Freelance Parent is now two months old, which seems like an impossible thing. How has it only been 60 days (or so) since we started this eMoms adventure? WordPress says we’ve made 57 posts and received 229 comments in that time. I’m pretty sure that those numbers represent complete insanity. Surely we’ve been here for a year, at least.
Writing and maintaining this blog has been such an amazing experience. In these two short months, the readers here have taught us far more than we could have taught you. You folks have been cheerleaders, mentors, friends, comic relief, a shoulder to cry on, and occasionally even that little voice on our shoulders that says, “Duh, do it this way.” You’ve also been generous with your praise and let us know when you found something particularly helpful. One of you even took your own time to email us quietly to let us know about a misspelling in a post. In short, this space is really feeling like a community.
Because we know that you all have certain needs and expectations, and because we are not mind-readers, we wanted to open up the conversation here to ask what it is that you really want out of Freelance Parent. Our aims thus far have been to:
Share our experiences starting up a freelance company.
Offer advice to others who are navigating the waters of start-up-dom. (Yes, I made up a word.)
Get to know other freelancers and learn from them.
Publicize our own business and services without being smarmy about it.
Offer readers a fun, informative experience that makes them want to be part of the community.
I think we’ve done pretty well on most of these, but we’d like to really drive that last one home. We want to know what you’d like to see here. It can be something as simple as, “I’d like to know how it’s going with Tamara’s new Mother’s Helper,” (pretty well, from what I gather), to “How far along is Lorna?” (30 weeks today). Or, it can be some sort of fantasy request like, “Can you give us the names and addresses of all your clients so we can hire them away at a lower rate?” (No, we can’t.) Or, how about “Can you build a fancy database system that allows me to track query letter submissions right here on your blog?” (Again, that’s probably a no-go, but we can possibly steer you in the right direction.)
Do you love it when we talk about keeping track of business records but just wish we’d stop whining about unethical clients? You can tell us that, too. (Do it nicely, though.) Do you think it would be awesome to hear more about blogging, in general? We could probably work with you on that. Do you prefer business-y posts, personal posts, or do you like the combination we have of the two? The point is that we really, really want to know what you really, really want. Go ahead and share your thoughts in the comments; or, if you’d rather keep them private, go ahead and email them to us at berrybreweradmin (at) gmail (dot) com.
After all, if we’re going to continue trying to build community here, it only seems right for the community members to have some sort of say.