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Ask Slashdot: Money-Making Home-Based Tech Skills?
New submitter ThatGamerChick writes "I'm a stay-at-home mom, but I'd like to be a work-at-home mom. I've done a few writing gigs, but I'm not a really good writer and cannot charge the fees needed for it to be worth my time. I'm just looking for something that I can teach myself in a few months and start taking small projects and working my way up from there. I've found that PHP, HTML and CSS to be the most demanded skills on sites like Elance, but the talent pool is flooded with overseas workers and Americans with so much more experience than me. Even when I was offering writing and virtual admin services on Elance I was having a hard time against them. So I'm asking here, because I think most of you may have a good insight on this type of thing as an employer of freelancers or as the freelancer themselves." What success have you had, either working from home, or employing those who do?
Seems like the best way to me!
The cheaper internet competitors from other places cannot enter this market.
There's an article in Cracked about why homemade porn tends to fail: good makeup, lighting, camera work, editing, writing of the frame story, and marketing all cost money.
Lots of software companies will either hire you on staff or contract with you as a freelancer to do remote quality assurance on their products.
You can pitch your writing & communication skills as an asset here. Instead of saying: this doesn't work, you can write reasonable, reproducible, clear defect and quality reports.
If you are good at video games and enjoy them you could make some money playing video games professionally, making walktrhoughs etc! http://tgn.tv/ is where i started, they have a lot of tips and tricks on how to get started and get more views quickly. good luck!!!
If you are interested in learning a web development language, use that skills to work on a idea for your own sites. When I started learning web development, I created a small on-line tool that people can use. Every time I learned a new language, I've re-written the web app in that particular language as an exercise. So my little webapp went from Perl, PHP, Python WSGI to the current Python Django. Now after a few years, I'm getting 1.5K visitors a day and earning about $300 a month for doing nothing. So instead of working for someone else at $100 per project, I starting on some new ideas and seeing if I can earn more recurring income while sipping on a beer. The only hard part is finding the idea to work on.
You'll find that your skills, assuming you can put together a decent website, will do fine if you work with a local organization.
There are tons of organizations near you/anyone who need help with their web sites, but who would feel very uncomfortable working with an eLance or an overseas company...and they don't have the budget to really pay the costs of what most consulting firms would charge. This means you are going to have to get out and make some contacts. The easiest thing you can do, assuming you can present at all, is to put together a talk (approx 20 minutes) that you can give with power point and without on "Promoting your company on the web" and then offer it to your local chamber of commerce and Rotary and women in business organizations. The information has to be useful whether they hire you or not. But there will be leads that come from that and off you go.
My brain is overly lubricated
Little side jobs that I do often come from business contacts of friends, followed by word of mouth from those jobs.
Real people like to deal with real people. Asking someone in India to do work for you feels like a bizarre gamble for your average business. That's your competitive advantage and you should use it.
I haven't done any online projects recently, but for some years I used to work pretty much exclusively on projects from rentacoder.com (now vworker.com).
The way I got into it was by starting bidding low on small jobs, getting good feedback, and progressively moving onto larger jobs. You'll find that the people willing to pay a decent amount on these websites also want experience and good reviews.
Once you have the reputation to even be considered, you need to make sure you bid on the right projects. That means finding projects that don't have a huge number of bids, and projects which match your previous experience. You need a portfolio. If you have spare time, spend it working on something which you can show off to prospective bidders. I'm pretty sure a little javascript asteroids clone I wrote 5 years back got me more work than any other reasons I gave people to hire me.
It also helps to concentrate on projects which are the latest big craze - when I was working, this was javascript. Not many people knew how to use it properly, so there were fewer bidders and you could charge higher prices. Of course, everybody "knows" javascript now days - I imagine phone apps is where it is at.
However you approach it, don't be discouraged when you don't win projects. It takes a while to get into the game. And regardless of how well you do, remember that you'd still make more money by working for locals (which is why I quit). Unless you enjoy it, theres probably better ways of making money.
Good luck!
I've tried what you've tried. I was on Rent A Coder, Moonlighter, Guru, and a few others.
First of all, with a '0' zero score, it will be extrememely difficult to get work - even if you offer your services for $1 or whatever the minimum is these days. Those sites are saturated with people. And many folks posting jobs actually have geographical restrictions: if you're not in a Third World country, you can't even bid.
