INTERVIEW
Steve Baric
DATE: September 27th, 2006
TWT: Are you currently working from home at all?
SB: Yes. In fact, even in my "day job" I do most of my work from home.
TWT: What was the driving force that led you to investigate working from home?
SB: Honestly? Desperation. I started out as a university student who was for one reason or another having a hard time finding summer work. Puttering around online seemed to be a good way to kill a lot of time and didn't cost much. That's when I started investigating online opportunities, and where I learned a lot about self-promotion and marketing for the jobs I regularly do, both in design and in music.
TWT: Do you work outside the home as well, I mean, what is your day job?
SB: My "day job" is sort of eclectic. The short version is that I'm a professional musician. Since most of the performing and teaching season runs September through June, that leaves me a lot of spare time in the summer to pursue other interests. I play the organ and direct the junior choir at a small church here in town, I play piano for ballet classes, and I play guitar in a wedding band. I also teach piano and music theory, and when necessary do small contract scoring jobs. I'm also a songwriter and classical composer. I recently had a new work commissioned and performed by our symphony orchestra here in town.
TWT: How awesome that you have had a composition played by a symphony orchestra. Is there a recording which can be purchased?
SB: Unfortunately no. It is exceedingly rare to have ones music recorded these days. There is a lot of competition among classical composers today, as we're up against the music of the previous 600 years, and audiences still prefer Mozart and Beethoven over contemporary classical music (which, admittedly, is more challenging to listen to). Plus, the cost of undertaking a recording for sale is astronomical. A band may put $20,000 into a solid recording project. Multiply that by the 80 or so people in an orchestra, plus the cost of a large enough studio to record them, and you get the idea. There has to be a guarantee of consumer interest, which there seldom is in classical music to begin with.
I do, however, have an archive recording of the performance which I have rights by contract to use for promotional purposes. So anyone who thinks they might need my services as a composer can "request a demo" and I can send an mp3 copy by email.
TWT: Tell me a little about your family. Are you married? Have any children?
SB: I have been married since 2001, though we dated for several years prior to that. No children yet...I was in school when we were first married, and since then we've been trying to get our finances in order before having kids. We do, however, have the most adorable cat in the universe (although the 4-am wakeup calls are starting to test my patience...every fall it's the same thing!).
TWT: Let’s talk about SteveandTara.net. How did that project come about?
SB: SteveandTara.net came about as my wife (Tara, obviously) and I started looking at the things we were doing, and wanted to do, online. Tara has been looking for a way to work at home, and she's getting ready to launch a new online service of her own (until now, I've been the only one really working online).
I've seen some fantastic networking sites come up in the last few months (www.simikathy.com is one of the best), and I wanted to do something similar. Realistically, the reason anybody does something like this is to draw attention to their own programs...however, even more than that, I felt it was important to our business success to seek out other networkers and share information with them.
So, rather than simply offer a place for people to promote their businesses, we're offering a place for networkers to meet and possibly work together. Yes, our focus is on providing information and articles...that's the magnet. But inside the site in the members' area we've set up a free forum, chat room, and private messaging system to allow members to contact and work with each other and develop partnerships. That's what we're really after.
We have officially launched and anyone is welcome to join at any time. Membership is free.
TWT: What about SteveandTara.net most excites you?
SB: There's a lot of exciting stuff going on. We're negotiating content deals from some REALLY big names in e-business; hopefully we can get at least a few top-level marketers and experts to supply some articles for us.
Also, there's the functionality of the site itself. The chat room script, hosted by BlastChat, is a really exciting feature. In the future, assuming membership levels warrant such a thing, we'll be inviting some of those heavy hitters for live Q&A sessions via the chat room. That should be really exciting.
TWT: What is your favorite part of working SteveandTara.net?
SB: Setup. I love diddling with scripts and modules and trying to get things to work properly. I also really enjoy the design and layout work...I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to getting things in logical order, and I have flow charts and notes all over my office. It's like this with every site I build
TWT: What is your least favorite SteveandTara.net aspect, if there is one?
SB: Setup. Although we opted for a Mambo-based site (Mambo is a Content Management System, similar to a blog package but with more specific modules, like the chat feature) for ease of updating, setting things up and getting them running is still a chore. I have great vision, but not a lot of patience.
At least that's my opinion. Tara would tell you that once I start working on something obsessively--like this site--she doesn't see me again until it's finished
That and planning. I hate planning. That's because every time I start planning, my plans get bigger and bigger, until they seem overwhelming and I wind up giving up and playing video games instead.
TWT: You are also a professional musician. Talk to me about that. What kind of music do you perform? Do you play any instruments and what kinds.
SB: There's a whole biography in itself. I'm classically trained as a concert pianist, although I also play jazz. I taught myself to play the guitar back in high school, and on that I play pretty much whatever is needed, which comes in handy with the wedding band where I may need to play anything from polkas and tangos to country, disco, and heavy metal.
I won't lie. I love metal, and a lot of my classical compositions for orchestra, and even for piano, are strongly influenced by that.
Of course, I also make my living playing piano in ballet classes where I have to be really flexible as a musician...lots of changes on demand. And I'm a church organist (Presbyterian), which likewise provides an interesting mix of classical performance, traditional hymnology, and contemporary Christian repertoire.
TWT: Who are your favorite classical composer and your favorite metal composer?
