Background
Though my entry into the freelance web design world is fairly recent, I have been enjoying computer work since the "pre-Windows" days. My education includes a BS in Civil Engineering which in those days included programming in Basic and Fortran and often involved keypunching hundreds of cards to submit to a mainframe computer. We did not all have PCs on our desks back then. When I stopped working as an engineer, in 1989, PCs were just starting to be fixtures in the workplace - and we still did not all have them on our desks!
Flash forward a decade or so and instead of working as an engineer, I am working for myself - as an alpaca farmer! Those of you who are thinking that a farmer has little use for computers are wrong. Like most small business owners, I try to manage all aspects of my business. That includes doing my own marketing, advertising, bookkeeping, etc. One of the first tasks I took on as a small business owner, was the design of my farm's website.
I found that I very much enjoyed the combination of artistic and technical challenges involved with website design. For the next 10 or so years, I maintained and regularly upgraded our farm website and kept abreast, through continuing education and online research, of the latest web design standards and software. It wasn't until several friends and clients requested web design services that I began to think seriously about starting this business.
I am finding that my two businesses mesh well. Working at home on the farm allows me the time to serve my web design clients and the web design business gives me the flexibility to attend to the farm as necessary. It's the best of both worlds!
You can visit our farm website at Snowshoe Farm Alpacas