Why do this?
As Roosh said in http://www.rooshv.com/nerds-will-rule-the-world, this job is one that is likely to be around for the forseeable future, as society gives more control of its infrastructure over to technology. Another reason is this is one of a number of jobs that has the ability to give you true location independence, allowing you to accomplish your goal of traveling and seeing new cultures. I started learning this at 15 as a hobby, and to help my uncle with a startup he was working on. I ended up writing their entire point of sale application from scratch, which ended up netting me more than $10,000 (at 17 years of age, I bought a car - stupid). It ended becoming my career (minus a few year stint in running a used car dealership).
Where to get customers?
This is where your networking and sales techniques come into play. It’s hard to tell you how to find customers in the world, but needless to say, it’s a good idea to network to as many people as possible. Go to meetups on http://www.meetup.com and meet with entrepreneurs, other coders, and even recruiters. There are many jobs available where you can work remotely and still get paid hourly or even salary with benefits.
You want to just make a few quick bucks doing this? There are many freelance hiring sites:
http://www.fiverr.com
https://www.elance.com
http://odesk.com
http://www.freelancer.com
http://craigslist.org
Now, there is a bidding component to these sites (just like the real world). Some people are just looking for cheap coding monkeys to crank something out. It helps if you take some shit jobs and get a solid reputation on there for quality work. You will benefit from working your way up.
A few ways to do this:
1.Simply installing your own blog / a blog for someone else
2.Simple site design / some back end work
3.Full site design / admin panels / web apps
4.Full stack system engineering
In this post, I will cover the first one. If there is any interest, I can cover the last three as well, although you should know these require a significant amount of learning and dedication to become good at (and therefore make money at).
1. Installing a blog
This option, generally speaking, does not require a lot of programming experience. It helps, of course, but there are many open source (read: free) blogging platforms that are easy to install and get going. I’m going to cut through the B.S. - go with wordpress. Most programmers cringe at the thought, since wordpress was written in php during a time when it was barely a programming language, and has changed very little since. However, it is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world. It has thousands of plugins, is free, and is easily installable in most hosting environments. The next consideration is hosting. Generally speaking, you have 3 options as far as web hosting, and your decision will be based on price and scalability.
a.Shared hosting
This is the cheapest option, and also the most limited. Basically you are on the same server as many other customers, sharing the same web server (apache) and database server (mysql). You should expect to pay around $8/month for the most basic plan, and this is generally good up to a few hundred thousand visitors per month (this can vary wildly depending on several factors). I recommend starting here, to see if you can start generating enough traffic to justify moving up. The limiting factors here are:
Memory & CPU (more visitors means more apache processes used - increasing your memory usage and CPU usage)
Bandwidth (think of bandwidth as a pipe carrying data, the more visitors you have, the more data you send through the pipe)
In most cases, you can pay a few additional bucks a month to increase either (or both) of these if you start to see traffic increase. The biggest drawback here is if one of the other shared customers starts hogging the CPU or network bandwidth, your site could be affected.
b. VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting - managed or unmanaged
This is a more expensive option than shared, as you get a dedicated virtual server.
Meaning you get your own apache instance and mysql instance. This gives you the benefit of not being at the mercy of traffic spikes for other customers, but comes at a higher price. There are managed and unmanaged options, managed meaning the host manages your machine for you (installing apache, installing mysql, firewall rules, etc). This typically costs more and you can be at the mercy of their tech support hours. Unmanaged means you handle all this yourself, meaning you need more training.
c. Cloud based hosting
Cloud hosting is similar to VPS, in that you get your own virtual server. There are many, many tiers depending on your needs, and you can add virtual servers on demand if needed. With cloud hosting, you are charged based on hourly usage, so if you shut off an instance during low traffic times, you won’t be charged for that time. These are typically unmanaged, meaning you install your own web server and database server, and configure your firewall yourself.
