We are in business to make money while maintaining the highest ethical standards and remaining true to our conscience. At the same time, we will be happy if we help others to make money too.So you’ve been in the business part-time for a while, the checks are trickling in and you think it is time to give full-time webmastering a try. How do you go about it, do you just hand in your resignation one day and then sit down in front of your computer and start making squillions?

Unfortunately it is not that easy – sure you can do it that way, but the chances of you succeeding these days are not that good. Making the leap from full-time employment with a regular paycheck to being self-employed, running your own small business and generating your own income is quite difficult. If you don’t believe me just try these statistics for a reality check. Here in Australia more than \’0% of small businesses will fail within the first 5 years – most won’t make it past the first twelve months! Of those businesses that do survive beyond the 5-year mark, most won’t be around to see their tenth anniversary. Statistics like these are not confined solely to Australia – they occur all ‘round the world.

The reasons for so many small businesses disappearing are many and varied, and running a business on the Internet does not mean you are immune to any of these problems. In fact, being an adult webmaster means that you face some additional problems that people who run businesses in the normal world do not face.

Here are a few tips to help you weather the transition from part-time to full-time, and to survive beyond the initial 12 months. They appear in no set order, and each one is just as important as the rest. I hope that they will give you some food for thought and help you get your plans in order so that you have a better chance of survival.

Mission Statement
There will be times when you will sit back and wonder what on earth you are doing. A mission statement is there to remind you. Write down what you want to achieve with your business, and be brutally frank about it. This is not the place for the sort of high-flying hyperbole that most businesses use – just put it down in plain language. My partner and I sat down some time ago and formulated our mission statement. It is very simple, but it provides a litmus test against which we can measure all of our plans.

Our mission statement is:

We are in business to make money while maintaining the highest ethical standards and remaining true to our conscience. At the same time, we will be happy if we help others to make money too.

Whenever we come up with a new idea we hold it up to that statement, and if it is not going to make us money, or it is against our principles, then that idea is discarded.

“If your plan is simply to make money while working for yourself, then perhaps you should think a bit more deeply. Draw up a business plan – not the sort that bankers look for, but a plan that has meaning for you.”

Business Plan
This is your map to achieve your mission statement. If your plan is simply to make money while working for yourself, then perhaps you should think a bit more deeply. Draw up a business plan – not the sort that bankers look for, but a plan that has meaning for you. List the goals that you want your business to achieve in 6 months, a year, 5 years and 10 years. This plan should give some brief outline as to how you intend to achieve those goals, it should not be set in stone, but should be flexible, because as you become more experienced you will realize that some of your goals are unobtainable, have lost their importance, or just won’t make you as much money as you thought they would. Review your plan frequently… add new things to it as you become aware of them, but never totally erase old things from the plan. It will help you greatly to look back to see how the plan has changed, and help you assess whether or not your plans are developing as you want them to.

Finances
Can you really afford to give up that regular paycheck? When you work for yourself or run your own business then your income is dependent solely on you. That thought should make you stop and reconsider your plans, because if you do not have a guaranteed income or sufficient working capital behind you then you will not last the distance. The leap from part-time to full-time is a quantum leap, and not to be taken lightly.

If you can survive such a period, are you able to survive the lean times? Some webmasters say that the current downturn in the industry has seen their income reduced by 30% – I would suggest that it is probably more… can you cope with a sudden reduction in your income of 30% or more? Your income may drop, but your costs will not diminish – can you cope with that?

If you can cope, do you have the squirrel mentality? Can you save your income in the good times so that you have resources to carry you through the lean times, or do you spend your money as fast as you earn it? Only you know the sort of person that you are, but I would suggest that if you plan on surviving beyond the 12-month barrier, then you had better become a squirrel very quickly.

Be sure to find a good accountant. At your first meeting with him, be honest with him about what you do and watch his reaction. When my partner went into business for herself, she went to an accountant that was recommended by another small businessman as being the very best in town. What we didn’t know was that this accountant felt that it was his moral duty to make sure that her adult business failed. He very nearly succeeded too, and she is still trying to cope with paying 3 lots of tax in just one year. After the first year’s tax return we very quickly found a better accountant.

When you have found a good accountant, listen to his advice and take notice of it because he will save you money. Keep adequate books of account, and make sure that you provide your accountant with all the figures he needs to satisfy the taxman. If you are open with him about your business he will be able to advise you on the best time to incorporate. That time will vary depending on your business and the country in which you live.

Tax
How we all hate the Taxman – (well my partner and I don’t actually hate the individuals, one of them down here occasionally models for us) – but we certainly don’t want pay the Taxman anything. That is a normal response, but don’t be tempted to cheat. Here in Australia the Taxation Department can monitor bank accounts so if you are depositing checks from overseas but not declaring them as income you will be caught and the penalties involved could put you right out of business.

Education
When you webmaster part-time, it is so easy not to keep up with all the latest advances in just about everything in the industry. For example, PHP arrived and I missed it totally, Perl is a language that I know about but have never had time to learn, and the list of things like that just go on and on. I am sure that every one of us has faced the same problem. All these little advances give others a market edge that we miss out on.

So take time out for education. Set aside some time each day or week to catch up. Sign-up at Script School, scour the Net for tutorials, buy the Idiot’s Guide to whatever – just make sure that you bridge the gap quickly, otherwise you will drop further and further behind.

“When you run your own business there is no one to give you a prod when you’re goofing off. Instead, the first notice you get that you haven’t been working hard enough is when the debt collectors start knocking on your door because you haven’t made enough to pay your bills.”

