How Much Do You Give Away?
When I started blogging, it was all about giving. Giving, giving, and more giving.
Writing for free, programming for free, talking, e-mailing, more blogging, more writing, and soon I got over my head.
Everybody is busy in their own way. Priorities shift constantly, and interests change.
One thing I’ve struggled with lately is how to keep on going. My personal situation has changed since I bailed out a friend who was kicked out of his apartment (long story). I’ve met a nice lady friend. I used to use blogging and programming to pass the time, now I have to make the time.
It’s a struggle, and one that I’m sure we all face. Some of us have kids. Most of us have day jobs. Some of us have school. And some have all three and then some. Yet we still find the time to make it online and share with the world our thoughts and knowledge.
Just this week I had to tell a guy who requested CSS customization on Ajax Edit Comments that I wasn’t able to help him unless I billed him my hourly rate. I felt bad about it, but there wasn’t much I could do. I had a paying client I had to finish a job for, and the custom work would have competed with that.
Andrew Rickmann also raised a thought-provoking issue. If someone had a site you didn’t particularly agree with, would you still help? So not only is our time being competed for, our ideals are as well.
My question to you is, how much are you willing to give away before it’s too much for you to handle? If you do client work, how do you determine what work should be paid for, versus not?
Thank you for reading.
Andrew says...
I’ve also had to start saying no to people recently.
I have found that I overestimated people’s willingness / desire to learn for themselves, or even read other comments. I have is that I released a plugin that creates client facing content. The problem with this is that it can look very different depending on the theme that is chosen and I get quite a few requests to re-code the theme so the plugin will work.
This has gotten to the point that I am really relcutant to release improvements for fear that I will get loads of queries.
Ronald Huereca says...
Client Work : Yes, on top of my day job.
@Andrew,
I hear ya man. It seems with every release of AEC, something breaks for somebody, depending on a theme or plugin. WP 2.6 released a crap-load of issues with their inclusion of an unproven jQuery 1.2.6.
Everytime I released an AEC update, I would perhaps get about 100 downloads a day. Now it’s close to a thousand. I cross my fingers everytime
Let me guess… is it your sidebar tabs plugin?
Andrew says...
It is Ronald. I put a beta version up on the site over the weekend which does so much more than the old version (you can see the sidebar and the feature box on my site, they both use it) but I am really tentative about releasing it through WordPress extend because it is more complex.
Andrew Flusche says...
I’ve had this same problem. Now that I’m running my law practice, there’s such little time for blogging. I truly love giving away useful content, but I’m having to find a new balance in life.
Peter says...
Client Work : Yes, on top of my day job.
I drew the line when someone specifically said they needed an urgent feature addition to one of my plugins for a client.
Also, it’s odd how a lot of us respond much faster (doing free work for others) than many paid companies.
Ronald Huereca says...
@Andrew,
So are you saying you can give me free legal advice?
@Peter,
I had somewhat the same experience this week. A person said, “Your plugin isn’t working!” So I asked for admin credentials to troubleshoot the error in an environment where I could duplicate the error. The guy refused, so I told him, “I’m sorry, there’s really nothing I can do then.”
The person eventually said, “I’d rather not have the plugin not work.”
It amazes me how someone can e-mail in and say that the world is ending, but once you tell them your hourly rate, the “urgent need” suddenly goes silent.
Lbug - Dubai Dreams Blog says...
I think because there is so much great free content available that people start to expect everything related to the internet should be free. When I get builders, plumbers and mechanics doing free work for me I’ll happily reciprocate, until then I’ll pick and choose.