Also, you will need to decide on whether or not to have your own domain name. Some shared hosting providers will give you a free subdomain (i.e. http://{your-blog-name}.{the-hosting-provider}.com). If you want your own domain name, that will start at a few bucks a year (http://godaddy.com always has coupons online for first year domain names. After the first year, it’s generally $35.00 / year).
For guys just starting off, I recommend going with shared hosting on the smallest plan available. You can get a free blog at http://wordpress.com, however, it will be their ads, not yours (meaning they make the ad revenue), and it will be their domain name. Also, you will be at their mercy in terms of “questionable” content (remember the heartiste controversy). My favorite shared hosting provider (and the one I will go through installing wordpress on today) is http://webfaction.com. They allow a bit more freedom than most other shared hosting providers (i.e. ssh access and port opening), and are always upgrading their plans for free (they doubled my available memory at no cost, without me asking). They also offer one-click install for wordpress. This is a great guide on how to do that, I don’t think I could do a better job: http://pursuitofepic.com/set-self-hosted...ress-blog. This will have you up and running in a matter of minutes. Then, you (or your client) can start writing content. It’s really that simple. Also note: since you are administering this yourself for your client, you can charge them monthly hosting as a reseller (if you have enough clients with simple blogs, this can be a decent small revenue stream for you). You are charged $8.00 / month for hosting, you charge the client $25.00 / month for hosting (plus per hour for plugin installation, etc), at 10 clients that’s an extra $170.00 / month you get for simply owning a hosting account.
Now, that was just a few easy ways to get a blog up and running, and your options for scaling the blog as it grows. I’d be more than happy to continue writing additional posts (installing the blog on VPS / Cloud hosting, setting up a local development environment for programming / testing, installing and scaling cloud applications on Amazon EC2, and even writing full stack software basics) if anyone is interested. I just realized I’ve been on this forum for over a year and a half and while I’ve taken a lot of value, I’ve given very little back. I’ve decided to not contribute until I have something of value to give to this forum. This forum is like an open source lifestyle project, and it’s my time to contribute back to the community.
As Roosh said in http://www.rooshv.com/nerds-will-rule-the-world, this job is one that is likely to be around for the forseeable future, as society gives more control of its infrastructure over to technology. Another reason is this is one of a number of jobs that has the ability to give you true location independence, allowing you to accomplish your goal of traveling and seeing new cultures. I started learning this at 15 as a hobby, and to help my uncle with a startup he was working on. I ended up writing their entire point of sale application from scratch, which ended up netting me more than $10,000 (at 17 years of age, I bought a car - stupid). It ended becoming my career (minus a few year stint in running a used car dealership).
Where to get customers?
This is where your networking and sales techniques come into play. It’s hard to tell you how to find customers in the world, but needless to say, it’s a good idea to network to as many people as possible. Go to meetups on http://www.meetup.com and meet with entrepreneurs, other coders, and even recruiters. There are many jobs available where you can work remotely and still get paid hourly or even salary with benefits.
You want to just make a few quick bucks doing this? There are many freelance hiring sites:
http://www.fiverr.com
https://www.elance.com
http://odesk.com
http://www.freelancer.com
http://craigslist.org
Now, there is a bidding component to these sites (just like the real world). Some people are just looking for cheap coding monkeys to crank something out. It helps if you take some shit jobs and get a solid reputation on there for quality work. You will benefit from working your way up.
A few ways to do this:
1.Simply installing your own blog / a blog for someone else
2.Simple site design / some back end work
3.Full site design / admin panels / web apps
4.Full stack system engineering
In this post, I will cover the first one. If there is any interest, I can cover the last three as well, although you should know these require a significant amount of learning and dedication to become good at (and therefore make money at).