Local business?
Again. Depending are on where you are matters, but here in Metro Atlanta, things are saturated. There have been a large amount of lay-offs and many folks are trying to do what you're doing out of desperation. Every Tom, Dick, Harry, Larry and Mary are in web development, support and PC repair. And contrary to the opinion here, they're not all screw-ups or mediocre - there are quite a few talented people out of work. Many of them had real jobs doing those things and got canned during economic meltdown. I constantly see signs on the side of the road from folks trying to get web design, coding, PC repair, and support work.
Retrain?
Good luck. Without paid experience it is also very hard. Folks want to talk to previous clients and see what other work you have done. And even then ... Out of desperaton, I tried putting up my own websites under different company names to use as "references" but my measely two websites werent' enough or I just sucked - I don't know because I never got feedback from people who mattered. Sure, all my friends said they looked great but apparently they weren't good enough.
I do know someone who did do well - as a graphic artist. She had a following at her old job and when she quit, the folks who liked her recommended her and when they changed jobs, they hired her - that way she didn't get into trouble for poaching people.
tl;dr Starting in this day and age as a freelancer is extremely difficult. All the folks I know who are making a living as freelancers were doing it since the 90's early '00s.
If you can work from home, you can work from Bangalore. And people working from Bangalore are cheaper.
The real home money is in BotNet herding. You can read all about this great money making opportunity in this PDF. ;)
Everyone knows someone with computer trouble and often its not that hard to resolve. Especially if you can do it as a house-call.
Additionally, people with computers are often trying to do things with them.. websites, imagery, newsletters, blogs, etc. and many folks don't know how.
Setting them up document templates, blogs, and other workflow in addition to good free software, and advising on purchases is a good way to go for someone with even modest experience.
Computer experience is a "culture" of knowledge that many people aren't connected to. By having face-time with your clients you can know them well enough to do remote desktop or phone support from home on their projects as they do them. They will recommend you to everyone they know if they are happy and that can lead to bigger contracts. In home-based you need both the big and the small contracts.
This can also lead to doing contra with any local businesses you are a customer of. woohoo!
What you are asking for is not possible due to the way markets work.
If there is a skill that takes only a few months to learn, doesn't require formal background, and then you can do meaningful projects, that skill is not worth much because just about anybody can learn it.
Pick something that is more than a simple skill (i.e. artistic aptitude, something unique), find a niche, find something that's still widely used but "out of fashion", go local (works better in a relatively "low-tech" locale), find somebody who will take on an apprentice / mentee in some area deeper than a "2-3 month learning curve".
Also, if you're already writing, they way to get better at writing is to keep writing. Start a blog or two, volunteer to write documentation for a non-profit or open source project or similar, use that as a portfolio to find better paying writing work.
Speaking of non-profits - volunteering with one is a great way to network, find somebody who might pay you for the skills you're using as a volunteer, etc.
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If you are not an expert in something, don't think you are going to learn it easily and do it at home. "At home" means you get paid 1/10th the pay for 5X the work. if you are ok with working from 7am to 7pm every day and getting basically $1.00-$2.00 an hour, then go for it.
honestly you need to be a seasoned expert that is highly skilled and knowledgeable in a field to make any real money at home. My wife is a CPA with 22 years of experience and does taxes at home for small businesses.
You can look up medical transcription, but you have to be a stellar typist that has a very high accuracy and speed to make it. But you can make a good wage (for home based, entry level wage for a go to work based)
your best bet, find a regular job. Your kids will be fine with daycare, and honestly it's healthy for you to get away from them for periods of time.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The kind of customer who uses $1 dollar an hour coders is not the kind of customer you want to be working for. They have no idea about price vs quality or how an economy is supposed to work.
I have in the past had to deal with more then my fair share of companies and individuals who had let their software or website be developed by either outsourcing or paying some kid a below minimum wage rate. Eventually it turns out that this doesn't result in even good enough code and then they came searching for someone to fix it all. And geesh, often they had spend their entire budget and more on the promises of "it will be fixed in the next version if you pay me now" and now they had nothing left but an average and outdated idea, useless code and a lesson not learned. The lucky ones can loan some more money but now have to start in debt with a website that has to be rebuild from scratch and is now last to market.
