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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.

#61

Post by caf »

martingordon wrote: post #25

The title of the post confused me at first. I don't think I've ever seen "OK" used as a measure of difficulty. The "Here's how" gave it away, but I originally thought the article was an argument against people feeling bad that they do development work on the side. I've clearly been spending too much time reading English.SE...

It's not using "OK" as a measure of difficulty. It's saying "don't feel like you're wasting your time on a project just because it isn't going to make you Ferrari money". I guess it's a restatement of the programmer's adage "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.".

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

#62

Post by canadiancreed »

nostrademons wrote: post #57
kungfooey wrote: post #55

It is much more straightforward to take on a little side work. Set your rate to $100/hr and work an extra 20 hours a month. In today's market this isn't terribly difficult to do.

Can be hard with the IP restrictions that go with most employers. The nice thing about something that's pure marketing & writing is that for software developers, it probably does not fall under your employer's umbrella.

One good reason to seek out employers that dont' have all encompassing NDA/IP restrictions as part of their hiring contracts. They're hard to find but they do exist, and they're worth their weight in gold.

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

#63

Post by tlrobinson »

getsat wrote: post #56
jshen wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. I run a community/blogging site for fun, not profit called yakkstr.com. There are about 50 regular users and it currently has around 5k posts. I mention it because it's a good counter example. I've done no link building, and I get very little search traffic. Maybe 50 visits per day. Occasionally someone will post about a product, instead of their relationship drama, and one girl posted about "mio liquid…

> I've done no link building You have 1,211 backlinks. You have no meta descriptions on any of your pages. The links to your content pages (e.g., http://yakkstr.com/posts/3635-Cute-Friday ) aren't inside a H1/H2 tag on your index pages. You are letting Google crawl/index your tag pages (pointless/bad). Your robots.txt isn't pointing to a sitemap. Are you using Google webmaster tools? Get rid of the /posts/N-title and…

What resources do you recommend for learning more about SEO?

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

#64

Post by nostrademons »

canadiancreed wrote: post #62
nostrademons wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can be hard with the IP restrictions that go with most employers. The nice thing about something that's pure marketing & writing is that for software developers, it probably does not fall under your employer's umbrella.

One good reason to seek out employers that dont' have all encompassing NDA/IP restrictions as part of their hiring contracts. They're hard to find but they do exist, and they're worth their weight in gold.

It's much easier to get the negotiating leverage to strike out IP restrictions on your contract if you've previously worked at a name-brand company, and name-brand companies are the ones that tend to have the most all-encompassing IP restrictions.

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

#65

Post by Silhouette »

ebiester wrote: post #60
jhpriestley wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a searcher, no I am not grateful to content farms, "directories", and other pseudo-content. In fact I find it quite frustrating that searches for common maintenance problems, housekeeping, medical topics, etc., now turn up page after page of superficial, ad-ridden content. I have the sense that the actual act of finding information on the internet has become quite a bit harder since, say, 2004.

Here's the question... would you pay for better information? Perhaps one with an encyclopedic knowledge that was constantly expanding, say an eHow with depth.

> Perhaps one with an encyclopedic knowledge that was constantly expanding, say an eHow with depth.

We already have one of those: it's called the World Wide Web.

If only bottom-feeders could stop getting in the way of navigating it, we could get back to answering useful questions with a quick Web search the way we used to.

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

#66

Post by Goladus »

ebiester wrote: post #60
jhpriestley wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a searcher, no I am not grateful to content farms, "directories", and other pseudo-content. In fact I find it quite frustrating that searches for common maintenance problems, housekeeping, medical topics, etc., now turn up page after page of superficial, ad-ridden content. I have the sense that the actual act of finding information on the internet has become quite a bit harder since, say, 2004.

Here's the question... would you pay for better information? Perhaps one with an encyclopedic knowledge that was constantly expanding, say an eHow with depth.

People used to buy books and magazines or go to the library.

The great thing about the internet was that it replaced the hassle and expense of doing that. It works pretty well even with the nearly-content-free sites clogging up the system.

Incidentally, for Q&A, IBM might have something that will beat google search:

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/index.html

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

#67

Post by Jach »

sliverstorm wrote: post #50
ck2 wrote: post #48

I love that quote about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" because it's so true. Sometimes I see people who refuse to use coupons in stores because they think it's beneath them (even if the coupon is right in front of them in a display for what they are buying).

The people I've known who were eligible to but refused to use food stamps did not feel it was "beneath them"- I'm pretty sure they felt that they didn't truly need them, and that there was someone worse off who needed them more than they did.

On the other hand, I had a roommate who spent his time criticizing "government handouts" while at the same time using food stamps himself.

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

#68

Post by getsat »

tlrobinson wrote: post #63
getsat wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've done no link building You have 1,211 backlinks. You have no meta descriptions on any of your pages. The links to your content pages (e.g., http://yakkstr.com/posts/3635-Cute-Friday ) aren't inside a H1/H2 tag on your index pages. You are letting Google crawl/index your tag pages (pointless/bad). Your robots.txt isn't pointing to a sitemap. Are you using Google webmaster tools? Get rid of the /posts/N-title and…

What resources do you recommend for learning more about SEO?

I'm by no means an expert, though I've worked with experts and picked up some stuff from them. The rest I learned from Google and various forums:

http://www.google.com/search?query=on-page+seo

http://blogs.sitepoint.com/ultimate-seo-checklist/

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/search-engine-optimization-3...

Basically, SEO comes down to having awesome content, identifying it properly on your site, and getting other people to link to it.

What is proposed in the OP's link is NOT impossible as the various detractors in this thread would have you believe, but it IS a lot of work. The tech stuff is easy, consistently building out your backlinks is the hardest part. If you're lucky, they'll start to grow on their own and you have 100% passive income.

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

#69

Post by crocowhile »

sliverstorm wrote: post #50
ck2 wrote: post #48

I love that quote about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" because it's so true. Sometimes I see people who refuse to use coupons in stores because they think it's beneath them (even if the coupon is right in front of them in a display for what they are buying).

The people I've known who were eligible to but refused to use food stamps did not feel it was "beneath them"- I'm pretty sure they felt that they didn't truly need them, and that there was someone worse off who needed them more than they did.

are the food stamps really limited in number??

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

#70

Post by palish »

Homunculiheaded wrote: post #38
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.

additionally if you're going to be pulling down public data sets there are probably more interesting and useful ways that you can restructure/reorganize that data. There's a lot of useful data out there that is a real mess that I'm sure some niche would actually pay decently to presented in a more usable fashion

But would they pay $2,000 per month?
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