Working for the Weekend

I got a job as a carpenter's assistant and after working only one day, it's become painfully obvious how out of shape I've become by doing a desk job for so many years. Sure, I go to the gym and walk my dogs and play tennis, but I haven't done any physical labor since I was renovating my own house to sell last year.

Sidenote: how hot is that construction babe cartoon from Lethal Threat?

Even though my muscles are sore today (particularly my back and arms), it's the kind of work that is really satisfying. I was doing simple things like pulling nails out of wood trim that we want to reuse (original architectural details) and knocking down the old plaster wallboard which will be replaced with new insulation and drywall. Not exactly highly skilled work, but I find it incredibly satisfying. You see your progress right away. Each time a nail popped out or a board came crashing down, I had accomplished something. I was WORKING.

In contrast, I put in about 16 hours straight on Tuesday battling with a PHP script to keep track of my website links. I started off researching available scripts and neither the free nor the paid options seemed to do exactly what I wanted. I ended up taking a free one and modifying it so that it would be search engine friendly (think Google), admin friendly (think me) and would pass the information properly so the links would end up where they were supposed to without error (think you!). Since I don't know how to code PHP, this was a bit of a problem.

By the time I found enough tutorials, FAQs and code snippets to figure out what the original code was doing and modify it to do what I wanted it to do, my back was aching and my eyes were burning from staring at my monitor for far too long. By the end, the script was working and I had a fantastic sense of accomplishment.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a fantastic pile of money. I earned $0.00.

That's the thing with running an internet business - there are always tons of time-sucking tasks to complete which might be necessary or beneficial from an admin standpoint, but don't directly put any money in your pocket. I suppose that's true of any business, really.

The funny thing is most people assume that running an adult site is all sexy nakedness and rolling around in piles of money. Shooting pictures and movies of the sexy nakedness is important, surely. But if you don't do the dull work of submitting your site to search engines and link directories, setting up banner trades or optimizing your pages so they show up in Google for the terms you want them to, no one will ever *see* the sexy nakedness!

Aside from the business of getting more visitors to your website, there's also a whole slew of silly tasks involved in getting your pictures or movies published on your website. For example, I use Sony Vegas to edit my movies and it took me weeks before I figured out which settings gave me the best output for the web. Then I bought a new HD video camera and had to start the testing process all over again. Then there was a Vegas upgrade. Then my computer kept crashing and I had to reinstall everything. And that's just for the movies!

Now these aren't daily problems, but I'd say at least every week there is something that doesn't work that I need to figure out or I take on the task of trying to find a solution to make things better on my site, on my home computer or on my server that hosts my site. These are the kinds of tasks that I do enjoy, but would be better off outsourcing if I could afford to.

For now, I will outsource my biceps and get to work swinging a hammer. Then back to play swinging my hips. *wink*