I have seen everything from sites where order lines were overwritten with new orders by the same person, to simple exchange rate errors on the financial report which the IRS does NOT find half as amusing as you might think to programs that load everything from the database and then search through it in memory. Works perfect for a demo with 5 products, enter your 50.000 and you need a super computer.
BUT the customers using these rent-a-coder site still think you can rent a coder for a dollar and get quality because obviously quality coders have no other options. Region matters less then they think, if it is no problem getting a coder in a low wage region to work for you, then it is no problem for that worker to get work for higher wages from your region... open borders work both ways. Here is the sting with outsourcing, the capable people in outsourcing regions don't want to work for your wages AND will work on their OWN ideas so THEY get the big bucks.
If the customer is only interested in low price, then you are racing to the bottom trying to compete. There is currently a big market for anyone who can setup a Magento webshop. But there are a LOT of bidders out there thinking they can do it for less and less money. Sure, you might try to persuade that YOU can do it better, make it more efficient, not have pages load in under 1 minute and be proud of it but you would be surprised just how few companies that want to start a web shop have either the know-how or the budget to do it right. You are setting yourself up for despair.
In many ways, getting a cleaning job pays better. People might not appreciate the work of a web developer but they do appreciate the work of the person that stops their toilets from becoming alive. The bottom end of web development is not a place to look for an income. To many competitors, not enough employers who know that quality costs money. Hell, the OP is part of problem, someone who doesn't need to make a real living from it undercutting those who do. How can you make a wage if there are people doing it for tips? Plenty of university girls make a living as a hooker, not so many boys do. How can you sell what so many are willing to give away for free or the cost of a beer?
Same deal.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
1st -> Find the free open source web content management system used most in your area/country in the professional field. In Germany that'd be Typo3, in your case (I'm guessing you're a US resident) that would probably be EZ Publish, Drupal or something like that.
2nd -> Learn that system and learn it well. Do this in the following order (timeframes mentioned are basic estimates based on my experience in 13 years of web development):
a) 6 months: Editing and Management, understanding the systems structure principles, Backend/Admin Interface Navigation, core system functions and features. (Coverd with User Maunals and User Books on your CMS) --> take on first jobs as an editor for installations and websites using said system.
b) 4 months: Markup stuff. Templating, HTML, CSS, minor changes and adjustments at that level, look into mobile templates aswell, everything is going mobile, you want to be on top of that when doing markup stuff (covered with HTML and CSS books)
c) After about a year: Installing and maintaining, DB structure, MySQL DB Management (I'm presuming it uses a MySQL DB, since they all do), low-level maintainance, basic admining and maintainance at shell access level (Unix/Linux/OS X type stuff), DB and media directory backup, versioning ... Here is where 3rd party tools come into play and will become an important asset. FTP GUI tool, Versioning GUIs, DB Tools, editors, etc. As for versioning my hint: Go with Git right away, the tools awailable now are foolproof and if you start versioning with the distributed paradigm right away you won't have problems understanding it later on. (covered with DB adming, Shell navigation, Linux, Apache and Books on Versioning ... you're entering solid OReilly territory here)
d)1,5 - 2 years into your new field: Programming, internal framework structure, maybe some PL basics before hand (more specialist tools, perhaps an IDE of some sort, maybe your own remote system) (covered with books on the programming language the system is implemented in ... most of them are built with PHP, Ajax / JavaScript would be the other end)
If you really want to make this your job, *do* focus on one system and one system/framework only! Pick the one most people are using or the one with which you get your first big-time paying customer. And don't be fooled, even then getting good money won't be easy at first. Proper editor level maintainace of a non-trivial web CMS requires experience, as does handling whiny customers and keeping your cool when the system goes offline for some odd reason you'll be researching for the next 30 hours :-) . You'll gain experience on the way, but also some grey hairs, so I expect anyway.
Start with maintaining your own test system and your own site running said system. Offer yourself up for editorial and maintainance work. Take it from there going into low-level maintainance and programming This will become interessting after 12-18 months into your new job.
Bottom line:
Popular system, start of as an editor, take it from there.
Good luck.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
First, to repeat what others have said - think local and network like crazy.
