Your own webpage is boosted in Google’s search ranking by having other people have your link on their website, however, it disregards these links if they are simply linked the other way too, known as ‘backlinks’. We could all link 2 others on our websites and if we work it in a circle everyone should have 2 links on other people’s sites but with no backlinks. Ideally, we want to link to others who are not our patch! What do you think? Obviously needs at least 3 people for it to work.

R

But I’m open?
ipisors@yahoo.com

Robin

The other day I got a response to one of my adverts , the guy already had an Access DB, but he wanted a button that would run some SQL statements to basically output a query and then send about 20 emails to customers, based on an email table he had set up already. I was planning to use Excel, Access, and Outlook for this – all in Access VBA.

I thought $75 USD was reasonable, but after I quoted him this, he never responded again.

Just a random example. I am thinking of trying to advertise more, though, and set up a nicer website for it. Another thing I find difficult is balancing my time between ‘free’ forums, where I ask ?’s 70% of the time and answer them about 30% of the time……..Because I feel I must continue to participate in those forums which taught me almost everything I know…On the other hand, need to still make money.

And I refuse to be one of those obnoxious people in the free forums whose auto signature is 8 paragraphs long and brags about their titles, accolades, websites, books published, links available, wiki’s, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

LOL. Take care.

Have stumbled across this thread by mistake, but has turned out to be really interesting! I’m in the same boat as a lot of you, trying to make it on my own as an Excel/VBA designer. I’m in that category that XL-Dennis describes – doing it part-time at the moment trying to build it up. And I completely agree with various people saying that one of the biggest problems is that potential clients just simply don’t know to ask!

I am encouraged (and you should be too) that there are people making a success of it and from a marketing point of view I think we’re a bit of a rare breed!

I’m also wondering (where you haven’t stated above) where in the world we all are? Is there more opportunity in the US, or is this simply because the US is vastly bigger (than here in the UK for example) so of course there’s more opportunity?!

Cheers guys
Robin

The only reason it’s not is as you guys mentioned, because the people that don’t know a lot about Excel don’t know they don’t know.

And this isn’t just Excel, it’s any programmable Office software.

It’s easy to value someone who says “I know Java”, because generally speaking people either have knowledge of Java coding, or they’ve never come near it in their life.

However, employers find it difficult (if they even want to try in the 1st place) if not impossible to distinguish between the employees who say “Sure, I know Excel” versus the employees who say “No seriously….I will VBA the manual processes and chaos in your business into oblivion and you will think you’ve paid developers for years of work to do so”……

Since most people aren’t even aware that the difference exists, most people wont’ look for it.

Since working at my company, a fortune 500 and one of the biggest financial companies in the world, I’ve noticed a huge gap: On the one hand, groups just limping along wrestling with data and processes and not doing anything about it. On the other hand, when things get so bad they’re ready to scream, they submit a business case and get approval for the IT dept to do a really big project out of it – involving 20+ PM’s, BSC’s, and umpteen developers. A year later, they have a product that’s extremely hard and beaurocratic to change and cost a ton to implement.

Between those two extremes are people like me who want to fill the gap with tons of well-thought out, easily modifiable VBA programs that do things none of the users realized was possible.

However, if people like me don’t have the best presentation and sales skills in the world….We’re severely limited in what we can implement, to whatever slaps management in the face with irrefutable value.

My guess is that in the long term, being “just an Excel developer” (and I’d like to lump Access in here too, because if you are a skilled Excel vba’er, you ought to be able to turn out plenty of decent stuff in Access too, not even using as much VBA, just using built in access concepts with tables, bound forms, and simple queries)………..anyway, if you are “just” a VBA developer, most business don’t even KNOW to look for you.

It’s either that slick-looking web or java program, or nothing at all. Sad but true!

I have an electrical engineering background, and have been working in the oil industry, and video game industries, and in each of those fields my knowledge of excel/vba has opened huge opportunities in reporting, charting, data access, and lately, prototyping gaming systems and analyzing player-base statistics and graphics optimization for our game engine.

In my experience a game system designer, e.g., without a knowledge of excel, an an excel pro without an understanding of how game systems interact make for a bad team, but a game system designer with rave excel skills can prototype systems in excel within a day that would otherwise take weeks to prototype in c++.