How do I make money - self-employed - without using corporate social media?
I was coasting along on an extremely minimal income and I embraced an ethical position of using only privacy-compatible technology.
I subsequently had a wonderful little person come into my life who has made me want to have more material capability & flexilibilty. And so I have turned to trying to sell my skills again.
By refusing to use to use corporate social media to promote my services, I am handicapping myself in getting work.
I also struggle to bring myself to cooperate with powers which are working to undermine my child’s opportunity to have a good life.
Would appreciate your thoughts
Use Thumbtack or search engines/listing sites specifically for your type of business. Make friends with your clients. Cater to a specific group. Word of mouth can be powerful at gaining new business, but it takes about 6 months to get going.
You create business accounts.
Use them exclusively for business.
Use a separate browser to access those accounts.
Create a firewall as much as you can between the personal and professional online.Business is inherently ethically dirty. Doing work for money is already an ethical step down. But in the environment you live in, it’s necessary to survive. So you do it. For you and your kid.
Do local networking the way we used to do it before social media — make up business cards with QR codes advertising what you can do, and leave the on public and semi-public bulletin boards (community centers, sports and fitness places, churches and shopping malls, parks that have boards set up, farmers markets, etc.). If you need to, try going door to door. If you can afford it, buy bulk mail and distribute a flyer locally. Let your friends and neighbors know what you can do. Take a few jobs below cost at first ifyou need to, listing your regular rate and a promotional or loyalty discount.
Personally I never made enough money to survive on doing this, but it was enough to keep me above water between contracts.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m doing at the moment (haven’t quite got to door-to-door though - maybe it will come to that). Those are some good ideas for locations for placing ads - thanks. I’m out of that headspace and need to get back in it!
I can’t help noticing how much work is coming in to my peers from instagram though. I’m getting the impression that it has become the standard medium/conduit for professionals.
If trying bulk mail – explore USPS “EDDM” services for canvassing local ZIP codes for sub-letter pricing.
Instagram is the standard way to reach people in their 30s and early 40s. Anyone older or younger, traditional methods should bring more repeat business.
just make business accounts on mainstream social media. idk what your job is or if you can do it but in parallel you can also have business accounts on federated/private/ethical whatever you call it social media and with that you are also promoting other networks etc. if u have more people working with you use some federated chat xmpp for example instead of slack, stuff like that
it’s not your fault, there is no “ethical” production/consumption in capitalism
There is ‘more/less’ ethical though. Don’t go full relativist on me
Only Sith deal in absolutes
the term is pointless
For running a public-facing business where your customer leads have to come from online, I don’t have a good answer, except maybe to take an attitude that it’s your company rather than you who is using the social media. I did a similar thing when I had to do some windows development for a client. I don’t run windows on my own computers, but the client supplied a windows laptop that I did the work on, so it was their computer rather than mine, ok fine. I realize it’s possible to overstretch that concept but it’s a matter of your personal comfort level.
As an ordinary working stiff working privately for companies or clients but not seeking public exposure, I haven’t had significant problems despite not using the big social media including linkedin and github. Just respond to advertisements and stuff like that to get jobs, and self-host a public code repo if you want one. Once someone commented on it but it still wasn’t an issue.