There are a lot of small-mid sized corporations that have a small (1-4 person) IT team but have an infrastructure that needs 24/7 monitoring. And if there's one thing that's universally despised by overworked sysadmins, it's being force to carry "the pager".
No matter how well you set up your Nagios/Cacti monitoring, there is inevitably a high number of Flaps going to the pager "WARNING!!! Agg!! I can't ping Server Z! Panic! Meltdown! The sky is falling" page goes out automatically to the pager. 5 minutes later after an automatic recheck "RECOVERY!!! Oh, never mind, it was just a network burp, the sky is not falling, the world is a calm blue ocean."
For anyone who's been through the "pager" rotation mill, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.
The actual skills needed are "common sense" and responsibility. The pager goes off, you read the page, and try and determine whether it's something mission critical (ie: worth waking up the high priced help at 3am over), head to your keyboard so you can do a quick check of the detailed message/status, and fiddle and kill time for five minutes while you determine if it really is a flap. If it turns out to be something that's a) Important (something that can't wait until the morning) and b) not a flap, then you call the high priced help and they sort out the problem.
Equipment needed: A Cel phone with an obnoxiously loud ringer (the better for to wake you up), a computer/laptop with an internet connection (so you can log into Cacti/Nagios remotely), comfy sweatpants.
In a short time you can build yourself a rep for being reliable and trustworthy, you will have no problem increasing your income by adding more and more small customers.
I admit, you might need to get a babysitter for those times when you're actually doing initial networking and later meeting with clients, but you might be able to find a high schooler in the afternoon, depending on when the local high school lets out. In the summer, it might be even easier.
Anyway, the local chamber of commerce -- do your research first:
If you can get a job from that, then you use that (and their contacts) to build up more clients. (and you might want to join the Chamber of Commerce, too, once you're established). If you can't, then you go for other ways to build up your portfolio -- find business with no web presence, or you might check on what the local non-profits are in your area, or if there's a small municipality, or even just check 1-800-Volunteer to see if there are local groups that might need website work. (eg, I volunteer for the local Friends of the LIbrary, and our town's annual street festival, run through the local Recreation Council; both could use help, and maybe also a presence on social networking sites so we can do more 'push' of information).
If none of those work out, I'd then look to see if you can help out with Code for America or any other open source group you feel passionately about, while still trying to network to find local work. You could even look to start up a local community website if there isn't one already (list local businesses, events, what's going on in local government, etc.).
Basically, don't just look it as a way to make money -- look at is as a way to help local businesses/non-profits/government to improve ... making it easier for people to find important information (when do you open on Sunday? does the restaurant offer anything vegan/gluten free? What services do you offer? etc.), presenting the information in a better way (ie, the website is too disorganized; it might be how their business is organized, but the general public doesn't expect to find (x) under (y)), or helping them reach out via social networking or e-mail (eg, this week's specials; important upcoming events; etc.)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I've been freelancing for a little under a year (I'm a work-at-home dad ;)), and so far have had overwhelming success using some of the sites previously mentioned (freelancer.com, elance.com, etc), so here's my two cents...
First of all, don't let the fact that you have to compete with dozens of other bidders take you down, as most of these are just low-quality unprofessional washouts or even outright scammers.
If you put some effort into your proposals (like sending the employer a private message letting them now you've actually read the bid, showing links to related portfolio, etc), will get you noticed faster than paid highlights or anything of the sort.
Ask the employer a direct question related to the proposal, so that he feels compelled to answer (once any type of actual conversation is started, you're leaps and bounds ahead of the competition).
Feedback and reputation are very important, as they're the superficial tools that let the employer gauge your risk and potential, so you have to start building them somehow.
My technique when I'm first starting on a site is to bid low (though not the lowest), put in a line such as "Since I'm building my freelance portfolio, I'm willing to work below my standard rate", and never charge any money upfront (yes it's a risk, but I've never had any problems so far).
Always keep your proposals short, clean and direct, as employers are usually busy people who don't have time (and don't care) to go through all the fluff.
Mention your schedule and availability, and try to be available through Skype or gTalk during work hours, so you can report to your employers if need be.
When choosing which projects to bid, go for the ones that are a little out of the ordinary, or that may require specific skills that are not available to everyone.
