So why not add some skills?
Skills take time and money to acquire, and in proportion to their utility. Any abilities I could acquire cheaply and quickly would be of dubious value, especially (as I said) in a bunk economy when there's a flood of experienced talent in most fields. So I'm pretty much skating on a wing and a prayer here.
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Writing can pay pretty well, especially if you write for your own website and/or have something interesting to say. Writing e-books to sell on Amazon can work out well too. I sold a website last year that was all my own writing, and between the sale price (which was 10 months earnings at that point) and ad revenue already collected it turned out to be about $2 per word onsite. I wouldn't say I'm a good writer, I'm not a very prolific writer (I have trouble with more than 2000 words a day, while I know people who consistently churn out 15000-20000 a day) and definitely not an interesting writer on most subjects or for most audiences...
I had another article on a 3rd party site that made over $2000 over the course of 2 years and represented 15 minutes of my time.
It's very hit or miss of course. Some topics there's just no money in, others it's too hard to get traffic. Sometimes the search engines just don't like your writing or who links to your site. Most of the people I know who do it full time end up averaging about $1 per month per ~500 word article (combined on-site and off) though. It might not seem like much, but if you can churn out a few thousand words per day it adds up pretty fast. There's usually no money in it for the first 3-4 months though, and it can take a year or two before a website will really start to get love from search engines, so it's not a get rich quick sort of thing.
If you want to try your hand at it you can put up some articles at places like hubpages.com, wizzley.com, or squidoo.com (seekingalpha.com if you can write about investing) and see if any of the subjects you choose to write about are "winners" that will get traffic and earn money. Then you can create your own website(s) around those subjects. Put up a simple Wordpress site with 5000 to 10000 words on it about everything you can think about the subject, throw a few links to it, and just let it age in. $2-10 for the domain name for a year, $20 for hosting for a year, and a weeks worth of writing. Adsense is a very easy way to monetize just about any website.
The other more stable route is to just sell articles to others who will put them on their own websites or e-books. $10 per 1000 words is pretty standard for a no-name author for a random buyer. You have to be prolific, but you don't have to be very good/interesting. It's hell because you have to write about stupid crap you have no interest in. By the time you've written "The best red toasters for 2012" for the 10th time you'll either be in a trance or suicidal. It can be a very good income in a developing country, and not bad for the first world either.
Before going either route, be sure to read "Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." by Edgar Allan Poe several times so you know just what you're getting into.
"tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner"
I write for a living and make a nice living at it. Been doing it 7 years.
Apolyton's Grim Reaper 2008, 2010 & 2011
RIP lest we forget... SG (2) and LaFayette -- Civ2 Succession Games Brothers-in-Arms
Huh. Thanks, Aeson. I'm working on something for Amazon already, but that'll be a while; it's about 33K words and a little more than one-third finished. I could try articles, though I wouldn't know where to begin. Possibly religion? I've never been to Seminary, but that doesn't seem to stop most of the people on hubwhatsit...
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You could take some jobs at Odesk or something like that to get a feel for the type of writing people are paying for. I started out writing $10 articles for other people to pay the bills until I was able to make enough on my own sites to stop doing so.
If you're writing for yourself, this is where to start:
https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeti...AS#search.none
Look for keywords which have high competition. This is competition from advertisers bidding on those keywords. The more people bidding for ad space, the more likely it's a paying topic. I look for volume in the 1000 to 10000 range using [exact] match type. These are usually obscure enough topics that there aren't a million other people building websites to target them, but still have enough traffic to make them worthwhile.
To find it start with your root keyword. Look for some longer keywords in the returned list. Input those... drill down to more and more specific categories.
As for general topics... never tried religion. Topics where there's clear commercial interest have the best chance of paying off, with a few exceptions. Tech is tough because most of the techies are running ad blockers or are ad blind. Health, insurance, loans, forex/stocks, and making money online are tough because they're very crowded and spammy. I mostly stick to home improvement, gardening, and landscaping topics. They're topics I can write about somewhat intelligently, and doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out. The commercial interest there are tools, plans, contractors, seeds, fertilizers, ect. Things people looking for those topics are going to spend money on, thus things that people advertising are going to be spending money to get traffic for.
