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It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

markmaunder.com

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Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#161

Post by clark-kent »

getsat wrote: post #71
swombat wrote: post #13

So, basically, create a demand-media site but without even paying writers the $3/hour to create crap articles? Just scrape them from the government? :-) I'm all for the lifestyle business thing, but there are more fulfilling ways to make $2k/month, imho... As the cost of creating businesses drops, the number of viable niches literally explodes.

I believe that most people would be willing to set up an "unfulfilling" side project to generate an extra $2,000 USD/month.

But not when it takes 6 months to get it going. For a 6 month project I would aim higher. How about building a useful app or web based service in 6 months and making some real money from it.

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#162

Post by jshen »

getsat wrote: post #157
jshen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could never isolate it completely with only a single site, but that doesn't mean you conclude that you can't measure anything, or estimate at all. If I made all the changes in a few days, gave it a few weeks for google to notice the changes, and organic search traffic didn't increase in any noticeable way ... that's strong evidence that it didn't have much of an effect. Now if someone is going to tell someone els…

> Now if someone is going to tell someone else that they should do xyz, what are they basing that on? Fair question. I would say these things are current, accepted "best practices". I'd liken it to suggesting you use a version control system instead of emailing code back and forth. Your existing system might work, but many other people who were also emailing code back and forth are seeing gains using this new-fangled…

yes, I agree with you sort of. I"ve done a lot of SEO in the past, nothing you mentioned was new to me. But here is my experience, one of the startups I did had a brand new domain, which had nothing on it before launch, and didn't hyper optimize the type of SEO you mentioned. However, due to the nature of our site we got a lot of links for big name groups like peta, the nra, etc. Follow links on their site, all within a few months of launching.

We ranked really well really fast, whatever sandbox people think google may or may not have didn't seem to affect us. Like I said, within a few months, on a brand new domain, without an SEO expert optimizing things like H1 tags, we ranked really really well for competitive keywords.

That's the basis of my hypothesis, without good backlinks, it doesn't matter a whole lot, and good backlinks matter a lot more than tags on a page, whether you have /posts/title, etc.

But I do really appreciate the time you took to look at my site and offer suggestions. You did catch a missing index :) I didn't notice because no human goes to tag pages, and it didn't show up in 'new relic' because my other pages are fast and get hit a lot more.

btw, i'm curious if you see my site on this search, http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&#3...

I rank decently for long tail things like that, if I did your suggestions would that page go up? I see it in 7th position.

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#163

Post by tvorryn »

gierach wrote: post #19
mmaunder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, starting in 2004 with census.gov data. Then friends repro'd it in 2005-2006. Repro'd again in 2008. About to repro again in 2011. Current site launched 4 months ago on new domain that had never been registered before. Now passing 1000 uniques per day with 300,000 pages indexed and 3 million to go - and expect to easily hit the short-term traffic target in 2 to 3 months. The site is non-spam, genuinely useful and…

Sorry, what does "repro'd" mean?

Reprogrammed?

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#164

Post by yummyfajitas »

matthewcieplak wrote: post #148
yummyfajitas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you tell me the flaw in my analysis? Or are you merely asserting that because I lack a certain experience, I am therefore incapable of analyzing the problem using statistics and logical inference? They must constantly show real proof they are looking for work and even with part-time jobs their assistance is immediately scaled back. This is simply false. The vast majority of the poor are not looking for work, no…

The flaw in your analysis, and your linked article, is following the fallacy of Homo Economicus, which is "an arbitrary definition of man, as a being who inevitably does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus In reality, human…

Please go learn what a utility function is before claiming it doesn't apply. Everything you described is simply a part of a person's utility function.

If you wish to claim that the poor disproportionately prefer to gain other things than wealth (e.g., they prefer hobbies/long shots over work which might earn them $0-30k), you are agreeing with me.

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#165

Post by getsat »

jshen wrote: post #162
getsat wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now if someone is going to tell someone else that they should do xyz, what are they basing that on? Fair question. I would say these things are current, accepted "best practices". I'd liken it to suggesting you use a version control system instead of emailing code back and forth. Your existing system might work, but many other people who were also emailing code back and forth are seeing gains using this new-fangled…

yes, I agree with you sort of. I"ve done a lot of SEO in the past, nothing you mentioned was new to me. But here is my experience, one of the startups I did had a brand new domain, which had nothing on it before launch, and didn't hyper optimize the type of SEO you mentioned. However, due to the nature of our site we got a lot of links for big name groups like peta, the nra, etc. Follow links on their site, all withi…

Yeah, SEO is really just about having good content and having links from other good sites to it. All the tweaks are just to help the search engines determine exactly what your content comprises and where it lives in relation to your other content (see Microformats/rel attribute on hyperlinks). Without good content, none of that matters.

