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Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#91

Post by tmaly »

3pt14159 wrote: post #21

What I've seen that has worked in the past is this: Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs. Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach…

I would also add, try doing a keyword analysis on remote jobs to help guide the choice of the open source project.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#92

Post by wongarsu »

pc86 wrote: post #88
john-radio wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3pt14159 did not say "Any programmer can make $500K by doing open-source full-time for a while," though.

But the statement is in response to "this is bad advice for brand new developers." If the advice is so specific you end up doxing the single person in the world who's ever done it, then it sounds like that's a perfectly fair criticism.

I think the point is more "this general strategy works for most people; but not everyone is going to get a $500k job from it".

It's a reliable strategy to get noticed and make a good impression. How much money you manage to make from that opportunity obviously depends on many more factors.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#93

Post by rmsaksida »

andi999 wrote: post #76
rmsaksida wrote: post #40

Don't bother with domestic freelancing. Chances are you will be worked to death and struggle to even get paid. Software engineers are rarely taken seriously in developing economies. Focus on overseas freelancing. Start small and gradually increase your rate. You probably won't get big projects or a nice pay rate in the beginning. It's fine, in the long term things will work out. You will build a reputation over time.…

Do companies employ overseas freelancer? If the company doesnt have a dependency in that country isnt this from a legal and tax point of view a nightmare?

Sure. It's definitely more complicated than keeping things local but I wouldn't say it's a nightmare of complexity. It's worth it, otherwise people wouldn't do it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#94

Post by risyachka »

wokwokwok wrote: post #38
Gustomaximus wrote: post #10

My view is coming from someone who hires people last few years. 1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. 2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality…

> Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. This is terrible advice. Don't work for free, all you're doing is allowing other people to take advantage of you... which, they will. There's plenty of other great advice in this topic; this: "work hard and do a good job, for free and it'll be great experience / advertising / whatever the f" is total BS.

This is real advice. You can expect whatever you want but if you are just starting you will get peanuts, as this is your level and fair pay.

Another situation is if you have experience but no portfolio. So you have two options - look forever for a project that will hire you without portfolio (usually this takes a long time, seen this many times), or you can complete few small projects for really small pay quickly and then you will be able to find a good-paying project way faster.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#95

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

chadash wrote: post #66
Gustomaximus wrote: post #10

My view is coming from someone who hires people last few years. 1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. 2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality…

For freelancing sites, you need to focus on stuff established businesses need and shy away from anything catering to individuals or startups. Payment is all relative. Someone with an idea for a new social network might think of $10,000 as a lot of money, even if they want an entire app with lots of features built from scratch, which could be a months' long job. They will vastly underestimate how expensive this will b…

> I think we found the guy on Upwork, but we ended up hiring him directly to do a bunch more work after that.

Be careful admitting this. I believe going off-platform like this is against their ToS, and technically they could sue you for it.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#96

Post by jasondigitized »

wokwokwok wrote: post #38
Gustomaximus wrote: post #10

My view is coming from someone who hires people last few years. 1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. 2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality…

> Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. This is terrible advice. Don't work for free, all you're doing is allowing other people to take advantage of you... which, they will. There's plenty of other great advice in this topic; this: "work hard and do a good job, for free and it'll be great experience / advertising / whatever the f" is total BS.

I disagree. I know someone who approached a company and said "I will work as a free intern for 3 months. If you want me to simply get coffee I will. It will be the best coffee you have ever had." 3 months later he had a full time offer and is now doing very well. Working for free indefinitely is bad advice, but offering a "freemium" model is rather savvy.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#97

Post by goatherders »

reroute1 wrote: post #71
goatherders wrote: post #64

Learn to write well. You can make 1k-1.5k/month starting next month if you can author good blog posts for businesses. Writing content, like coding, is something where the time investment cannot be "hacked." For a 1200 word blog post someone has to sit at the computer and actually write the 1200 words. That takes time. In many cases there is no content writer on staff and someone has to do the work. I'd say 90% of the…

Interested to know who is paying you $1k for a blog post...

I'm not telling you specifically who, obviously, but we have 3 clients that order a post from us about once a month for at least $1,000. The posts typically are:

- 2000 to 2500 words - FAST (48 hour) turnaround - ready to be published without more than a simple read through - voice consistent with other posts that we may not have written for them - well cited or referenced

The clients are - b2b environment selling into the enterprise - companies that generate b/w 10M and 100M in business - tech companies that have a disproportionally small digital marketing team thus the need to outsource.

Example, in early March we wrote a series of 3 blogs posts about security challenges for transforming your organization to WFH. $2500 for a total of ~6000 words, ordered Monday morning and delivered Wednesday night.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#98

Post by bryanlarsen »

latenightcoding wrote: post #59
3pt14159 wrote: post #21

What I've seen that has worked in the past is this: Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs. Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach…

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP). People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly. It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

3pt14159 isn't saying that noddly should try and make money doing open source.

Noddly should gain the respect of an open source maintainer. These maintainers receive lots of requests for job openings and contract positions. Most of it is just recruiter spam, but some of it is real and the maintainer would be happy to forward them on to someone they respect, along with a recommendation.

It's that recommendation that's worth its weight in gold.

Re: Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

#100

Post by mobilefriendly »

jasondigitized wrote: post #96
wokwokwok wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising. This is terrible advice. Don't work for free, all you're doing is allowing other people to take advantage of you... which, they will. There's plenty of other great advice in this topic; this: "work hard and do a good job, for free and it'll be great experience / advertising / whatever the f" is total BS.

I disagree. I know someone who approached a company and said "I will work as a free intern for 3 months. If you want me to simply get coffee I will. It will be the best coffee you have ever had." 3 months later he had a full time offer and is now doing very well. Working for free indefinitely is bad advice, but offering a "freemium" model is rather savvy.

A company that responded to this kind of solicitation would be unethical, at best, and is probably breaking employment law in the West.
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