Oh, and if you come to a fork in the road at Jellystone Park, be sure to take it!
“Work online, work anywhere, live free’ … will be a blog for anyone who works through the web (freelancers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, webmasters, telecommuters etc).”
AnyWired’s Day Eight: Write your portfolio’s “About” page.
“When you come to a fork in the road, ” Yogi Berra once famously said, “Take it.”
No, not that one in Jellystone Park with his side companion, Boo-Boo Bear.
But that famous Yankee catcher from a time before you were born.
Baseball.
Check your collector set of most valuable baseball cards.
Unless someone you love dearly threw them out lo those many years after you left home.
I took the fork when I decided not to follow all the good advice that AnyWired recommended for establishing a side gig or full time business freelancing.
I began a new meal not called freelancing when I had to repeat the 1st grade.
Or maybe I chose a path that required me to cut back on meals – at least on a regular basis.
But one that AnyWired inspired.
“Work online, work anywhere, live free’ … will be a blog for anyone who works through the web (freelancers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, webmasters, telecommuters etc).”
Here’s where the blog’s message inspired me:
- Work at home, but live where you want instead of where you are forced to.
- You are in demand, but you don’t know where.
- Customers, clients and consumers all over the world are searching for the insight you have accumulated.
- It used to be that you had to be local to work with clients or an employer in a specific location.
Not anymore.
I figured that there were more than enough detailed instructions for earning a living online.
My contribution?
- If you are already making money as a freelancer or an internet entrepreneur, why not move to where you will find the most inspiration?
- How do you find the highest quality-of-life communities with people who are just like you?
- Those that offer everything you enjoy?
- Plus affordable real estate, shopping, dining and entertainment with award-winning schools?
Wait, maybe Jellystone Park is relevant after all.
For Day Eight AnyWired said:
“Include your current location, any relevant qualifications you have, previous work you have done in the industry and previous clients you have worked for (don’t worry if there are none).”
“This is particularly relevant if you’ve been working in your field before going freelance.”
If not, then you’ll have to fake it until you make it.
Or, on Day Eight, “You should spend at least 1 hour per day just developing your skill.”
And, on each and every day going forward.
So what lies ahead over the next seven days according to AnyWired?
- “Day Nine: Create your Contract Form.
- Day Ten: Design your invoice template.
- Day Eleven: Set up your home office space.
- Day Twelve: Create a logo OR commission a logo OR work more on your skills.
- Day Thirteen: Start work on a portfolio item – you will have 5 days to complete this.
- Day Fourteen: Add a page to your portfolio describing your one service.
- Day Fifteen: Read Freelance Switch’s guide to Getting Started as a Freelancer.”
So, back to Pages in WordPress.
You are supposed to write your About page.
Being such a clueless DIY bumbler I didn’t understand the differences between “Posts” and “Pages”.
Here’s what I found out.
What you are now reading is called a post.
Like your resume they appear in reverse chronological order, unless
- You know what you are doing
- You change the default setup
- You can see I don’t and didn’t
But we’re not here to wax poetically about posts.
No.
We’re after those non-chronological and often hierarchical content on pages.
According to the WordPress Codex:
“Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present timeless information about yourself or your site — information that is always relevant.
You can use Pages to organize and manage the structure of your website content.
In addition to the common “About” and “Contact” pages, other examples include “Copyright”, “Disclosure”, “Legal Information”, “Reprint Permissions”, “Company Information” or “Accessibility Statement”.”
Pages don’t change dynamically. They aren’t time-bound. Their content doesn’t perish or become outdated like in posts.
A little more from WordPress:
- Pages can use different Page Templates, including template files, Template Tags and other PHP code.
- More sophisticated themes may provide a wider range of adjustments or display options for individual pages.
- It’s quite possible to make a website using WordPress which only contains pages.
So with that cleared up, what about, well, The About Page?
Here’s what I found buried in my dashboard that came with my Twenty Seventeen theme.
“Most people start with an About page that introduces them to potential site visitors.
It might say something like this:
Hi there! I’m a bike messenger by day, aspiring actor by night, and this is my website. I live in Los Angeles, have a great dog named Jack, and I like piña coladas. (And gettin’ caught in the rain.)
…or something like this:
The XYZ Doohickey Company was founded in 1971, and has been providing quality doohickeys to the public ever since. Located in Gotham City, XYZ employs over 2,000 people and does all kinds of awesome things for the Gotham community.”
So how do you arrive at your About page description?
It flows from your site’s mission statement.
Your answers to each of the following question will provide a summary you can fine tune.
- What am I going to do with this?
- Who is going to read this?
- What kinds of information will I be posting?
- Who am I doing this for?
- How often am I going to be posting and adding information?
Here is a draft that I’ve been working from which will be my bio displayed on the inside cover of each of my five books in Volume One of The Knowledge Path Series:
Steve is the founder of the Knowledge Laboratories and its network of enterprises.
He’s been mooning for years. Mostly in the dark.
Write. Write. Write.
Before first light.
Crafting messages “literally bottled and set adrift from KnowWhere Atoll.”
It’s taken him eight years just to bring Volume One: The Knowledge Path Series and its five books into the light of day.
Is it because he’s ADD? Maybe.
While he doesn’t see ghosts in the dark, he sees patterns. And opportunities. And, well, ways of tying people, places, things, ideas and trends together in new and original ways.
All of which come in handy during his day job in the Executive MBA program for The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine.
He advises millennial, midlife and empty-nest executives pursuing new career, entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial opportunities. Helping them get unstuck by seeing their situations differently.
“How to Live, Love, Work, Play, Invest and Leave a Legacy.”
Oh, and if you come to a fork in the road at Jellystone Park, be sure to take it!
Day Seven: Is It Worth All Those 3 am Wake Up Panics?
Day Six: Who Should Take the First Step the Chicken or Egg?
Day Five: Repeating 1st Grade