Yup, I do see your site on the first SERP for that query. Here's a shot of the SEO breakdown for that SERP: http://i.imgur.com/URUr2.png Not bad positioning considering there's zero backlinks to that page on your site. If you had 1-10, you'd probably rank higher.

You probably wouldn't see any rise by just doing tweaks, but they're probably still worth doing overall. I would focus on encouraging your users to spread your content. Give them a "share this link with friends/embed this link on your web page" widget. Digg is dead/useless, get rid of that icon. Get a Tumblr and Stumbleupon share icon on there instead. I'd probably space them a bit more away from that big, ugly, unrelated image ad, too. :)

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#166

Post by ajays »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #86
ck2 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the amount of paperwork and hassle to apply for foodstamps is crazy. It can be embarrassing because you have to provide so many details about your life and give them legal permission to dig into all kinds of records. I realize the need to prevent fraud but there has to be some kind of balance to allowing someone in a bad situation to keep a little dignity. Then there is the craziness that you can buy things…

I realize the need to prevent fraud but there has to be some kind of balance to allowing someone in a bad situation to keep a little dignity. On the contrary, that would be counterproductive. At low levels of income, there is virtually no relationship between earnings and consumption. So if a person's utility function is proportional to consumption, with a slight disutility for working, they will choose not to work.…

That is an interesting link; but it will probably catch a lot of flack.

I believe that instead of making poverty "unpleasant", we should structure the reward system so that it drives the poor towards self-reliance using positive rewards. For example: right now, if a mother is not working, she gets support for childcare. But the moment she starts working, her support dries up, so it becomes an economic disincentive to find work. So the rewards should be graded in such a manner that they don't disappear; it should be a continuous function, whose gradient points to self-reliance. So for the same single mother in my example, for every dollar she earns, her childcare benefit would go down by, say, 10 cents. She would still get 90% of the benefit of her labor.

I'm sure if we put our minds to it, we can come up with a system that works.

Unfortunately, a lot of the current stakeholders (in addressing these issues) have a lot to gain by maintaining the status quo; they'd be out of a job if there was no poverty....

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#167

Post by matthewcieplak »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #164
matthewcieplak wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw in your analysis, and your linked article, is following the fallacy of Homo Economicus, which is "an arbitrary definition of man, as a being who inevitably does that by which he may obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus In reality, human…

Please go learn what a utility function is before claiming it doesn't apply. Everything you described is simply a part of a person's utility function. If you wish to claim that the poor disproportionately prefer to gain other things than wealth (e.g., they prefer hobbies/long shots over work which might earn them $0-30k), you are agreeing with me.

You've implied that you believe the number of poor people not working is so high because we skew their motivation toward "couch surfing" through aid programs. I am arguing that many are in fact "working" on something besides a full-time job, and would not be convinced to adopt another lifestyle by minor disincentives in welfare. Aid to the poor is a social program, not an economic widget, and surveying the number of people in the program who are actively seeking self-sufficiency is an utterly worthless metric of its efficacy.

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#169

Post by yummyfajitas »

matthewcieplak wrote: post #167
yummyfajitas wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please go learn what a utility function is before claiming it doesn't apply. Everything you described is simply a part of a person's utility function. If you wish to claim that the poor disproportionately prefer to gain other things than wealth (e.g., they prefer hobbies/long shots over work which might earn them $0-30k), you are agreeing with me.

You've implied that you believe the number of poor people not working is so high because we skew their motivation toward "couch surfing" through aid programs. I am arguing that many are in fact "working" on something besides a full-time job, and would not be convinced to adopt another lifestyle by minor disincentives in welfare. Aid to the poor is a social program, not an economic widget, and surveying the number of…

We seem to be in agreement. The poor don't work because they don't need to work in order to consume and instead prefer to engage in other (non-work) activities.

We also seem to agree that "a lack of dignity [or other minor disincentive] is probably insufficient to push more than a few people over the threshold [towards work]" (as I said a few posts up).

I'm always glad when I can convince others (including others with whom I share different values) of the correctness of my pet hypothesis. It suggests I'm on the right track.

Re: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.

#170

Post by getsat »

uxp wrote: post #152
rmc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "scraping government websites", this is using your skills as a programmer to manipulate data, to make graphs and visualizations of the data.

This is what I got from the article. data.gov has LOADS of datasets for the USA, as well as hundreds of other APIs from different departments that can be used to retrieve that data in real time. The problem comes just after you click "download" and realize you have a 600MB XML file listing the Ph levels of groundwater sites around the country for the past 25 years. How in the hell are you going to make that data an i…

> How in the hell are you going to make that data an interesting draw that users want to read or learn about?

People are probably looking for that data. Find out exactly what they're searching for, and tailor your content/site presentation around those keywords. You can use Google Keyword Tool to find this information:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

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