Taking stock

Just got back from a 'long weekend' paying respects to family. Mother, cat and visiting badgers, sister and brother-in-law...I expect you've all got some of them! Before I left, the helpful guys at Fusion-MX sent me a first draft of how my car could look:

So I took the picture with me for second and third opinions. Mother just thinks it would spoil the car. I reminded her it's the only reason I bought the car! Business-minded and arty brother-in-law agreed with me that it's an excellent advertising idea but needs the phone number, the name should be bigger and not overlapping the logo.

So this morning I went back to Fusion and the guy tweaked it very quickly - using Adobe Illustrator - to how I wanted it. And it's all booked for next Wednesday, which is great because that day marks the end of my business year. The 'new year' kicks off with the BlueTutorMobile buzzing around the Herefordshire roads.

I'd taken Monday off to make a long weekend but while I was eating supper last night the phone rang - twice - with new clients, so that made up for the 'missed' day. October will be my best month so far, just beating February which, surprisingly, was the best until now.

Going into the months' figures reminded me that HMRC is looming so I have hurriedly registered to do my tax return online, which gives me until January 2010. But it would be sense to tot it all up by next week to give myself a fair idea of how this computer tutor enterprise has gone so far... I'll let you know the verdict.

Colin

www.mycomputertutor.co.uk

is now up and running, 0001 Friday 23rd October and I'm off to bed!

Later today (I nearly wrote 'tomorrow'!) I shall test it on Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. As if I haven't already!

But I just can't face it tonight so..........

Good night

Fruits of my labours

Hereford's a rural county. I live right in the middle of the city but I only have to go a mile or so and I'm out in "the countryside". The cider maker Bulmer is still a big industry in this area and we are surrounded by apple orchards. Soon, lorry-loads of apples will be arriving at Bulmers and all through November the smell of baking apples will be all over the city. I moved here in a November - far back in the last century! - and it was comforting to have that homely smell wherever I went.

And on Monday I was given a punnet of tomatoes - including some 'plum tomatoes' - which I made into barbecue sauce. Today, I've been given a large bag of apples and pears - russets and Cox's, Comice and Conference. Not in lieu of payment, of course, but it's nice to have clients who know that I'll appreciate the fruits of the season.

Colin

I gotta new car...

When I started My Computer Tutor almost a year ago I was advertising the business mainly by delivering flyers through letter-boxes. This involves a lot of walking, but I like walking anyway. I thought that if I can walk to deliver the flyers then I could walk to my clients. I also followed the good advice I'd had from a couple of you about parish magazines. So I'd posted a display advert in half a dozen Hereford City parish magazines, forgetting how large some parishes are nowadays. I hadn't allowed for 'word of mouth' either, so despite my attempts at keeping my business within walking distance I took several bookings from clients 3-4 miles away and further.

I realised that some form of transport would be a good business investment for my kind of work and so, two months ago, I bought this car. I knew it well - I'd borrowed it on several occasions before! - and I knew it had been very well cared for. The fact that it was blue was a happy coincidence for my business logo.

Of course I still walk to my local clients. I'd walk everywhere if only I had the time. So the car does spend a lot of the day outside on the 'wild' part of my garden - the cultivated bit is out of shot to the left! And as I'm always looking for advertising opportunities, I make sure that I display an A4 poster in the window and the windscreen. (The pavement is just out of shot to the right) In fact, if I drive to a client I always stick the posters up while the car is parked. Now, I'm advertising further afield and getting some good response. The transport really is a good investment.

But then, whilst browsing around other tutors' websites, I found this:

...and I thought "Hey! That's advertising!" This is how Jackie Raines uses her car for her business in the Thanet area of Kent. You can find this striking picture on one of her webpages.

Inspired by that, I'm making enquiries as to costs and designs...

Any other computer tutors out there advertising on wheels? Let us know - show us the pics!

Colin

Show and Tell?

A few days ago I showed you a screenshot of 'work in progress' on a page of the My Computer Tutor website. Here it is as I showed it:


The question is: Do you put a picture of yourself on your website or not?

I see that some of you do.

If I'm going to post a self-portrait on a webpage, what do I hope it would say?

I should explain that the one you can see here I just stuck there 'for fun', to see how a picture would look in the sidebar of the page. It truly is a self-portrait! I held the camera at arm's length, tried to look 'neutral' - and clicked, fully aware that the background was a shelf of geeky books.


It was my little joke to myself, a reminder that perhaps the most cliched portrait of teachers, writers and people who consider themselves educated - and want to show it - features a backdrop of a bookcase. Oh yes, and you mustn't forget the pen - and generally to give the impression that you've just been disturbed at your studies by the photographer!

