It’s an interesting piece. I’m wrestling with this at the moment - the added strings to your bow are valuable and important, be they those of programmer, writer, photographer, filmmaker, designer, blogger, social engineeer, publisher. As one person, you can play with all these and more to many levels, from amateur to high-end pro, from self-publishing to pro publishing, and then usually charge a lower fee than a single-string specialist in any of those fields, in order that you improve your profile and skillset.

I recently took on a job I shouldn’t have, and in the end had to admit a fairly damning defeat on, because I couldn’t match the specialist professionalism they were after. Lesson learnt by all of us involved, there - I learnt to understand my limits and skills a little better. Unfortunately for me, their lesson was probably never to work with me again.

That doesn’t alter the need to be versatile and there is huge value in having a real understanding the tools, even if you can’t use them properly yourself. You do indeed need to keep up with what’s out there - but you shouldn’t confuse that with having to become an expert in all of it. Instead, the trick becomes spotting those new opportunities to apply the skills that you have, and to their greatest effect. Much better than trying to reinvent yourself as yet another blogging consultant.