Just a quick look at religion as a topic gets me to "electronic bible" as a high advertiser competition keyword with 1600 exact match local (US) per month. People searching for that are likely looking for an electronic bible to buy. "Study bible" and "bibles for sale" also looks like there's potential there. Your site doesn't have to specifically be about those topics, but if you were talking about religion you'd want to make sure you're targeting that traffic by using those high competition keywords in your articles, and have a few articles specifically about those topics. To go back to the home improvement example... I generally don't write reviews about specific cordless drills and don't have a site specifically about cordless drills (though product review sites targeting a product category like that can do very well)... but I do mention cordless drills, their name brands, where to buy them, or what specific model I use when covering broader topics where cordless drills are a useful tool. Then I'd also have articles about what to look for in a cordless drill, how to [do specific thing with a cordless drill], ect.
"tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner"
Attaching dildos to the end of them?
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
Is that how you do it too, -Jrabbit? I have to admit, the process seems pretty intimidating. Guess I'm a wuss.
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I have a lot of friends attending or applying to grad schools. They've been giving me essays to edit. Holy crap how bad even grad students are at writing. Atrocious. It's not simply grammar errors; it's the terrible style that shocks me.
"Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
"I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi
Programming is a skill you can pick up quickly and practically for free. There's also tons of jobs for them and they pay amazingly well. I got a job at the first company I interviewed with, and I only filled out 3 applications for a programming position. That was after my marketing degree proved useless and even my information technology degree proved useless. The best programmers I ever met didn't even have degrees. It's all about what you know and what you can do.
Yeah, I've looked at it. I guess it's something I could do--I smoked Basic in high school--but I'm not sure how to learn something useful. I also find it somewhat unpalatable (like trying to supervise an autistic child: you give him orders, watch it go wrong, and try to figure out which order you phrased just a little bit off), but I suppose I could give it a shot and see if it grows on me.
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Frankly, it sounds like Snoresville to me
"Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
"I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi
That's not even remotely how it works. Most your time is going to be spent thinking about how to design a solution using your programming skills and then trying to implement it. Unless you are really bad, you aren't going to be spending a ton of your time trying to fix syntax errors and figuring out how to make something work from a programming standpoint. That's not to say that there aren't times when that really is all you're doing and it takes a ton of time, it's just not your primary function. Programming is problem solving and the language itself is just your tool for doing it.
Learn Java, the IDE is free (use Eclipse) and there are plenty of entry-level positions out there. These are the official tutorials, but there are sure to be many others available for free, and you can probably get a Java book from your library. C# is extremely similar, so once you learn Java you can easily transition to C#.
Visual Studio Express is also free. Of course not that you can't find whatever you want for free anyway if needed. Just saying.
I believe JR is a freelancer, but he'd have to answer that.Is that how you do it too, -Jrabbit? I have to admit, the process seems pretty intimidating. Guess I'm a wuss.
What I did, and do, is I have an agent who farms me out. Agent sets me up with client, I write for client. Of course that doesn't stop me from building up a portfolio, and finding work myself.
If you're going to write, I encourage you to build up a portfolio first. Just write about things that interest you. I try to anticipate future desires, and it's been a long time since I've had to write on deadline. Most of the contracts that I get are for work I'd written years ago, and it's just a matter of dusting it off, sprucing it up, and away it goes.
Scouse Git (2) LaFayette Adam Smith and Solomwi you will be missed
"*** dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum"
For me it's less intimidating than finding a job that you know is going to schedule away the next 30-40 years of my life somewhere I wouldn't choose to live.Originally Posted by Elok
If you don't like doing keyword research, just write about topics that interest you. It doesn't have to be anything special. Just get it up on the internet whether it's on your own site or some third party that has ad revenue sharing (the ones I mentioned before). 10k posts suggest you can do it.
