My Dev skills are: jQuery, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, SQL and Coldfusion. I'm heavily experience in Photoshop and Design.
Any thoughts? I'm a college kid looking for a way to get some cash.
Send me an email with samples. I know people in need of someone on the technical side (sales, customer service and graphic design they already have covered).
Web developers are a dime a dozen. Competent web developers are harder to find.
Speed, use of both standards and best practices while retaining cross-browser compatibility.
Helps to know web semantics as well, I see way too many headers as masthead logos or call-to-actions, rather than section titles and <div id=“logo”>
1. Find some businesses or non profits that need what you can do for them
2. Tell them how you can help and that you can do it cheaply and with a 100% guarantee that you will refund their money if they don't like it
3. Make a portfolio of work you've done
4. Find other businesses that need what you can do for them
5. Tell them how you can help them. Show them work you've done and the results you've generated. Give them a price for the results you will get them
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 indefinitely
(like e-books, screencasts and things like that to help teach people things, distilled information certainly has a value)
http://unicornfree.com/2010/i-made-216668-from-products/
In case anyone wonders, I'm a self-taught graphic/interaction designer and Ruby/JavaScript developer. I freelanced/consulted for >10 years and was employed in technical leadership positions for 2.5.
Freelancing can be incredible because it exposes you to so many projects & tools & ideas you'd never investigate on your own. You can't beat it for developing breadth. But products are absolutely the way to go in the end.
Another way is to build some kind of content site and get into the arbitrage game. That is, drive a small amount of traffic to it, ruthlessly optimize your ad placements to max each visitor's returns, and then once you're paying less for traffic than you're getting back out, crank up the dial on traffic being sent to your site.
Bummer. I've got a viral Facebook app in the pipeline.
Is this what you're referencing?
"On September 21, 2010 Facebook took games off the news feed, limiting viral channels to discovery stories and invites." http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/game-building-on-a-bud... ("Distributing on Facebook" section)
"Facebook is cracking down on free promotion | kills profile boxes" http://rooturaj.com/social-media/facebook-is-cracking-down-o...
Is there more to it?
Create a portfolio so that people can see the kind of work they can expect from you. Then find people who want work done, show your portfolio, and do some work for them.
As you can see from the comments, there's no shortage of people who need quality work done.
Heck, there are even people who just need a quick job done and quality is less important.
It obviously works for writers, designers, artists etc, but for various reasons, I've always been skeptical about whether the work would be there for a developer.
A few years ago I worked at a job shop that did web sites for small businesses, and I was talking with my accountant about getting my taxes done and he asked me how much we'd charge for a web site. I told him it would be around $2000... That would include a CMS install, original template, and some SEO. A pretty fair price for the time of the talented people it takes, plus the sales overhead. He was shocked. Although just getting another 10-15 clients a year would have paid for his site quickly, he was hoping he could get one for more like $50.
4 out of 5 small biz clients will let you make a tiny profit, but 1 out of 5 is a client from hell who'll balloon a $10k fixed price project to something that costs you $30k and wipes out the product you made from the other 4.
Not for me. I make web sites for my own account.
The best clients are those who either understand or who have already burnt through months or years of frustration with the cheap shops.
Use that as part of the pitch, ie. 'Ye you can get somebody offshore for $100, and I will see you in a year, or we can just get it done properly now'
Have you thought about developing a few small, niche targeted for-pay lessons?
For example, a lot of people want to learn how to design and code WordPress templates to sell on theme sites. Whip up a micro site and a very complete tutorial. Buy an ad on one of the smaller template sites, do some low volume adsense and you should have a few subscribers. Keep it cheap and make sure that you get excellent feedback.
You have a good mix of skills listed above and if you identify some things that people want to learn (use some keyword tools for this), you'll likely have a good source of sustainable income.
Edit: Nevermind, you fixed it now :)
Here is my portfolio page if you want to have a look - http://mattmccormick.ca/portfolio
Since I put that up, I have basically gotten at least an interview to every position I have applied for that matched my skills.
As others have said, WordPress themes.
The market is crazy right now, go find a designer and partner with them to make themes. I found the whole niche by chance, I needed a designer for another project and saw on craigslist a designer looking for someone to create a theme from his designs for a new site in exchange for a free design.
I replied, did the theme and setup his new site, then we started working together. I ended up dropping the other project once I saw the demand. Saving that free design for something else now.
He's one of the best designers I've worked with, show him a few designs you like from his portfolio tell him a little bit about your company/project and he comes back with a stunning design in a day or two. A few days later I've got it turned into a WP theme. You can see his portfolio here: http://highendcustomlayouts.com/portfolio
We're working on a RoR app to take PSD files and turn them into WP themes in about 5-15 minutes.
Also, find a writer, if you can offer the whole package from copy to design to hosting it makes getting the deal that much easier.
We're starting to get pretty busy with work doing this so if you drop me an email I might be able to hook you up with some work in the future.
A company I work with does a high volume of WP themes and there are residual income opportunities there. Do you have a portfolio or reference URLs you can provide? My email address is in my profile if you don't want to post here.