Career at the Crossroads

Welcome back to TopSecretProject.

This week I have been mostly thinking about what I am going to do with my life.

I have been freelancing for the last couple of years.

The idea was never to actually be a full-time freelancer but to create some software and make a living from selling it.

The freelance work always seems to take up most of my available time, consuming all my energy and often the money is not that great, once you factor in the actual time it takes to perform all the tasks required – sales, marketing, project management, accounting, maintenance and once in a while actually writing some code.

I have tried a number of different ideas.

I built an SMS messaging platform that I think is actually pretty cool, but the idea itself requires some sort-of mass-marketing campaign that is really out of the realm of my knowledge and expertise. Not to mention that the advent of the iphone really puts a dint in SMS as a medium for the long term.

I created a CMS-type application for Facebook Apps (called Prefabrikator). This concept evolved into a tool for creating and managing competitions for Facebook. You know the sort of thing – “Tell us why you need an iPod in 25 words or less”.

This project has been plagued by several issues – the constant changes to the FB API has made development less than fun, and I also lost faith in investing more time (and hence money) into a platform that I have no control over. The constant and ongoing changes to Facebook have pushed apps further and further into the background, making some of what I have done rather moot. The final straw is really that because of the steps needed to setup an application inside FB (adding and configuring through the Developer Tools, then adding authentication keys to the Rails app configuration) means that there is really always going to be a manual process involved – each deployment becomes a custom installation, which ruins any hope of making the price terribly accessible.

So …

… at the moment I am working a longer-term contract for the excellent Inspire Foundation on their new ReachOut site and platform. Having a regular income is a huge bonus and working with a team on a great project is great fun. I do get to work from home, but the hours are much more regimented which is actually a benefit. On top of this I still have a couple of clients that I do very minor ongoing maintenance work for.

But the question remains …

Where to next?

The goal is still been to make great software and sell it, but I am increasingly wondering how viable this is as a lone-wolf developer.