Turns Out The Need Was Out There Just Waiting For Me To Fill It

[ This is part 6 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

That was in early February of 2008. Over the next month or month and a half, I scoured all the cities on Craig’s List looking for WordPress gigs in the Computer Gigs section on Craig’s List. And they were out there! An advanced theme customization for a stocks web site built on WordPress in Austin TX, some layout changes and customized widgets on a sustainable gardening blog in Washington D.C., a real estate blog in Florida… The list goes on.

Lot’s of small to medium sized jobs paying me actual money to do something I absoloutely *love* to do! I was in heaven! During a bit of a lag in business, I posted my first ad in the Computer Services section in Seattle and got my first really big job. It wasn’t even WordPress. It was finishing a web design that some designer had desserted for the owner of a Seattle Law Firm. That job drove home that this business was real, multi-faceted, was something that I could do and was booming.

This was great for a few months, but then a very slow time hit. As in hit the wall! Business just stopped for a few weeks, and I was scared. My instinct was to ride it out, but with a young child counting on me, I felt the responsible thing to do was to go back to work.

FORCED TO RIDE OUT THE SLOW TIMES [READ PART 7]. . .

Accidentally Finding A Need And Filling It

[ This is part 5 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

So as I did all of this as a hobby, something else was happening concurrently with that. I lost my job as an Administrative Assistant and my developmentally disabled son was becoming harder and harder to deal with. I was not able to find a new job for about 6 months after losing that Admin job. I was on food stamps and unemployment and absolutely desperate.

So I started poring over Craig’s List ads in every city in the country looking for *something* that I could do to make a few extra dollars. I was looking in the Computer Gigs section for something like data entry or something like that – I didn’t know what I would find. I just needed to find *something* I could do and do quick and get a paycheck.

Low and behold in the San Francisco Computer Gigs section of Craig’s List section I found an ad asking for “WordPress Help.” What??? WordPress? Hey, I can do that! The pay was listed as “A Little Moo-La For Your Latte.” I didn’t know what that would equal exactly, but it was more than I had at the moment, so why not give it a shot?

The need, as it turned out, was for a customized widget for the sidebar on a blog for car enthusiasts. The pay wound up being approximately $20. I had done that particular thing before, but there was something unique about the theme this site was using that made it a bit of a challenge. So I think I spent about 3 hours earning that $20, but I didn’t care. I was ecstatic! I had $20 in my PayPal account headed towards my bank, I had learned something new about WordPress, and I had hope! An opportunity was knocking, and I wasn’t about let it go by.

TURNS OUT THE NEEED WAS OUT THERE JUST WAITING FOR ME TO FILL IT [READ PART 6]. . .