Meeks Mixed Media Celebrates 2 Years!
It’s hard to believe, but Meeks Mixed Media is now two years old! To celebrate I am hard at work on a complete re-design of the site and shot a video (above) where I discuss some of the highlights from the past two years and talk about where Meeks Mixed Media is heading in 2010. I’d like to thank Kirk Harnack (of the This Week in Radio Tech podcast) for providing narration, Doug Davenport Jr. (of Atomsplit) for providing the great testimonail, and all my clients over the past to years for keeping me in business!
As far as how Meeks Mixed Media got started, I was working at a small manufacturing company doing web design and video production. My manager told me a client of the company liked our website and wanted to hire him on a freelance basis to create one for his company. He asked me if I’d be interested in doing everything on the programming side and splitting the money. I was more than willing, of course, and he said he’d let me know. A few weeks went by and he told me the project was being put on hold so I shrugged my shoulders and hoped for a raise as I had a child on the way and wasn’t making enough to support my burgeoning family.
The whole situation got me thinking that maybe I could get some side work while I waited for the raise to happen. I did some online research and discovered a great website called FreelanceSwitch that had tons of resources for people looking to freelance. One of the sites they mentioned was called Scriptlance. I decided to place a few bids to see what would happen. A lot of the projects were quite shady, but it required no initial investment so I thought I’d give it a shot. I bid on a few jobs and promptly forgot about it. About it a week later I received a message from Randy Henderson at Okie.Net that my bid was accepted and I had a gig. I completed the project in a couple of week working at night and on the weekends when I wasn’t taking care of my newborn son. We really enjoyed the extra money, but having to work around at a full-time job meant I couldn’t take on any projects that were terribly complicated or time-consuming.
Back at work I still hadn’t gotten the raise. It was really frustrating because I had taken the job at a rate much lower than what I generally earned at that point with the promise of making more very soon. Frustrated, my wife and I sat down to try and figure out our finances for the next couple of months and just for fun I ran the numbers on what I had made per hour on the freelancing gigs. It was about $15 an hour, $4 more than I was making at the 9-to-5. After talking it over we decided that my boss had 2 weeks to push the raise through and if it didn’t happen I’d put in my two weeks and start bidding.
While I’m not making mansion and Lexus money quite yet it is pretty empowering to casually drop into conversation that I’m animating a commercial for an Australian gym, programming a web-based back-end for an insurance firm in London, or filming a promotional video for a Ticketmaster competitor (although when I mention the web a lot of times they think I’ve fallen in with some pyramid scheme selling vitamins).
There are a lot of of perks to being self-employed, but I think the biggest one is that you never get bored. Sometimes when you are working one job at one company your creative mind can stagnate from the repetitive tasks and goals that recur quarter after quarter. If I have a really intense web programming job and I feel like I’m starting to burn out on it I can always go and find a job editing some videos or composing a background track for a video game. I love all aspects of New Media and freelancing allows me to build my skills in areas I already have experience in and also allows me to try new things.
Sneak Peek of the New Website
2 Responses to “Meeks Mixed Media Celebrates 2 Years!”
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Testimonials:
- Colin Q., Avast!
- Mel Herbert, Doctors Unplugged Podcast
Hi, this is Nicole from vWorker (formerly known as Rentacoder).
I’d like to congratulate you on your success at online freelancing — brief as it was. I’m quite sure with your current attitude, you will be very successful should you decide to leave your job for good and pursue a permanent online career. Many of us are doing just that, right now.
I’d also like to introduce you to vWorker. vWorker provides access to programming, writing, illustration, even data entry jobs.
One of the ways to become successful working as an online freelancer is working through a service that protects you. In this regard, Scriptlance may not be the best choice. Consider the following:
If you have any questions, please let me know. You can also call in to talk to a facilitator 7 days a week, or email us.
Hi Nicole,
I actually rarely use Scriptlance anymore due to the poor quality of the clients. I generally bid for jobs on eLance and have found a great deal of success there. I did try to use Rentacoder a few times in my early days of working but found the job selection and quality of clients pretty low. Looks like you guys are working on a pretty serious re-branding effort so I’ll check you out in a month or two and see if you can work as a good second source of clients for me. Thanks for contacting me!