1. Installing a blog
This option, generally speaking, does not require a lot of programming experience. It helps, of course, but there are many open source (read: free) blogging platforms that are easy to install and get going. I’m going to cut through the B.S. - go with wordpress. Most programmers cringe at the thought, since wordpress was written in php during a time when it was barely a programming language, and has changed very little since. However, it is one of the most popular blogging platforms in the world. It has thousands of plugins, is free, and is easily installable in most hosting environments. The next consideration is hosting. Generally speaking, you have 3 options as far as web hosting, and your decision will be based on price and scalability.
a.Shared hosting
This is the cheapest option, and also the most limited. Basically you are on the same server as many other customers, sharing the same web server (apache) and database server (mysql). You should expect to pay around $8/month for the most basic plan, and this is generally good up to a few hundred thousand visitors per month (this can vary wildly depending on several factors). I recommend starting here, to see if you can start generating enough traffic to justify moving up. The limiting factors here are:
Memory & CPU (more visitors means more apache processes used - increasing your memory usage and CPU usage)
Bandwidth (think of bandwidth as a pipe carrying data, the more visitors you have, the more data you send through the pipe)
In most cases, you can pay a few additional bucks a month to increase either (or both) of these if you start to see traffic increase. The biggest drawback here is if one of the other shared customers starts hogging the CPU or network bandwidth, your site could be affected.
b. VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting - managed or unmanaged
This is a more expensive option than shared, as you get a dedicated virtual server.
Meaning you get your own apache instance and mysql instance. This gives you the benefit of not being at the mercy of traffic spikes for other customers, but comes at a higher price. There are managed and unmanaged options, managed meaning the host manages your machine for you (installing apache, installing mysql, firewall rules, etc). This typically costs more and you can be at the mercy of their tech support hours. Unmanaged means you handle all this yourself, meaning you need more training.
c. Cloud based hosting
Cloud hosting is similar to VPS, in that you get your own virtual server. There are many, many tiers depending on your needs, and you can add virtual servers on demand if needed. With cloud hosting, you are charged based on hourly usage, so if you shut off an instance during low traffic times, you won’t be charged for that time. These are typically unmanaged, meaning you install your own web server and database server, and configure your firewall yourself.
Also, you will need to decide on whether or not to have your own domain name. Some shared hosting providers will give you a free subdomain (i.e. http://{your-blog-name}.{the-hosting-provider}.com). If you want your own domain name, that will start at a few bucks a year (http://godaddy.com always has coupons online for first year domain names. After the first year, it’s generally $35.00 / year).
For guys just starting off, I recommend going with shared hosting on the smallest plan available. You can get a free blog at http://wordpress.com, however, it will be their ads, not yours (meaning they make the ad revenue), and it will be their domain name. Also, you will be at their mercy in terms of “questionable” content (remember the heartiste controversy). My favorite shared hosting provider (and the one I will go through installing wordpress on today) is http://webfaction.com. They allow a bit more freedom than most other shared hosting providers (i.e. ssh access and port opening), and are always upgrading their plans for free (they doubled my available memory at no cost, without me asking). They also offer one-click install for wordpress. This is a great guide on how to do that, I don’t think I could do a better job: http://pursuitofepic.com/set-self-hosted...ress-blog. This will have you up and running in a matter of minutes. Then, you (or your client) can start writing content. It’s really that simple. Also note: since you are administering this yourself for your client, you can charge them monthly hosting as a reseller (if you have enough clients with simple blogs, this can be a decent small revenue stream for you). You are charged $8.00 / month for hosting, you charge the client $25.00 / month for hosting (plus per hour for plugin installation, etc), at 10 clients that’s an extra $170.00 / month you get for simply owning a hosting account.
Now, that was just a few easy ways to get a blog up and running, and your options for scaling the blog as it grows. I’d be more than happy to continue writing additional posts (installing the blog on VPS / Cloud hosting, setting up a local development environment for programming / testing, installing and scaling cloud applications on Amazon EC2, and even writing full stack software basics) if anyone is interested. I just realized I’ve been on this forum for over a year and a half and while I’ve taken a lot of value, I’ve given very little back. I’ve decided to not contribute until I have something of value to give to this forum. This forum is like an open source lifestyle project, and it’s my time to contribute back to the community.
