Thoughts on side-gigs

The seed:
A side-gig is meant to be a low gain, low stress thing. It should be something you can easily outsource/automate. In fact, being easy should be the highest priority. If anything doesn’t meet first criteria, the second shouldn’t be bothered. I crank up a lot of source code on my full time job, don’t want to do that for my side gig.

Benefits:

Having a different type of side-gig means a different part of your brain gets activated when you’re working from your home office. It also means you’re not putting all of your eggs in one basket.

Example:

Transcription and video editing for example, pretty much fit the bill. You can start the biz on your own. At first you’ll be slow but you’ll get familiar with various English accents and the overall process of transcription/close captioning. Once you have a reasonable income you can reinvest (after paying you a 15% of your full time salary), you can start putting cash aside to hire virtual assistant(s) to automate parts of the process.

Expansion:

I believe that the transcription expert should be a separately dedicated person. S/he would provide the transcription which would be then used by the video editor to add subtitles to videos. We do need better software tools for the closed captioning though. Techsmith Camtasia is not good enough IMO.

I being a software developer will have an opportunity to software products tailored to the needs of transcription people and video editors who add closed captions to videos on regular basis. Although, that’s a very far-fetched possibility and I don’t want it to be on the list. Smells like a short sighted office rat.

Instead, I would love to get a VA who could work as a BD and find work our little business machine.

Family matters:

Begum(my wife) doesn’t have to play a role in this plan. But, I do believe she needs to be able to support herself and the family even if I’m not there. She also needs to do something beyond the household, it will comfort her mind. She will have a purpose of life other than bearing and raising children. It’s going to come with a decent income as well, which will give her some freedom of choice.

Office or no office?
In the end, I believe I don't need an office where people could come to work. Instead, everything can be outsourced to guys & guls who can work from home(or anywhere else they can get the work done for that matter). If Wordpress do it, why can't a small video editing shop? Instead of spending money on buying the computers & air conditioning, I think we should pay them well and invest in collaboration tools(work software, company website, file sharing services, get together, project management software). Maybe we could facilitate a few people through co-working spaces sometime in future. Like, when the power cuts get worst in summer.
I will get myself a couple gigantic screens though and setup a home office for myself. 

PS: The author has been there, done that. I used to work through freelance portals like ODesk(now Upwork), Elance, and Freelancer for developing Android apps and Windows desktop software. Took a start in video editing through Fiverr. 

PS2: This is not a morning journal entry. Just putting it there so that it will be easily traceable in the future.

The Morning Journal # 2 - On Udemy, evil affiliates, and a producing more courses

I feel like my Udemy courses have run out of juice. Present month I'm afraid will be a 2 digit month.
[Most] Part of this happened due to Udemy's pricing policy. Both of my courses (this and this)are the less shiny objects anyone would buy for $10 I believe, $20 is too high.

Udemy affiliates are doing good business while the instructors are (largely) starving of organic students and loosing faith in Udemy.

Remedy:

I believe if I could put out a high value course i.e. $508ish thing, then my revenue will bounce back for a while. But, if an attempt to put out a $50 course fails, well I will test another (lower) price point. Shoot for the stars, you'll hit the moon at least. This is a true win-win.

Evil affiliates:

Affiliates only create fancy websites & build mailing lists, giving them the lion's share is bull crap on Udemy's part. The downside of unjustly rewarding the affiliates is that when genuine instructors will find another way to monetize their courses, the affiliates will also run away. They won't create content for Udemy.

Poor instructors:

We're the real content producers. Nobody should get a share higher than the original content producer. They way Udemy's been playing with instructor revenues lately is pure evil.

Advise for Udemy:

Udemy needs to bring affiliate rewards to a 25%. The rest should be split between the instructor and Udemy. This will give Udemy some extra cash and relax the instructor community which is so disturbed right now.

Dumping the crutch:

Udemy(and any other platform like it) is just crutch for your online business, don't let it become the leg of your business. It is said that we should be focused on building our own long term biz, which is one hell of a task I think. Not every engineer or accountant is good at building mailing lists or promoting things.

So, I am seriously considering the idea to finish my 3rd Udemy course ASAP and rush to PS. They don't offer competing courses and I have a couple ideas they'd love to get courses built for. I will also get a chance to work with a different breed of professional course planners & editors by doing this.

Make a mobile portrait video look good on large screens

How to fold a portable greenscreen background like a pro, easily

R

This video is intended to be a help for folks like myself who don't have much experience with photography equipment. 

I bought a portable greenscreen last year for recording my online courses.

When I bought it I asked the tailor on Nisbet Road, Lahore to show me how to fold it because it appeared to be tricky.

The man was kind enough to show me how to do it and he didn't mind me recording the video on my mobile phone.



For anybody interested in video editing part, I will be putting out another video showing how did I make the video look the way it does using Camtasia Studio. You see, it was a portrait when I shot it from my cell phone.