As a web designer and (experimenting) entrepreneur, I tend to work on quite a few of my own personal projects on the Internet. From service websites, blogs, CSS galleries to script businesses I experiment and delve into a range of activities in order to see if I can create a sustainable income on the web. So far my journey has lead to a plethora of new discoveries...

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Choosing a path: Client Work vs. Personal Projects

Posted October 11th, 2008 by Taiyab

Every so often in my life I challenge my current position, both in what I’m currently doing and in what I’m aiming to achieve in the future. Recently, I’ve been taking on quite a bit of design work, and in light of this I’ve also discovered how stressful client work can actually be, especially when you take on those larger clients too.

Client work (design-related) to me is actually a double-edged sword; you can either gain tremendously from it and consistently provide a high quality service on time, all the time, or you can get bogged down in all the work and it becomes a scene from some horror movie. Not long ago, I fell into the trap of taking too much client work at once, and not being able to juggle them effectively enough, and as a result did not reach my targets in terms of turnaround times and my own satisfaction with the outcome of the project. I did learn a valuable lesson from this though. Only take on as many clients as you KNOW you can handle. Personally, I like working on one client at a time, no more than two. Yea, it sounds like a small number, but this way you can fully work on pleasing the client and gettin 100% client satisfaction. You’ll also be able to produce work in a timely manner, and therefore please the client even more. To me, taking on one client at a time is how is should be, although this could differ for other people.

Another problem/disadvantage to me of doing client work is that if you were to put that effort spent doing client work into your own projects, you would be able to create a much more sustainable and even greater income. I advocate the creation of your own web businesses rather than the assistance in creating someone elses purely because the earning potential (and freedoms) that come with it. With client work you have to deliver work at a set time, while when you  work on your own projects you can work how much or how little you want.

I’m still thinking about whether I should continue taking on more client work, for now, I am though. If you’re interested in a designer, just visit my portfolio. I may just quit client work in the future sometime, so nows the time to hire ;)

Until next time, bye.

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