Open for more client work

Today I published my new About page to include new information about my freelancing business.

Although I switched from freelancing full-time to being employed in 2019, I still keep a handful of clients on the side, and also keep my profile live on Codeable. I was still freelancing passively in the past few years.

Changes due to moving to Japan

Since last September, I moved to Japan to open a new chapter of my life. To obtain a visa for long term staying, I went through the route of business manager visa. Which means I have to create a business entity in Japan and running it as a manager.

I chose this route because I still want to have the freedom of doing whatever I want, wherever I want. As much as I wanted to live in Japan, the lifestyle is also none-negociatable. It is also tempting for me to think: what if I can really run and grow a web agency here, to an extent that it can afford to hire a few nice local people, and being profitable and sustainable?

So I finished the process to set up my Japanese company (思果デジタル) in Tokyo. The rough ideas of what it will do includes:

• General WebOps work: we can host and maintain WordPress websites.
• Collaborating with plugin businesses: we can join force with companies that developing WordPress plugins. Targeting a niche to specialize in supporting and debugging could be a good start point. Also for small to medium size plugin businesses, they may not want to invest too much on full-time staff yet, we can probably fit in a space like that.

This is the first year, I haven’t hired any developers in my company yet. So the “we” in the context above is just me at the moment. But once I can have a regular revenue stream for this company (the minimum target I set is USD $5,000 per month), I would be happily considering to hire the first developer in the local area.

Pricing and stuff

Currently the plan is simple, I have two packages for clients to choose from: Pay as you go ($600 for 5 hours of work) and Moonlighting ($3,000 per month).

My strength is WordPress plugin development. While I haven’t done it for a while, I will get back to be familiar with EDD and WooCommerce related projects. To prevent conflict of interests, I won’t be taking clients who also sell commercial Gravity Forms add-ons. But I surely still take Gravity Forms customization for website projects (mainly from Codeable).

If this could interest you, be sure to check the About page where I elaborate the uniqueness of my working styles and why I could be a good fit.

Other open source projects

I also have some plans line up this year to exercise my coding muscles not just for client work. I plan to keep updating two of my still active WordPress plugins, mostly improve their integration with the Block editor.

Creating plugins to utilize the local payment gateways like PayPay is also on my plate. The first will be a Gravity Forms PayPay add-on, then maybe for other form plugins or WooCommerce.

Client work always make me energized

If you’re a developer and also have a full-time job, I wonder if you ever feel the same with me? That I always feel client work can energize me much more than the day job.

I think it could be that, the client work is more of something you choose to do. Unlike the tasks from the day job, you typically have less control over it.

Even I do enjoy my current full-time position and already have very high autonomy, running a business on my own is still no doubt, I have 100% control.

So here I’m back on the wagon! Let’s build your successful WordPress project together! Drop me a line at yoren [at] 1fix (dot) io, or following and dm me on Twitter.