I completely understand, I'm having to go back through my replies from the past few days trying to catch up. Thank you very much for your kind words, it honestly brightens up my day!
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I completely understand, I'm having to go back through my replies from the past few days trying to catch up. Thank you very much for your kind words, it honestly brightens up my day!
I've been thinking about your post. I understand you are thinking of new ventures for business and so was mulling that over. This is just opinion mind you, although I'm older than you with experience in work and so my first instinct is to tell you is to move beyond the web with focusing your skills. I know you have success with your web business but I keep hearing the web is "old" and stale now, everyone is on mobile. While it's true there will always probably be a need for a web presence, if you have the time, and it appeals to you, maybe try mobile development? There's a lot of competition for work in any case for front-end work, you might be better off to study some kind of programming (although that's hard to choose, too, if trying to predict the future). Have you looked into blockchain development? While the work might be sporadic I'm under the impression there is many jobs to be had. You could probably fit that in with your homesteading plans as well. I'm not saying abandon the web work just wanting to plant the seed to expand out into something you could market more easily at your own pace and desire.
Some other areas I noticed that are really growing is Amazon is really pushing for developers to develop for Alexa. I signed up for the developer program and they are always sending emails for free tools they give away to developers, contests, and they just desperately want people to do stuff for Alexa. So that might be an area that doesn't have a lot of developer competition where it might be slightly easier to get recognition and support. I'll keep an eye out for other things as I see them.
I just wanna start off by saying your comments never discourage me, only encourage.
When it comes to development, it doesn't really matter what "environment" your work in, be it web, mobile or general software development so much, as your core development skills. So things like languages and frameworks. Many mobile apps are little more than glorified web pages, and I like that. A mobile app, let's say for this example Gmail, still communicates with the back-end servers the same as a web application like gmail.com. I don't use a Steemit app on my phone, I've just saved the link to my homepage and it opens exactly the same as an app.
That's the kind of development I support, as mobile apps are little more than an advertisers wet dream. Even most mobile games run just the same in a web browser. Plus looking at what the future of android might look like, this blurring the lines between devices, the web and apps and so on makes me think that this is the future of the web/mobile devices.
I did study internet and business technologies at college, although dropped out during the third year to get a job working for a couple of photography studios, developing software and websites for them. I think I've always stayed away from specialising too much, as with technology things can move on so fast you'll be left with redundant skills.
I've pretty much constantly developed my skills over the past few years, expanding the amount of frameworks and languages I can work with, but at the end of the day... I think I just wanna keep it as my hobby. I don't like being forced to work a certain way when it comes to development, I have my own philosophies and ways of doing things and that makes me feel uncomfortable in a work environment, or rather working for someone else. Even when I was working freelance, many people want to micromanage things even when they don't understand the technologies being used. I think that's all down to my asperger's to be perfectly honest, I can work as part of a team, but I don't like it.
An example of that, was when I was making a website for a canadian photographer, through an agency, and after handing it over to them, they pretty much made it... a bit crap. Painfully slow to load, bad spacing and placement of things etc. I still have my original now: http://john-greenfield.co.uk/liteplo/ and then there's: http://liteplo.com/
However, despite all this, during my degree I seemed to be pretty good at managing group projects, and project management was a big part of my course. I'm thinking maybe going for a project management qualification, and make that my job while still doing whatever I like in my spare time. It seems like a good compromise to me, and could potentially work better with me. Certainly something I need to think on!
Oh and of course you should try Steemgigs! If it costs you nothing but a bit extra time to list your services, why not? I think if you're good at something you should keep doing it (hope my previous comment did not discourage)