The benefits are you can work however much you want to, whenever you want to, wherever you want to (as long as you can get online), and the ceiling is just about limitless.
"tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner"
Ben, can you provide links for any articles you've had published under your name?
The OT at APOLYTON is like watching the Special Olympics. Certain people try so hard to debate despite their handicaps.
Baron O RIP.
Rah is so cold.
"I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger
So basically you just write a blog and collect money from ads? That pays well enough to live off of?
Captain of Team Apolyton - ISDG 2012
When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah
The official tutorials seem written for people who know more about programming in general than I do, so I'm trying some site called javabeginner.com that's a little more dumbed-down--but not as dumbed-down as I'd like:
Uh, okay.
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Don't forget he lives in the Philippines. And I think he has a farm.
"Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
"I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi
Abstraction denotes the essential characteristics of an object that distinguish it from all other kinds of objects and thus provide crisply defined conceptual boundaries, relative to the perspective of the viewer.
Encapsulation is the process of compartmentalizing the elements of an abstraction that constitute its structure and behavior ; encapsulation serves to separate the contractual interface of an abstraction and its implementation.
Filosofy
"The boastful seeks the company of parasites." (Spinoza)
Boy, where I'm from you don't communicate that poorly except on purpose, like when you want to say you think Melville's writing was all about his discomfort with uncircumcised penises and not get laughed at. THEN you write something really vague using unnecessary jargon; it's called "Lit Crit."
Filosofy
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They're really making reference to Platonic forms in that java tutorial? Maybe I really had no idea what programming is.
"Flutie was better than Kelly, Elway, Esiason and Cunningham." - Ben Kenobi
"I have nothing against Wilson, but he's nowhere near the same calibre of QB as Flutie. Flutie threw for 5k+ yards in the CFL." -Ben Kenobi
Ah, that sounds nice. I should run a farm in some global backwater.
Captain of Team Apolyton - ISDG 2012
When I was younger I thought curfews were silly, but now as the daughter of a young woman, I appreciate them. - Rah
I already have.Ben, can you provide links for any articles you've had published under your name?Why you think my clients are national newspapers eludes me. It's the only one anyone posting here would have had any chance of coming across.
Uh, let's see. Most recent project was a comprehensive guide on hospital billing codes and the systems under which they are organized for 10 different jurisdictions. Want to know what the billing code for appendectomy is in Manitoba? My guide finds that for you.
Last edited by Ben Kenobi; June 18, 2012 at 18:35.
Scouse Git (2) LaFayette Adam Smith and Solomwi you will be missed
"*** dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum"
Looks like you found something to write about.
“As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
"Capitalism ho!"
Seriously, I would recommend you go with C# before Java. Java just plain sucks. Find this book: The Object-Oriented Thought Process 3ed this is a good book for object oriented programming in general. For C# I recommend: CSharp 2010 and the dotNET 4 Platform 5th Edition. Just google these for ebooks and grab VS 2010 through other means as well.
A major problem with beginning object-oriented programming is that most of the tutorials want you to jump straight into objects and classes - when I started programming I did nothing but loops and arrays and if-statements for the first umpteen months. Maybe try starting out with Small Basic tutorial or something like that - if you go with Small Basic then there's a bit of a syntax change when you switch to Java or C#, but nothing too problematic. One thing: it looks as though Small Basic supports the "goto" statement, which you shouldn't use (it's "considered harmful") - you can do everything you need with while loops.
By the way, my attempt at a translation of the javabeginner atrocity you quoted is: if you want "squares" and "circles" then you can abstract the common properties, e.g. perimeter and area, into a common "shape" class; the squares and circles encapsulate their individual methods for calculating the perimeter and area, so a programmer can be given a random shape and query its perimeter/area without having to know what kind of shape it is.
On second thought, maybe I've been programming too long to de-jargonize.
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