SB: It's hard to pin down a favorite classical composer. When you spend all your time immersed in music, you come to love the finer qualities they all bring out. Beethoven is tremendous for all-out passion, while Mozart has a unique way of creating transcendent melodies. I'm especially fond of the romantics as well, since as a piano player I get a lot of inspiration from Chopin and Liszt (who probably tops the heap for me overall). When I write choral music, I take a lot of cues from Faure.
As for heavy metal, I have a preference for the heavier stuff (Korn, Metallica, Testament), although I did grow up on more melodic music like Ozzy and Iron Maiden. Black Sabbath has always been a favorite as well. There's a Swedish guitarist named Yngwie Malmsteen that every guitar player knows about...he basically re-wrote the book on guitar technique by incorporating a lot of classical elements into his metal style. I think he probably had the most profound influence on me as a player and writer, even though in retrospect I now find his music a little cheesy. It was innovative for the 1980s though.
TWT: We have a lot in common, musically. I adore Beethoven, but am fonder of Tchaikovsky. I was also a fan of Yngwie Malmsteen, as well as Steve Vai’s (whom I believe was taught by Malmsteen) music. Now, on to Adland. How do you feel that Adland helps you in your profession?
SB: As a musician? Not at all. There are better networking forums for music professionals.
TWT: How long have you been a member of the Adland community?
SB: I joined Adland in May, I believe, of 2005. That was part of a new push I had on to get some wider marketing contacts for my online businesses. To a certain extent that has worked.
TWT: Tell me how you use the Adland community features and have you found support, friends, relationships here?
SB: I have made a few good friends at Adland, and even one or two business relationships. I think in general it's better to find and cultivate one or two really productive relationships than to go gangbusters and pick up dozens of basically facile ones.
That said, I have gotten a few sales just off the free classifieds, which was surprising (free classifieds don't usually garner much response). I've also found the forums entertaining, though in general they're not nearly as useful business-wise as they could be. One does get a little tired of constantly finding prayer requests in one's business mailbox.
TWT: Your forum Serial Outerworlds (Blog Address is here) is one the few I visit on a near daily basis. (I am appreciative that you sought out public domain work and did not infringe anyone’s copyright or ownership.) How did that get started?
SB: Serial Outerworlds started in the spring of 2005 as an experiment. I wanted to see if blogging technology could be used to serialize fiction in the same way that a lot of novels were originally published in the 1800s (one or two chapters at a time -- the old "penny dreadfuls" as they were called). It looked like a good way to draw attention to some of my own writing, and possibly pick up a few Adsense clicks at the same time.
Turns out I was right...within the first month, we had generated over 6,000 page hits, which is a lot for an unadvertised site. It seems the interest in speculative fiction on the web is pretty viral. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep up with the pace once work started in the fall, and I had to put it on the back burner.
This fall we started up again. As Tara and I found a pile of content for SteveandTara.net, we also came into a huge mother load of classic sci-fi, fantasy, and horror novels. With access and rights to these, we decided to try again with Serial Outerworlds, and that has already started to pick up steam. We're currently running five classic novels: "Alice in Wonderland," "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "The Time Machine," "The War of the Worlds," and "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." These get updated with a new chapter each weekday, so they're easy for busy people to follow. Access is free to everyone.
We're also looking for any aspiring authors who might want to get involved...anything in sci-fi, fantasy, or horror is acceptable. Just email your proposal to serial.outerworlds@gmail.com and we'll take a look. Contributing authors get half of the ad revenues generated from their stories.
TWT: Do you use print advertising (ads in papers, magazines, periodicals) and do you find it productive?
SB: I have never used print advertising for my online business opportunities. I don't see how it would benefit me, given that my community is fairly small. My target market is elsewhere anyway, and hopefully SteveandTara.net will help us get more attention in those markets.
TWT: Are there any other sources of advertising or promotion that you find particularly useful?
SB: I have tried other online classified sites with limited success. I also strongly recommend www.freewebsubmission.com as a search engine submission service, but ONLY if you build your own site. Cookie-cutter sites provided by MLMs are not worth submitting this way, as you'd be up against 10,000 other identical sites in the search.
By far the most productive advertising I've used has come from actually purchasing signups for one of my free programs. Those I got from Ultimate Inc (where I'm now an affiliate who is very happy to endorse them, after my downline in that program shot up to 70 members in less than a week).
In addition, I've recently gotten into autosurfing as a means of promotion and creating income. So far it's worked out fairly well, although naturally Tara has gotten in with the Network surf sites, and has been kicking my butt over the last couple of weeks. Although we have to pay for the hits, we're getting a ton of traffic from this method, and turning a profit on the surfing we do as well, so it's a lot of fun.
TWT: Where do you see yourself in five years?
SB: Naked, on a huge pile of money surrounded by many beautiful ladies.
Ok...that one just got me a smack upside the head...ow...
Realistically, I plan on continuing with my music career and building my teaching practice. That's paramount in my plans. But I also plan on having a strong online business system in place as a key component of our financial stability and longevity. Our short-term goal is to generate $1,000 a month in internet income by the end of November. If that goal is attainable, we'll be able to turn that into a much more lucrative business income that will allow us to lay a strong foundation for our future. Oh, and I plan on being a daddy to at least two little people by then. ;)