing I struggle with in my quest to find a purpose, that all the romance and charm, passion and creativity have been removed from our processes.
We are asked to become human-shaped cogs who bear only the will of our wage-vomiting masters.
Online Businesses You Can Start Today, Part One – Web Design
I’d venture to say that most of you aspire to live a lifestyle that seems incredibly out of reach. You want to work at home or work on the road or start a business or become an author or whatever else. When you’re starting out, the path isn’t clear at all. In fact, it doesn’t even really exist. It’s a little like diverging from a main highway and driving straight into the forest. You only have the vaguest idea of where you’re going, but you can’t see too much further ahead.
When I started freelancing two years ago, I was in that exact situation. I felt like there was something different for me, that I had somehow been set apart to live a life devoid of mediocrity and filled with joy and contentment and meaningful work. The problem was that I didn’t know how to get there. I didn’t know what would give me joy and contentment. I didn’t know what meaningful work was, I just knew what it wasn’t.
The deeper you go into lifestyle design, the more you’ll see the many options people have to live life on their own terms. There are many paths to freedom, but some are more common than others.
In this series, we’ll take a look at five professions that are ideal for wage slave rebels starting with today’s profession… web design!
What Aspiring Freelancers Can Learn From The World’s Greatest Web App Company
This weekend has been a business weekend. I’ve done almost nothing but read business related books to get me in the mindset I need to have for some upcoming projects. The first book I started on is one that I had always heard was great, but had managed to put off reading until yesterday. It’s a very fast read, though, made up of a series of bite-sized, wisdom-packed essays.
“Getting Real” is a collection of business philosophies and lessons as applied and learned by 37signals. For those of you who don’t know, 37signals is the web developer and web business community’s equivalent of a critically-acclaimed indie rock band. They aren’t the biggest or the richest, but, by God, they are the greatest. 37signals has revolutionized the web as we know it. Not only because their products (Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise and Campfire) have changed business management to something more suited to the 21st century, but also for their willingness to release their Ruby on Rails application framework to the public free of charge and restrictions. (The awesomeness that is Twitter was built using Ruby on Rails.)
If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s available on their website and for purchase.
Even though the book is more specifically about web development, I’ve noticed that a lot of the advice in the book can easily be applied (and should be applied) to the professional decisions of aspiring freelancers, bloggers, writers, consultants, entrepreneurs, etc. Here are the most important lessons you can take away from the book…