Introduction (2/1/2024)

OK, so hi! Thanks for reading. I'm starting a new newsletter thread today, for more personal musing, and far fewer Ghost tips. If you haven't already, you can subscribe using the link below.

The new newsletter thread will follow my progress this year, as I go from Ghost being my side-gig to being a full time job. Or whatever actually happens. (Bet on full-time job.)

I've taught and conducted chemistry research at a liberal arts college for the last 17 years. I love working with students. I love the moment when the "light bulb" comes on. And I've really enjoyed the individual mentoring that happens in the research lab.

But. Small liberal arts colleges are in trouble. We were worried about shifting demographics even before COVID, and COVID accelerated the problem, along with eating up a bunch of reserves. (Residential colleges are like landlords who need the rent to cover the mortgage. That was a safe bet, until COVID.) There aren't enough students interested in what we're selling (although it's awesome), and not enough families willing to pay for it. Faculty last had a raise in 2018, and next year we go from teaching six courses a year to eight. Budget tightening means that support for summer research (namely free student housing) is imperiled, and faculty willingness to mentor research is withering in the face of the 4-4 load. My building leaks, my office has inadequate climate control, and the classrooms aren't much better. What's been a "very soon" plan to do a massive gut-level renovation and expansion is now a much smaller expansion, with no clear plan for how the existing structure gets renovated and integrated with the expansion. And our administration is leaning on faculty to do more and more, while telling us we're doing too much?

I give, enough. I love teaching, but more teaching doesn't make me happier. I enjoy research (at the level of working with undergrads on interesting problems), but I get paid in the three figures to work with several students for ten weeks each summer, and in the absence of raises that at least keep up with the cost of living, my effective salary is declining. It's time to get out, and not just out of this institution, but out of the sector.

So, what's next?

I've been freelancing on Ghost as a side-gig for the past 1.5 years. It didn't start out all that seriously. I was setting up my own blog, and found myself fielding questions on the Ghost forum. Then I got invited to apply to be a "Ghost Expert", and ever since then, I've had as much work as I cared to take. (That amount hasn't been all that much, given that the day job wants to expand to eat all the time, except in summers.) I'm currently turning away people who aren't willing to wait a month or more for me to start their job.

Is there enough work for me to do Ghost full time? Honestly, I don't know. My gut says yes, but time will tell. And that time is coming. My contract is over in May, and I'm planning on doing work for Ghost clients all summer, hopefully full time. If I can do about 20-25 hours/week of paying work, I'll make as much as I am I do teaching during the year, with generous padding for benefits, employment taxes, etc. Maybe more. But there are assumptions...

The biggest assumption here is that I'm actually working at $100/hour. That's my nominal rate; it's what I have in my head when I quote a job. It's going to take me two hours? Ok, $200. For really small jobs, that generally works OK. Sometimes the $200 job takes an hour and a half, and sometimes it takes 2.5, but it's generally OK. Where I seem to go off the rails is underquoting larger jobs. I'm trying to do better, but I'm generally a bit too optimistic about how quickly I can accomplish something.

I'm also not great about factoring in time on the phone, time on email, etc etc. If that all fits in the other 15-20 hours (to make a 40 hour work week), then I guess that's OK. But for some clients, it seems like I spend more time sorting out what the job is than doing the job, and I'm definitely not capturing all of that as income.

I hate tracking time, but I guess in May it'll be time to rigorously track my time, to get a better handle on what's really going on. (Right now, so much of my time is snatched from evenings and lunch and weekends, and people are perpetually disrupting my work and why am I working after dinner anyway... I'm not sure how much I'll learn from tracking until I can do it in peace and quiet during daylight hours.)

Then there are the retainer clients. I probably need to rethink this whole plan, but I don't have enough data yet. For it to be profitable, I really need to hold people to an hour or two per month, but I've got a few people whose startup jobs seem to go on and on and on. I thought going into this that ok, people would need more to get started and then things would calm down, but I've got five new clients this month, and none of them are slowing down yet. Still, looking back a month, the two clients I picked up in the end of '23 mostly got what they needed and now don't need much. So maybe? I don't really want to track time on retainer clients, but maybe I really do need to move to that sort of model...

[Dear retainer clients if you're reading this: you get what you signed up for through the end of your current term (if annual) or several months of warning (if monthly), when/if I decide I need to tweak the plans I'm offering. I'm not going to pull the rug out from under you or send you a huge bill. That would not be cool. And I'm having a blast helping you get your sites launched. How cool is that? I get to help launch a site every week this month!]

Thirteen weeks to go.