The Fastest Way For A Programmer To Make Money Online
What Is The Single Fastest Way For Programmers To Make Money Online?
Hands down the fastest way you can make money online as a computer programmer is by pimping yourself out.
I’ve developed all sorts of weird things for people including plugins for CRM packages, quick PHP scripts where someone was abandoned by another programmer, custom WordPress plugins, and even a quotations system that hooked into a Joomla database.
Far and away freelance programming has been the easiest way to make money online that I trialed in 2010.
If you’re a computer programmer then you’ll be happy to know the rates are quite good too. Upwards of $70-100 an hour is often not even sneezed at, actually, it’s considered cheap.
If you think about it, you’re not usually the one getting the best end of the deal even though it feels like it by charging that much.
To hire someone costs a lot of money. Oftentimes the advertising alone to find an employee is over $500 a week on job websites. Then they need to spend their valuable time as a business owner interviewing possible local candidates of which there may not be someone suitable.
It’s also certainly a lot harder to interview for a temporary employee if the project really isn’t that involved that it requires a full time employee.
This is where you fit into the picture as a freelance programmer.
Where Can You Get Freelance Programming Jobs?
Every one of my programmer jobs has found me via my personal website joshkohlbach.com. I make absolutely no effort to advertise this website, just the small amount of organic listings it gains via the search engines is enough to bring in a handful of clients per year each worth potentially hundreds or thousands each depending on the project.
Do you have a personal website? If not, get on it. Knock something up in WordPress, it’s dead easy and is something you can expand later.
The other way you can get exposure as a freelancer is by putting yourself onto websites like eLance.com, oDesk, and others. You can even scout for jobs via Craigslist or, if you’re in the UK or Australia, Gumtree.
If you have programming skills and you’re in the market for some extra cash, or you’re even just looking for something to fill your spare time with the I suggest looking into freelance programming as a viable option.
Here’s some other resources I’ve made for you:
The 3 Downsides Of Freelance Programming
Make It Locally: How To Target Your Local Area As A Freelance Programmer
This Is The Secret To Happy Freelance Customers
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Yep. Amazing how easy it can be.
Customer selection is important though!
Too right! I think you an I have both experienced the good and bad of that in some form over the last 6 months. It’s a topic for a whole article though, I’ll put it in my draft queue now.
I am the student of BCS and i have good exprience about programming in java, c, c++, and c# so I need work
That great you’re learning those languages. What are you plans? Are you freelancing? If so, tell us about it.
I’m currently working for a large company as a software engineer, but I was looking to supplement my income by doing extra work in my spare time – evenings and weekends.
I was wondering if you had any tips for those just starting out? Especially since I only graduated from University last year, so I don’t have such a great portfolio of work – yet.
THanks.
Hey Ian,
Thanks for stopping by. My advice for just starting out would be to keep your rate reasonable and go for the quick jobs to build up some experience with dealing with people.
The work is the easy bit, but the dealing with what people want and getting them to tell you can be tricky.
At the start I’d suggest getting your own website up (just something quick and basic to explain who you are and what you do) and then hit Craigslist. Avoid elance and findaprogrammer and those types of sites at the start, there’s way to much competition from overseas companies will to do anything for near free.
Businesses know that you get what you pay for, so start locally and try to get referrals while bumping your rate up slowly.
hii,
i finished a course in php&mysql and started to search for jobs but i did not find and when i go to freelancing sites and search for projects i find many things that i don’t know and i was frustrated,
how can i increase my experience?are there sites to let me do practices like the projects in the freelancing sites.
Hi Mostafa,
Sounds like you’re hitting that invisible wall of people needing someone with experience, but you can’t get experience if you can’t get the jobs. It’s a chicken and egg dilemma!
My best advice is to start bidding on jobs you know you can do and low ball it to get your experience up. If the person is after something cheap you should be able to score some jobs.
Once you get a few jobs under your belt you can start raising your rates.
You might even consider doing a few freebies for people, especially if you know it could lead to a promising relationship in the future.