For those that Work from Home
polycounter lvl 18
Hey, I was hoping to get some opinions from some of you freelancers / indies / other people that work from home...
My girlfriend and I have been talking a lot lately about looking into finding a nice office that we can rent and getting a bunch of other freelancers and such together to share. Basically, the idea is that people can rent desk space and we set up a nice workspace to work in.
The reason being that we are both a bit tired of working in our apartments, and coffee shops are nice for a while, but it'd be kind of nice to have an actual work environment. We also figured that it could provide people with a business mailing address as well as a sort of support network. We sort of looking at setting it up in a similar way to an artist's studio.
We have figured it out that we can probably find space that will cost around $150/month in downtown Vancouver.
So, for anyone who does or has worked at home, would this kind of thing appeal? If so, is $150 bucks a month something you'd be willing to pay?
(And if you are interested and live in Vancouver, let me know!)
My girlfriend and I have been talking a lot lately about looking into finding a nice office that we can rent and getting a bunch of other freelancers and such together to share. Basically, the idea is that people can rent desk space and we set up a nice workspace to work in.
The reason being that we are both a bit tired of working in our apartments, and coffee shops are nice for a while, but it'd be kind of nice to have an actual work environment. We also figured that it could provide people with a business mailing address as well as a sort of support network. We sort of looking at setting it up in a similar way to an artist's studio.
We have figured it out that we can probably find space that will cost around $150/month in downtown Vancouver.
So, for anyone who does or has worked at home, would this kind of thing appeal? If so, is $150 bucks a month something you'd be willing to pay?
(And if you are interested and live in Vancouver, let me know!)
Replies
How many people would be putting 150 in? How big would the office be? Are there any other benefits like shared office copy/fax machine, meeting room, or receptionist? What part of town?
Make sure to have everyone sign and understand an agreement!
Really cool idea, though!
this
and dudes possibly hijacking your gig?
Like Tyler mentioned, I'd be interested to know where you're looking around Van...150 seems pretty cheap, I imagine it'd be a smaller room shared with people?
Gav
Tyler - thanks for the thoughts and advice. We are definitly going to be drawing up a good contract if we do it. It was my first worry as well.
We would be looking into some of the other stuff you mentioned. Part of the plan is to hopefully set it up in a sort of co-op manner. So we all pay our 150 bucks a month, use any left overs for upgrades/mutally beneficial stuff, and if we feel the need for something we can pool our money together. We do want to start with some things though, coffee machine and printer/scanner forsure. A receptionist would be great. Meeting room is something I've been thinking on as well, because it could be quite important if someone wants to meet a client.
As for location, this is for right downtown vancouver, 6-8 people. We're going to look at a couple of places today, but so far it looks like it should be manageable to get 6-8 people a decent office for that price.
And yea, the NDA thing came up as well. I was thinking about it, and realized it shouldn't be a problem, but I'd love to hear some more thoughts on this. But in my experience freelance work is given under the impression that you will not show anyone your work, but not that you will work at home. As long as the office is set up in a way that allows people who are under NDA to have privacy in who views their monitors, it shouldn't be a problem? (I know freelancers who work at coffee shops and shit, so I figure that this sort of thing should be alright?)
Anyways, love to hear more thought! This is definitely encouraging though.
gav... wow man... that does sound totally screwed up... i would lose my mind if i realized i hadn't said a single word in a twelve hour period
so does that 150 include utilities and power? toss a bunch of powerful computers in there, and you may see a difference in the light bill. you'd have to keep hours restrictive to keep costs down as well. just talking out loud... not sure if that those issues are even issues, but something to always think of... people always say you can own a home for $XXXXXX but that doesn't include all the other stuff like basic bills and maintenence that would need to happen regularly... cleaning service for the bathroom is a must... give it two weeks, and everyone will be taking a trip to tim horton's to drop the kids off at the pool everyday. i think your "everyone pay $150" is a better option instead of splitting to cost up, at least at first. however, investing your contributor/user money into something may mentally help the people that you work with help take care of the place on a rotational basis or something so you wouldn't have to pay for someone to clean the floors or bathroom or take out the garbage. but then you get into that "when i leave, do i get my money back?" issue......
