Help Pay My Bills: A HN Experiment

by bendauphinee • 16 years ago

74 72 16 years ago

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

Maybe you need a more structural employment to balance the need to pay your bills?

After all you can't post this sort of thing every day, and if the first day is successful you will still have the same problem on the next.

catch404• 16 years ago

I agree, though what you wrote works really well in terms of selling yourself - could keep it in mind for some kind of landing page to use with the services suggested above.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

This is true. I was considering that might be an issue, to get recurring traffic. I have hope though that enough people bookmark the page to come back to that I can continue selling my time. Even a few hours a day is better than nothing.

I have actually started applying for jobs again, which stinks because I love the freedom that freelance affords. Unfortunately for me, freedom does not pay the bills :)

tomedme2• 16 years ago

I need a copywriter to fluff up some text for SEO on a website.. but it's not in the list of things on offer, and I'd happily $12 an hour for that kind of work.

lachyg• 16 years ago

Have you tried selling stock photography on iStockPhoto? Collis from Envato said he made something like $6k a year without even touching it. Why not upload all your photos there?

He also has a site called CodeDen or something, where you can sell PHP scripts. Why not do some work and upload your stuff there?

There are lots of large communities specialising in the stuff you list there!

mahmud4• 16 years ago

I had to look that up because I thought $6k/year was laughably low and you must have forgotten a zero. Turns out he made $6k in THREE years:

http://freelanceswitch.com/money/how-i-make-2000-every-year-...

With the AdSense non-sense, pennies from the appstore and what have you, I am starting to wonder: are people really that averse to going outside and getting a non-laptop job? I used to make $500/day washing windows, man. It was me, a bucket of sprays and a bunch of rags. Should I have blogged about it and tweeted around?

skowmunk6• 16 years ago

Where was that $500/day washing windows job? If i don't get funding, I might need something like that when I would quit my job and start working on my start up full time

Would hate to drain up my resources by not having any cash flow.

loewenskind2• 16 years ago

Passive income is the holy grail. $6k in 3 years sounds low, but that was without touching it. That's like a $2k/yr raise just being given to you. And the more of those you can get the more of your time can be financed to do what you want.

prawn• 16 years ago

A guy I know was making $100-150/day from passive stock sales. Not too bad for some shots he took on holiday.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Tried iStockPhoto. Applied twice with different images both times, and was rejected both times. The problem with iStockPhoto is that now all but the most obscure niches are filled, so it is difficult to even get in the door with them.

Never heard of CodeDen. Can't even find them in a quick Google search. Have a link?

jw84• 16 years ago

You can give TaskRabbit.com a try.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

I had never heard of them. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately, I do not live in any of the listed cities.

aymeric• 16 years ago

Try to list your services on http://TaskArmy.com (my startup).

jason_tko• 16 years ago

Sure, I'll throw in.

I need a nice, clean PDF report done up with good typography that will be offered as a free report on the main MakeLeaps site.

I was planning on hiring a freelance designer for this, but if you're able to do this, please contact me and lets talk.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Emailed you. Thanks

skowmunk6• 16 years ago

Have you tried odesk.com, elance.com, rent-a-coder.com?

You might find some good competition from East European, Russian and Asian Coders on these sites- some of them are terrific coders/developers, but you also have some inherent advantages.

From experience of working with contractors/programmers on odesk.com, in my opinion these would be your inherent advantages that you can use to market yourself:

1) working and being avalable to work with, during sane hours (for North Am.) - working with somebody from half way across the world, even if they are very good, can be tiring in the long run

2) Cultural acquaintance - Many programmers from the developing world have not been exposed to the day to day life here in the more developed western world. when websites are dealing with making the day to day life easier, dealing with those whose awareness of it is next to nothing could be a big challenge sometimes. (There are some who really good at understanding, though)

Other problem here is, from experience, even if they could speak english, not eveybody can catch the nuances and subtleties of langauge which does have a bearing in good comprehension/communication. (to be honest, even my english is not upto the mark of an equally educated American, though I have lived in the US for almost 1/3rd of my life)

3) The understanding of confidentiality is next to nothing in many countries. Even if the understanding is there, the enforceability of related laws is very poor or next to nothing. So, thats a big biz risk you can market yourself on to North American customers on these sites, especially when dealing with unique ideas.

