OT: Does this describe you? -
02-08-2005
, 12:17 PM
I thought this was very provocative and kind of cute...
He wakes up, showers, shaves, eats, gets dressed.
Hits the computer. Yahoo home-page. Reads news blips quickly, checks
weather, and basically just gets acquainted with reality for a second.
Mundane tasks:
Checks his emails, his website, his crappy server, his stats, any sales,
all those commissions, how's his traffic, also returns phone calls from
the day before and tries to put out yesterdays fires.
Then the drudgery:
He checks his control panels at: CJ, Linkshare, Performics,
BeFree, Advertising, FastClick, Tribal, Burst, Casale, PayPal, eBay,
Amazon, Azoogle, Clickbank, AdBrite, ShareASale, etc etc to near infinity.
He's a publisher and he's an advertiser, and a merchant. Because he's a
jack of all trades.
Maintenance:
Server, merchant accounts, site, visitor questions, customer questions.
Then the real news, the webmaster forums:
SitePoint, WebmasterWorld, Slashdot
Prepare orders
Go to the bank
Go to the post office
Get cigarettes and coffee
Mail comes back. It's always good and always crap at the same time. A
$10K check is often right under that subpoena. Or you're being sued by
some nutcase for nothing. Visa, MC, AMEX, DISC, or your MAP have a
chargeback to tell you about, or two, or ten, You find you're dropped by
this, or that.
Misc 1: Check your private label sites, all 20 million of them, and all
their problems. Deal with them
Misc 2: Your future projects. Dealing with some jagoff schlep coder from
Aserbekistan or India.
Misc 3. Family, friends, your annoying girlfriend you wish dumped YOU
already, and they're all buzzing in your ear all day long.
Misc 4. Check those sites you don't care much for yet, but are testing
(no disrespect to these examples at all): Quigo, Ah-Ah, ePilot, Godaddy,
Textlinks, PayPopUp, SearchFeed, (anyname here) affiliate program you
joined lately, etc etc.
Misc 5: Don't forget to check your Alexa ranking. Gazing at a new site
high... well, that's your drug.
Misc 6: Check your backlinks. Who's fkn you over lately, and who's helping.
Misc 7: Google, Overture, and every site worth a damn seem to always be
changing their rules, or policies etc, or are in some way screwing you
over, and it's always your job to correct these things, ASAP.
Does this routine sound like anybody we know - because it may be you. It
is me!
Now I may sound bitter. I'm not. I love what I do. I really love
everything about it. The ups and the downs and all of it. The money is
sweet, but it's the fight I love. The web is like one big game to me and
I love playing it. Just sometimes friends think I do nothing and they
always ask me, "What exactly do you do...". My very close friends are
more blunt, "You're such a lazy bum, what do you do all day". Yeah, I
sleep late, and appear to them as being an easy-going bum. But I am a
webmaster. Like you. And we work harder than anyone. Because it's all
brain and thinking. For most people, just showing up and shmoozing is
all you need to do. Look neat, and act pleasant. But when you work for
yourself online - it's like madness.
Thoughts? |