Time Management
When you were working full-time this little matter may not have been quite so important. Some may have worked in very structured environments, while others worked in less structured environments. Whatever the situation, if you goofed off for too long someone would come along and give you a prod to get back to something productive. When you run your own business there is no one to give you a prod when you’re goofing off. Instead, the first notice you get that you haven’t been working hard enough is when the debt collectors start knocking on your door because you haven’t made enough to pay your bills. By that stage recovery is usually almost impossible, so managing your time effectively is critical to the survival of your business.

Just about every webmaster operates his business from home, so there are always plenty of distractions to lure us away from work. There are kids, television, computer games, friends, hobbies and on and on the list goes. For some people the biggest problem is just getting started on the day’s work. When you were working in the normal world you had a set procedure that you followed to get to work. The alarm went off, you got up, showered etc, dressed, had breakfast and rushed out the door to catch the train/bus/ferry or whatever you used to get to work. Now that you are working from home and have no set schedule to meet to get to work, it can be much harder to actually walk the short distance from your bedroom to the computer. It’s nice to stay in bed, there might be something you need to watch on the television, that new magazine is just begging you to read it and there goes another slice of the day down the drain.

How do others overcome this problem? Well I know of people who faced the same situation and beat it by returning to a set schedule each morning – they even dress in clothes that they may have worn to work if they still worked out in the wide world. Following this sort of pattern helped them to establish a mindset about their own business. The pattern helped them get to work, and you may find that you have to establish that sort of pattern too. Even simple things like the clothes you wear can be a great help to increasing your productivity.

Time management does not just encompass getting to work – it also includes actually doing something when you sit down in front of your computer. It is very easy to get distracted in front of the computer too and lose valuable time doing non-productive things. Setting yourself a schedule for the day’s work can help you overcome this problem. Allow time for checking stats, catching up with the notice boards, building sites, shopping for content and chatting on ICQ; just don’t allow yourself to spend more time than you have allocated for each of these things.

You also need to think about time for yourself when you are scheduling your day. Spending too much time working will lead to total burnout very quickly. Of course you will have the perception that you need to work non-stop to keep the money rolling in. Unfortunately that is not correct, you do not get more work done if you work longer hours. Instead you make more mistakes and produce a generally inferior result than you would if you worked reasonable hours and allowed yourself time for recreation and sleep.

So make time to do nothing – be sure to spend time with your family, sit down and watch television – just plain get away from the computer for some time each and every day.

Family
Married with kids? Then make sure that you do not isolate yourself from them. Your partner still needs you around to help in the ways that you did when you worked for wages. Sometimes the move to working for yourself means that you need to re-educate your partner and kids. They may need to be told that even though you are now at home you are not always going to be available for them because you are working. At the same time you should not cut yourself off from them by spending excessive hours at the computer every day.

This is a fine balancing act and it is very hard to achieve, but your success in life will depend on achieving this balance.

Work Environment
I am not sure of how most people perceive the way we work, but I would not be surprised if most people had an image of an adult webmaster as a dirty little man sitting in a dark room glued to a computer monitor. Now that may work for you, but reality is not what you see on your computer screen. As I write this I am sitting in a room of our house that we have set aside as an office. It is a nice open airy room with a great view of the major natural landmark in this city. Do I waste time gazing out the window? I do not, but it sure is nice to stop work now and again and get in touch with reality through the window.

“Spending hours a day in front of the computer and sitting on something not much better than a packing case is a recipe for disaster. A little money spent now on the correct furniture will reap big rewards further down the track.”

If at all possible, set aside a room just for your computers – apart from giving you a work mindset when you are in there, it will also keep your work away from eyes that should not be looking at it.

Make sure that you have proper ergonomic furniture in there. Spending hours a day in front of the computer and sitting on something not much better than a packing case is a recipe for disaster. A little money spent now on the correct furniture will reap big rewards further down the track.

Isolation
It is one of the ironies of the Internet that while we are potentially communicating with millions of people, we are very much isolated and alone. So make sure that you don’t drop out of your normal social circle. Stay in touch with your friends, go to parties and keep doing all those things that you would have done if you had been in ‘normal’ work.

At the same time, establish contacts with other adult webmasters, hang out in chat rooms and chat on ICQ, but at the same time don’t do it to excess, and respect the needs of other webmasters to get some work done.

It is also helpful to stay in touch with the real world by reading the papers and watching the news on television.

The move to fulltime work as an adult webmaster can be very rewarding if you take the necessary steps to ensure your success. It can also be a recipe for financial disaster if you ignore the commonsense principals that apply.

Stuart Livesey is a one of the newest additions to The ADULTWEBMASTER writing staff. Stuart lives in Australia, where he works full-time as an adult webmaster.

We are in business to make money while maintaining the highest ethical standards and remaining true to our conscience. At the same time, we will be happy if we help others to make money too.So you’ve been in the business part-time for a while, the checks are trickling in and you think it is time to give full-time webmastering a try. How do you go about it, do you just hand in your resignation one day and then sit down in front of your computer and start making squillions?

Unfortunately it is not that easy – sure you can do it that way, but the chances of you succeeding these days are not that good. Making the leap from full-time employment with a regular paycheck to being self-employed, running your own small business and generating your own income is quite difficult. If you don’t believe me just try these statistics for a reality check. Here in Australia more than \’0% of small businesses will fail within the first 5 years – most won’t make it past the first twelve months! Of those businesses that do survive beyond the 5-year mark, most won’t be around to see their tenth anniversary. Statistics like these are not confined solely to Australia – they occur all ‘round the world.

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