Good luck.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Thanks for the suggestions. I've been through both rent-a-coder and odesk, and the big problem I found with bidding on projects is that most of them are scut work, and I can't compete with twenty other people from East Europe, Russia and Asia.

mootothemax2• 16 years ago

The big problem I found with bidding on projects is that most of them are scut work, and I can't compete with twenty other people from East Europe, Russia and Asia.

I used to think this when I first started using RentACoder. Then I thought sod this, and started giving quotes at my full-whack rate, and you know what? It worked, and it's continuing to work :)

One bit of advice I'd like to add: don't be put off if the price listed for a project is a bit below (or even way) below what you'd like to charge; I find a simple email with questions, a rough timeline and then basic explanation of why your quote costs so much (you need to work for a while at a good rate) works well. Good luck!

nailer• 16 years ago

If you want customers, give them some value. I didn't read your link because paying your bills is nit in my interests. Perhaps you do something else that is, and would make a better headline?

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Do you have a suggestion?

jasonlotito2• 16 years ago

How to Win Friends and Influence People. This book. It should be required reading in school.

zackattack• 16 years ago

send me an email, i will have php work for you

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Sent an email. Thanks

adnam3• 16 years ago

Seems a bit lackadaisical.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

Is that another way of saying 'creative'?

adnam3• 16 years ago

No, another way of saying 'lacking gusto or spirit'.

This guy might be the bee's knees, but his marketing sucks. The title of the page is "Pay the Bills" FFS! I'm not interested in paying his bills or his fancy pricing scheme. I'm not interested in finding out his talents, if explains he "lives near some parks and trees" before listing any real accomplishments. It practically comes over as arrogant, and I'm amazed he's got any work through this at all.

wenbert• 16 years ago

I can relate to this post. I live in the Philippines have a good steady job but still not enough money to live comfortably and save at the same time.

I sell my extra time at night to do websites and design as well. I have been doing it for a few years now (>4years). I sometimes take breaks from it though.

I never tried odesk or similar sites. I tried to look for a small job there but there are too many uncertainties. Over the years I have about 1 or 2 clients that come back regularly so I just stuck with them. Although more would be better because I still have more time left. lol

RBr2• 16 years ago

Here is what I think you should do:

1) Do some research online about legitimate ways to make money. Make a very long list with no fewer than 100 entries. These don't need to be things that you're interested in, but each one needs to result in some form of income. None of these things should cost any money to make money or require you to pimp out your friends and family for referrals. Don't limit yourself online either, remember that people earn money in easy ways offline as well and that something as easy as personal shopping for an elderly person in your neighborhood can bring in $50 a week for something you're doing anyway. Be creative and constantly add to this list.

2) Create profiles, sign up or apply to each one of these money making methods. In some cases, you'll need to create basic websites (storefronts), etc to facilitate income. Do not spend any more than 4 hours of a single day stetting up any single method.

3) Start thinking about a portfolio. It doesn't matter what life goals you have, you need a portfolio - especially if you're going to be earning money this way. Think about what your "perfect" job / gig / startup looks like and carefully collect items for your portfolio that support your expertise in your target area. Opportunistic portfolio work is the only type of work you should ever do cheap or free.

4) I bet you have already started to do these things. You've identified 4 very general things on your website that you can do. However, you've put out a general call for work in common areas. Think about your skills (starting with the 4 you've listed) and look at the looong list of money making opportunities.