I haven't found a computer tutor website with a picture like that, so I think I'm safe in poking fun - I'm sure you've all seen pictures - and TV interviews - like that! But seriously, we want our websites to give some good impression of ourselves. We want to encourage people to contact us, make enquiries and ultimately book loads of lessons. Our advertising should allay all fears of engaging a 'geek' or 'nerd'.

So should we try to look serious, studious, older than we really are, younger than we really are, happy-go-lucky or just happy? Should we just trust the photographer to catch us in a typical pose, showing our 'best side'?

And then what should we write about ourselves? Professional qualifications, marital status, hobbies, complete CV? I think we need to give some information about ourselves, especially as we are offering to visit clients in their homes.

So....any advice out there? Have you looked at those About Me pages? I'm planning one - but what would you want to know about me before you booked a lesson?

Colin

Taking in Washing

Someone has already pointed out to me that the link to my website (over there on the right-hand panel) doesn't work. I really am spending every spare minute on the website and it really will be up and running really soon.

Really really.

Of course, I have a good excuse. I am rushed off my feet with doing stuff for other people. And most of it paid 'homework' which suddenly is coming in. Just when I wanted to get down to finishing the website, I'm getting several requests to help with various projects.

One client has been having fun with a little 'Disgo' video camera - a tiny thing that records sound as well as film. He's asking for help with putting this onto disc, but the main thing will be editing out lots of shots of walls, ceilings and floors etc. Rather than try to do all this in the course of his lessons, I said I'd take it all home and edit it for him. When I say 'all', I mean three videos to be untangled, edited and reconstructed.

Then a lady phoned up last night asking for help with designing a certificate template for her bowls club - and I've ended up taking that home as well. Now I remember, there's a letterhead to update for a gentleman who runs a musical instrument business. He's a world authority in his field - I do meet some interesting people in this job.

So part of the job is rather like 'taking in washing'! And I enjoy that too, not only for the challenge of the project itself, but also for the more practical reasons that I can work at home on my own equipment, knowing (usually) where everything is. The client is always pleased to get the job done and I can give a further session on exactly how I solved it - and how to do it in future.

There's a whole page on my 'Other Services' on the website.....which is on the way.

Really!

Best endeavours

It doesn't happen so often now, but over my first months of computer tutoring I had several phone-calls that went something like this:

"Hello my computer isn't working I can't get on the net it's all gone phut what do I do can you come now............"

And typically just blurted out like that, with no introductions or anything. No "Oh good evening, I wonder if you could help me...."

So far, I've delivered about 10 000 flyers through letterboxes all around the Hereford City area and a little beyond; presumably these people had seen my flyer or poster somewhere.

The poster is basically an A4 version of the A5 flyer. And in designing these, I thought I'd emphasised the fact that I'm offering TUITION.

You can see I start off by trying to make the point......"Tutor", "tuition", "I teach..."

I have been known to set up a new computer and a broadband modem, but usually in the fervent hope that a block of lessons will follow. I often have to face up to some 'trouble-shooting' in the course of a lesson, the most common one being the discovery that the antivirus software has expired - sometimes years ago! But I see that as a natural part of my general computer educational service.

I can understand the challenge of a technical problem to be solved - good grief, I studied computer programming for three years...and that had plenty of problems - and 'grief'. But I refuse to do PC call-outs. There is so much that could go wrong with people's computers - and it's not always the computer!

I am not too proud to tell people that I'm not a 'techie', and I make sure that I always have to hand the names and phone numbers of a few local professionals who delight in that sort of work.


Colin

Website on the way

Yes, I am about to join you out there on the web. This is not the finished article but it will give you some idea of the general style.

I was determined to devise my own site so I started teaching myself HTML about a year ago, just by looking at online tutorials and a library book or two. I liked the idea of CSS - it struck a chord with my programming experience.

I compared what I'd read with what I saw in other people's sites, just by right-clicking on a webpage and then 'View Source'. I noticed that loads of people were using tables for layout and so I thought that I'd better gen up on tables. Then, not long after, I started reading about 'Web Standards' - and dropped my study of 'tables' like a hot brick! I had been barking up the right tree after all. The World Wide Web Consortium likes CSS/HTML separation and winces at tables for page layout.

But it's still all very confusing, what with the different browsers people are using and the width of their monitors, whether or not they've enabled 'scripts' - whatever they are! - not to mention the allowances we should be making for the partially-sighted/blind/colour-blind and whether users prefer a mouse or keyboard shortcuts...

So I do my websites from scratch and try to keep them absolutely under control. The result is that they are pretty simple - no gizmos, no slideshows, no quirky rollover effects - and although the real reason is that I haven't devoted time to studying the techniques for these, I'm pleased that the official W3C view of these things is that one should avoid them anyway. Hooray!

Have you created your own website for your tutor business? How did you learn about web design? Any handy hints?

Colin