Get one that has a bathroom down the hall where the manger cleans and supplies. If you can find one with a common kitchen area, even better. Stock your stuff in your office, go down the hall and cook yer food. You don't want some tool with durian stinking up YOUR office. Try to get the fastest internet connection you can afford. Be prepared for flakes.
Who's gonna watch, manage, collect, pay bills, spend the money each month? If money can break of a marriage where two people are sexing each other, it will break up a bunch of eccentric artist in a heartbeat. So be careful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking
A number of cities appear to have at least one location... a quick google for Vancouver shows at least a few. Unfortunately one (WorkSpace) closed back in August
I'm only working my first freelance(modeling) gig right now, but if work gets more consistent I would definitely consider this. For me, there would be a lot of additional costs on top to get started., such as a new Laptop/second PC and Transit. As well, I like to work at any time of night or day, how would the hours of the place work? I guess it would not be much for me to reschedule my sleep patterns.
Are you going to be putting up cubicles?
You should have ask people in that want to pitch in extra money to save for a 3D printer/scanner for the group.
It'd be nice to set up a server to host/share assests.
How much will the internet cost?
Who will provide desks chairs? or is it BYO?
Trouble I ran into (maybe you can learn from it :P).
- It took all my time, which made it impossible to do my freelance work. People mailed, phoned me all day with (stupid) questions.
- Multiple people managing = getting conflicts
- Everybody wants something different, bigger space, coffee machine, etc, etc.
- Money is a big problem, I never want to be in charge of that ever again.
I put a lot of effort in trying to make it work. found an office space for like 300$ (total), the space was big enough to hold like 15 people (that makes 20$ per person) but I only had 6 and like 6 on hold. 50$ for an office space is still cheap but people did not want to take the risk as many of them just started as a freelancer.
I always realized that these things are not really a big deal, but for some reason even those things get big. So I guess my advice = Be very sure what you are getting yourself into, its gonna take a lot of time! which brings me to the next advice, get somebody else to do it as soon as possible!!
Which you the best of luck, because it still sounds like a really cool idea!!! so do go for it!!
The NDA does pose a problem. Exactly because I would want feedback. A second pair of eyes. That or what if you have a problem you want to ask someone about more experienced in a area than you? Having to hide your work from one another seems somewhat counterproductive to at least what I would want out of such a social situation.
Could the setting be a outsourcing art group in name only? Meaning you have one established name that all the contracts for all the different indies and freelancers work under. So there is only one NDA to sign for each project, and people involved with each one don't have to worry about having to hide what they are working on from one another. I guess at that point though, it would be more a co-op.
Tulkamir: What I was saying about the receptionist etc.. There are office spaces in Vancouver that offer shared resources like that. So you have an office with 10 rooms or whatever. All these rooms share a copy/fax, receptionist, meeting room, kitchen(?). The price tag goes up. So it depends how much business you're doing.
Friends of mine rented part of an office on Granville Island from another company. It worked alright but didn't really have any amenities and was still a bit expensive.
Heh yea ...better to try your hand at indy development these days there's no doubt. But that qualifies as well as working from home
I moved into my younger brother's place a few weeks ago and he has been talking pretty seriously about buying a bus and converting it into an RV to travel around in for a while. My brother works as a foreman/roofer for a company that usually has jobs out of state available where they not only pay for his labor, but give him comp for food and rent. When his lease ends here in a few months, he'd like me to go with him. We'd get some kind of affordable on-the-road internet solution and live and work out of this bus converted into an RV. I'd much rather live in a building, personally. But, who knows? It might be a lot of fun...
It definitely sounds like there will be a lot to look into, but I think it could be worth it.
Someone on here did just that. He now is a head artist. Damn though, really cool guy (and willing to let people look at his rigs/models to see how done), but I have a memory like a sieve with names. Anyhow he hung around outside of Tucson doing that living out of a truck If I remember correctly.
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Hey another bonus to all this. Since the freelancers will be seeing at least what each job entails, they can help each other with a early warning system about staying or working with X company. Something they would otherwise be afraid to share online.
sounds like a great experience to me more than something you do to make a lot of cash money's
i say go for it!