5) Once you get a couple of bucks in your pocket and you get the bill collectors (if any) off of your back, a really fun experiment is to have your bills paid by passive income. One-by-one, if you can slowly discard one bill at a time using things like affiliate programs, ad income from your blog, whatever... you'll really start to have fun. The only rule in this "game" is to define a small number of maintenance hours per week to maintain your passive income. The natural progression of passive income using this strategy is to take an item from your looong list of income sources and modularize / mechanize it to reduce the amount of labor it takes to complete the task to the absolute minimum. Sometimes, leveraging the low cost labor of others to preform tasks that are easy to repeat is a great way to move a task completely passive.

6) Above all else, keep your chin up. Remember the setbacks and failures but don't let them put you in a bad mood. Staying upbeat and creative is the key.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

I have been working towards creating passive income. One of the projects I am working on is a v1 of my own freelance business management tool, but that is still a few weeks from completion.

And of course, I am keeping my chin up. As disturbing as it is to get calls about overdue bills, I am not letting that paralyze me (as shown by this experiment).

BenSS• 16 years ago

Don't fall into the passive income trap. How many hours have you spent creating this tool that could have been spent freelancing or at a PT job. Or talking to prospective clients BEFORE creating the tool? There are a ton of products already out there.

dalore2• 16 years ago

Sorry, but if that site is anything to go by I don't think I would be asking you to help design a web site.

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

I like my own design for my sites. But here are some other samples of client sites.

http://youthrunningseries.ca http://ginettejewellerydesign.com http://duncanhadleytriathlon.ca

davidu2• 16 years ago

Knowing how to design a website and being able to design a website are two very different things. You just know how to design a website. You are not able to design one though.

RBr2• 16 years ago

There are two broad strokes of web designers. Those who are best suited for true frontend projects and those who are best suited for application design.

Frontend projects require artistic skill and a deep understanding of user interface design.

I bet that you're an application designer. This is an excellent thing to be good at - 99.9% of all medium and large design projects require application development and planning.

If I'm right, you should monopolize on this niche. There are a good number of artistic designers who don't know very much about code. If you develop some examples (aka a portfolio) you could be the "go to guy" whenever any number of large artistic shops needs to integrate or develop an app into their frontend design.

If there are a lot of small businesses in your geographic area who require web design (it doesn't sound like there are), I think that you should either rely on web site templates or subcontracting template design from artsy frontend folks. What you're doing now is a disservice to your own body of work.

midnightmonster• 16 years ago

"not have to move back into my parents place while I job hunt"

In your position, I would strongly consider moving back into my parents' place. I got married right out of college and my wife worked in resident life while she was a grad student so we could live on campus for free. But if I had been single and struggling to make a freelance career work (instead of married and...), I probably would have moved right back home. Saves a bunch of money (don't forget food savings), which gives you time to build the life you want.

FWIW, I did end up 'giving up my freedom' and took a full-time job in retail so we could get decent health insurance and have a baby. I did that for a year and a half, then split work and childcare with my wife for a couple years, and for the last 2.5 years I've been supporting my wife and three kids solely with my freelance work. So even if you have to give up freedom for a while, you can bank the experience and work your way back.

joey_bananas• 16 years ago

> Rebel XSi, so quality is not a problem

Because the camera is all that matters, right?

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Well of course not. Before I got that last year, I was shooting with a Canon PowerShot A640 for over two years. Just the XSi produces cleaner shots, because of the larger sensor.

kilomanamolik• 16 years ago

I don't get it. Your website looks like crap, your writing is poor, and the color scheme you chose looks like it came out of the 90's. This is pretty pathetic. What makes you think that anybody would hire you over someone else with better, more impressive, credentials?

bendauphinee16• 16 years ago

Thank you for your valuable feedback. I believe that there is a market for my skills, and that has been proven repeatedly. I have gotten work, based on my current website and projects I have done, and I'm sure I will continue to be able to find work in the future as well.

Help Pay My Bills: A HN Experiment

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