Try to bid on less projects and focus on getting in higher quality proposals, than to post crappy bids left and right all over the place.
I've started my freelancing venture with just two flash projects, one for a virtual makeover tool (http://danielbrinca.com/makeover), and an AAC radio player (http://danielbrinca.com/audioplayer), and these became so successful that now I'm able to win bids just by showing these off, or any of their spin-offs, to a new client.
You can also consider doing or participating in an open source project, even if you feel you're not good enough, and show this off to your clients as this will prove that you're serious and have the determination to see your projects through.
Yes there is a lot of competition out there, but if you're professional and competent, you're already a cut above the rest, so all you need is to be able to demonstrate this to strangers.
Once you land a few jobs, you'll probably start winning more bids (and you may then ramp up your rates), or even get new jobs from previous employers.
Hope this helps,
Daniel Brinca
http://danielbrinca.com
Hi, OP here. I would also like to thank everyone for the tips and suggestions. I'm still doing my own research, and this thread has given me more to think about. I just wanted to address a few things. I know I'm not going to be a complete master at the end of 2-3 months. I was hoping that, like some other fields, you can learn a bit and then start working. Like programming scripts to automate tedious tasks, or gather info from the web, etc. I figured that I could offer something small and reasonably priced. At first, I thought about learning a piece of specialized software like ACT for real estate agents, or how to set up and write scripts for Ubot. There's just so much out there, I'm not sure where to focus on. Also, I am and will always be a full-time Mom. They come first and is the main reason I'm staying at home. But the household does need a few extra bucks a month. I'm not looking for the equivalent of a full-time job. So, thanks again for all the comments :)
Cherish the good friends you make over the years, because like you, they're rising in their careers, and some day they might have a contract or job bid to throw your way.
Never be afraid to meet people, hand out your business cards, and introduce yourself and your business. Even if they're not interested, give them TWO cards and ask them to pass one along to a friend (you'd be surprised how often they end up in the hand of a friend who's looking for such services.)
You can not win the game of life playing roulette with every other schmuck on the planet who thinks slinging code == programming. It's not. Programming is a broad-based skillset of analysis, debugging, design, and coming up with unorthodox ideas to solve everyday problems. A coder is a dime a dozen; a PROGRAMMER is a special breed.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Only on Slashdot does someone make a joke about doing home porn... just to have another person point them to relevant articles about why the idea is unsustainable.
And get modded up!
The best and easiest remote job I had was 'typesetting' a manuscript ready for printing.
Most authors use a word processing program and submit their work to a publisher. The manuscript often is really badly formatted, inconsistent as authors dress up their work to make it look pretty, which is totally useless when it comes to the print stage.
The publisher then needs to convert the text into a format that the printer can read by adding and
The process is something like this:
* Convert to plain text or RTF if footnotes are used.
* Fix formatting errors (double spaces, page breaks, remove tabs, capitalization, punctuation etc) - lots of Find and Replace work and repetition.
* Add and for chapter headings, paragraphs, quotes, sections, indents, italics etc.
* Footnotes changed to end notes
Zip and send back to the publisher.
All in all, a 500 page manuscript may take 8 to 12 working hours to do and can get you $300 to $500 or more.
Your job sources would be publishers and authors (who get told by their publisher to tag their work in plain text).
Place ads and start ringing publishers/authors. Publishers are more than happy to send you a glossary of tab headings, formatting codes etc.
You can learn the skills by the end of your first book or journal paper and you already have the hardware/software.
It's pretty intense and boring at the same time and it does help if you are familiar with the subject matter, but very worthwhile.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
You misspelled fellatious.
I'm sure I'll be called chauvanistic, old-fashioned and be modded into oblivion for saying this, but how about ... oh, I dunno, being a mom and raising your children?
Parenting is not a part-time job. I'm not going to pretend to know your situation (maybe daddy is out of the picture for whatever reason), but you'll contribute more to society by spending your time raising your kid(s) to be decent human beings.
And society shows how much it values it, by paying stay-at-home moms accordingly, right?
http://unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html
Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from all that is known.
Just this weekend I published an article specific to this topic. It is available in electronic form from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Readers for your laptop, computer, or other device are downloadable free. The title of the article is "Micro-Tasking -- A Productive Use of the Internet".