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

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

#231

Post by derefr » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #197

derefr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hypothesize that the people who get paid are the people who actually set out with the goal of getting paid. I really doubt there are many long-time FOSS contributors who want (as their top-level goal) to be paid to do FOSS, but still haven’t managed it after months/years of trying. Most people who do FOSS don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. Just like most people who play a sport don’t do it with the goa…

>Most people who do FOSS don’t do it with the goal of being paid for it. It depends how you define "doing" FOSS. Yes, certainly there are many people who casually fool around with FOSS with no expectation of payment. And even a fair number of people who have some sort of spare time FOSS hobby. But most of the big FOSS projects (especially server infrastructure/platforms) depend heavily on developers and others gettin…

Most of the big FOSS projects depend on their core contributors being paid to work on them. Most sports teams pay highly too. It doesn't mean that most people playing sports are playing on a professional team. It also doesn't mean the professional teams pay their fans anything—despite said fans doing, in aggregate, as much (in PR et al) to earn the team their high pay scales, as the team itself does. Both big FOSS projects, and professional sports teams, are long-tail efforts, with a hard line between the core contributors (paid) and everybody else who helps (unpaid.)

Also keep in mind that many critical FOSS projects aren't big. Many are one-man shows. HN has a habit of frequently "finding out for the first time"—to much amazement and distress each time—that some project everybody's using is just kept alive by one person in their spare time.

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

#232

Post by andi999 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #179

andi999 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

One can help with that by creating a single-person company and just issuing regular invoices for services. An accountant to manage the local taxes is usually not very expensive.

I know that in some 3rd world countries this requires either huge bribes for setting up the company, and/or good connection since it touches on foreign trade (or both)

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

#233

Post by pb7 » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

downerending wrote: post #225

pb7 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s more to life than owning a home as soon as possible.

Not much, if you want to have kids and raise them with a decent quality of life.

You can do that once you amass wealth in your 20s (and even early 30s if that's your style, not necessary though) and then move to a lower COL.

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

#234

Post by downerending » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

pb7 wrote: post #233

downerending wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much, if you want to have kids and raise them with a decent quality of life.

You can do that once you amass wealth in your 20s (and even early 30s if that's your style, not necessary though) and then move to a lower COL.

Great advice, but too late for me.

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

#235

Post by exolymph » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:12 PM UTC

preben wrote: post #218

bryanlarsen wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What kind of open source projects are useful to go for? This seems like by far the best way to spend a few months. I know Python best but I don't mind learning a new language.

Projects that businesses use to do something, or aid in doing something, that makes them money.

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

#236

Post by exolymph » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

nurettin wrote: post #158

@noddly I have some actionable advice. You are in an excellent spot. week 1, 2 maybe 3: search for popular android applications that have low ratings that you can implement, sort them whichever way you prefer, do some wireframes and plan your first project. Do not spend less than 3 weeks. Do not spend more. Week 4: This is the most important week. Figure out the tech you will be using. Make lots of demos projects, fa…

Good advice IMO, but I want to nitpick something: "Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case)"

The worst case is making something terrible that no one wants, despite all that effort. And it is definitely possible. (Don't let that hold you back though, anyone reading this! Failure is the best way to learn, because it sucks so much.)

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

#237

Post by exolymph » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:16 PM UTC

admax88q wrote: post #67

This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice." Might I suggest people stop giving advice if they haven't actually done it themselves? Just spewing what you think should work, or what you think you've seen people do could be super harmful to this person's career. Let's hear some first hand stories of what worked, not second/third/imaginary hard stories of what people think shou…

> This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice."

That's good! Someone smart and driven will inhale every reply and pull out common tidbits for experimentation.

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

#238

Post by jonfw » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #184

3pt14159 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know many people that did this. Not all of them are making $500k a year, but here is some more examples: - Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year. - Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year. - A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his…

This frustrates me a bit, personally. I've been a professional developer (as in getting paid to do it) for 15 years, full time. I know a lot of tech terms are overused and misused, but I consider myself full stack. Frontend, Backend, Database, some devops. I've worked, in depth, with MSSQL, .NET, C#, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PHP, Python (Django/DRF), JS, NodeJS, React, Flash/Flex. I've dabbled in Java, Clojure, ClojureS…

A lot of it is probably location, and also comparing yourself to anecdata.

But some percentage of it needs to be standing out. There are a lot of developers in cube farms working with stacks that look exactly like your resume. The javascript stuff is very quickly becoming devalued as boot camps crank out front end devs by the hundred.

Maybe becoming (or just advertising yourself) as a leading specialist in one or two of those technologies, or becoming an expert in an emerging technology would do it.

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

#239

Post by exolymph » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

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 hired freelancers at my last job. When going through candidates, I didn't look for the lowest bidder. I looked for someone who charged a reasonable amount who looked like they knew what they were doing.

+1, this is how anyone sane chooses vendors. Paying bottom dollar is a good way to end up costing the company just as much in hassle and in-house resources dealing with that hassle.

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

#240

Post by tbran » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

brianbreslin wrote: post #189

tbran wrote: post #46

Some business-y ideas: 1) Build an affiliate site. Some of the older posts on /r/juststart [0] are helpful. 2) Organize information and sell it. See the stuff made by Pieter Levels [1] or BuiltWith [2]. I just put together LotsofOpps [3] (which is just bunch of information on online/offline ways to make money). There is lots of info out there that will be interesting to someone if you can find the right angle. 3) Unb…

Bannerbear is actually an example that even if you have an audience, and yongfook has been at this indiemaker space for ages, it is still tough to break $1kMRR [1] . He is barely over $1,030/month after almost a year at this project. [1] https://bannerbear.com/open

That's great then! BannerBear actually fits into OP's desire to be making $1-1.5k in 13 months!

Kidding aside - yes, I get it. SAAS products take a while and are hard. According to BareMetrics, after a year most companies are making $3333 in MRR [0].

But if you're living in a 3rd world country that's usually plenty of cash if you've got decent margins. The spirit of including BannerBear was more like "think about the things people do in Zapier and put together that product". Also, I just like the BannerBear story.

[0] https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr...