Hey guys, i'm in a pretty difficult spot right now and i could really use some advice. I promise i'll make the backstory as concise and clear as possible out of respect for your time.
I'm 21, no college education, born and still currently living in Bucharest, Romania. I have about 1 yr experience working as web developer. I self-thought HTML, CSS, Wordpress, Photoshop, Illustrator and a bit of Jquery. This working knowledge allowed me to land through word of mouth some low-cost work. (for scale, the minimum wage in here is 280E/month, an avg salary for a jr. web dev. is 350e/month and a Senior web developer at IBM Bucharest makes an average of 1500e/month(20k USD/yr). Yes, it's that shitty.)I was making around 200e/project, but the projects were gruesome to work on because the clients were very demanding and hard to please, borderline delusional. The mantra in general in Romania is to pay as little as possible and demand as much as possible. I could've landed a jr. gig but the idea of waking up early, commuting and doing the 9 to 5 as a code monkey at some agency for 350e/m and beg for a 20% raise after a year or some shit sounded horrible. I took some time off and invested mainly time - and some money - into a venture that at first gave huge returns but is now shaky and i'm facing the possibility of going broke.
As of right now I have the time and freedom to study and try anything. I don't want to go back to web programming. It's a field dominated up top by college educated nerds with tons of experience that I can't compete with and tons of cheap indians at the bottom that make it harder for everyone. It's a field where you have to constantly keep up with new technologies and standards and in the end you'll always be the bitch of either a client or a boss that will always pay you a fraction of what you make them. (I'm sorry if I offended any programmers, i might be wrong, but this is just my opinion and my experience). But I also know that smart people always say: Play on your strengths, not your weaknesses, so i feel like a fool for thinking of kicking to the curb something that pays pretty well that I invested effort into learning and starting from scratch with something that I have no clue about.
So in conclusion: What path do you think would be the best for me to make the most money but also give me the most flexibility? Would starting to learn copy or content writing make sense? I could write about health&fitness, poker and maybe tech. A job, any job, that would pay even 8-10e/hour would change my fucking life right now and set me up for good. I have the brain and motivation to do anything as long as it's legal, profitable and flexible. Any opinion or advice is welcomed.
I'm 21, no college education, born and still currently living in Bucharest, Romania. I have about 1 yr experience working as web developer. I self-thought HTML, CSS, Wordpress, Photoshop, Illustrator and a bit of Jquery. This working knowledge allowed me to land through word of mouth some low-cost work. (for scale, the minimum wage in here is 280E/month, an avg salary for a jr. web dev. is 350e/month and a Senior web developer at IBM Bucharest makes an average of 1500e/month(20k USD/yr). Yes, it's that shitty.)I was making around 200e/project, but the projects were gruesome to work on because the clients were very demanding and hard to please, borderline delusional. The mantra in general in Romania is to pay as little as possible and demand as much as possible. I could've landed a jr. gig but the idea of waking up early, commuting and doing the 9 to 5 as a code monkey at some agency for 350e/m and beg for a 20% raise after a year or some shit sounded horrible. I took some time off and invested mainly time - and some money - into a venture that at first gave huge returns but is now shaky and i'm facing the possibility of going broke.
As of right now I have the time and freedom to study and try anything. I don't want to go back to web programming. It's a field dominated up top by college educated nerds with tons of experience that I can't compete with and tons of cheap indians at the bottom that make it harder for everyone. It's a field where you have to constantly keep up with new technologies and standards and in the end you'll always be the bitch of either a client or a boss that will always pay you a fraction of what you make them. (I'm sorry if I offended any programmers, i might be wrong, but this is just my opinion and my experience). But I also know that smart people always say: Play on your strengths, not your weaknesses, so i feel like a fool for thinking of kicking to the curb something that pays pretty well that I invested effort into learning and starting from scratch with something that I have no clue about.
So in conclusion: What path do you think would be the best for me to make the most money but also give me the most flexibility? Would starting to learn copy or content writing make sense? I could write about health&fitness, poker and maybe tech. A job, any job, that would pay even 8-10e/hour would change my fucking life right now and set me up for good. I have the brain and motivation to do anything as long as it's legal, profitable and flexible. Any opinion or advice is welcomed.