I am unsure whether to accept this job offer

Hauldren Collider · June 19, 2012, 01:09

To get a decent programming job (even just code monkey) I would imagine pretty much everyone expects a college degree in CS at this point.

Hauldren Collider · June 19, 2012, 01:10

Originally Posted by DriXnaK

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.

Java does not suck, what are you on?

Aeson · June 19, 2012, 07:49

Originally Posted by OzzyKP

So basically you just write a blog and collect money from ads? That pays well enough to live off of?

Not just blogs. Not just ads. (Some affiliate/commission/referral sales. Some sales of my own products.)

There's an extremely wide variation on how much you can make from a website. As I said earlier, I'd expect about $1/mo per 500 word article. I've done better than that in most of my writing projects, sometimes significantly so (such as the $2/word website last year). Most of the people I know who do this full time do about the $1/mo per article though. If you wrote 20 per day, after a year you'd have a good shot at having an income of more than $5k/mo that would likely last for 10-14 months if you never did any more work. (Standard sale price for a no-name website is 10-14 months earnings, which means that's around the market's expected lifespan for the earnings without further input.)

Of course there's risk involved. You could end up with a 0. Some of the websites I've made have never earned a penny. It happens. It could also really take off. The lady who put together dogbreedinfo.com for instance (a very famous example since Adsense highlighted it). She was making $600 per day several years ago. Last time I looked at her rankings she was getting traffic worth around $1 million a month to advertisers. I'd guess she only captures a fraction of it, but she's probably making 6 figures a month.

What definitely is possible for just about anyone who can write average internet English is to sell $10 articles. If you approach it as a full time job, you should be able to make at least a couple thousand a month. It's a lot of writing, but 20 of those articles a day is certainly possible. I can't stand to write anywhere near that much, though when I write it's at better than that pace usually. I know people who write 30-40 of them a day.

Aeson · June 19, 2012, 07:59

Originally Posted by Al B. Sure!

Don't forget he lives in the Philippines. And I think he has a farm.

I actually spend more here than I ever did in the US. Of course it goes a lot further here, part of the reason I feel it's worth it to earn/use more.

The farm still isn't helping yet in that regard.

Kidicious · June 19, 2012, 08:14

Originally Posted by Aeson

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.

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.

nice

OzzyKP · June 19, 2012, 12:12

Originally Posted by Aeson

Not just blogs. Not just ads. (Some affiliate/commission/referral sales. Some sales of my own products.)

There's an extremely wide variation on how much you can make from a website. As I said earlier, I'd expect about $1/mo per 500 word article. I've done better than that in most of my writing projects, sometimes significantly so (such as the $2/word website last year). Most of the people I know who do this full time do about the $1/mo per article though. If you wrote 20 per day, after a year you'd have a good shot at having an income of more than $5k/mo that would likely last for 10-14 months if you never did any more work. (Standard sale price for a no-name website is 10-14 months earnings, which means that's around the market's expected lifespan for the earnings without further input.)

Of course there's risk involved. You could end up with a 0. Some of the websites I've made have never earned a penny. It happens. It could also really take off. The lady who put together dogbreedinfo.com for instance (a very famous example since Adsense highlighted it). She was making $600 per day several years ago. Last time I looked at her rankings she was getting traffic worth around $1 million a month to advertisers. I'd guess she only captures a fraction of it, but she's probably making 6 figures a month.

What definitely is possible for just about anyone who can write average internet English is to sell $10 articles. If you approach it as a full time job, you should be able to make at least a couple thousand a month. It's a lot of writing, but 20 of those articles a day is certainly possible. I can't stand to write anywhere near that much, though when I write it's at better than that pace usually. I know people who write 30-40 of them a day.

Well I applied for an AdSense account, I'll guess I'll see how I do.

DriXnaK · June 20, 2012, 01:28

Java does suck. I'll take the microsoft stack of products and C# any day over a Java driven solution.

As far as needing a CS degree, that's bullshit.

rah · June 20, 2012, 08:59

Yeah, 90% of all the programmers that I've hired didn't have CS degrees.

Aeson · June 20, 2012, 19:32

Originally Posted by OzzyKP

Well I applied for an AdSense account, I'll guess I'll see how I do.

I take it you already have a website?

Al B. Sure! · June 20, 2012, 19:44

Originally Posted by Aeson

I take it you already have a website?

http://www.oneandfour.org/

MRT144 · June 20, 2012, 19:46

Originally Posted by rah

Yeah, 90% of all the programmers that I've hired didn't have CS degrees.

That's the beauty of computer technology and why I am thankful my Dad got that sales job at Control Data back in 1981. If it weren't for his constant tech sales jobs I probably would have had a very different life.

Al B. Sure! · June 20, 2012, 19:55

oo lala when you google Ozzy's real name, google auto-finishes it for you. Then it comes up with all these hits, including the wikipedia article on him. Got his photo on the side of the search results. Related searches include: "exclusive interview *********" Exclusive. Sexy.

We have such a celebrity here

Elok · June 20, 2012, 20:24

And he's got at least one stalker to prove it.

loinburger · June 20, 2012, 22:04

When you google my real name you're taken to the Linkedin profile for the only other person in the country who shares my name. My aunt met him on an airplane once ("hey you have the same name as my nephew"), apparently he's a douchebag ("**** you lady").

DaShi · June 20, 2012, 22:11

OMG, do we have the same name, loin?

Aeson · June 21, 2012, 10:05

Originally Posted by Al B. Sure!

http://www.oneandfour.org/

I'm not sure there's much in the way of commercial interest there. Still if you can get traffic, Google is pretty good at figuring out what ads people will click on, and often it will be something completely different than the topic of your site. Still it's best to ask yourself, "in what way would people coming to my site be looking to spend money?" Then build your site to attract those types of visitors and offer those kinds of goods/services/ads.

Elok · June 21, 2012, 10:09

I think he's just looking to write whatever he wants to write, and any income he makes off that, however small, is gravy.

Elok · June 21, 2012, 20:36

By-the-by (and this is something I should have asked earlier) does AdSense cost you anything? Is there a charge for use of the service somehow; i.e., is this a situation that could lead to a net loss of anything but wasted time?

Aeson · June 21, 2012, 21:50

No cost for Adsense. Google takes a 32% cut of the ad revenue (applied before you ever see it) to pay for the service. You do need to have a website to apply for Adsense, and it should be of sufficient quality to get accepted. (It's not a very high bar... you just need a few pages of original, readable content.) The other main requirement for Adsense is to have a "Privacy Policy" page. There are Wordpress plugins that will automatically generate the Privacy Policy page, if not you can get the text generated at a lot of sites, just search for "Privacy Policy generator". They do shut down accounts for violations of the TOS.

I would recommend taking the time and expense to get your own domain/hosting and set up Wordpress on it. It should take an hour or two and cost $30 or less for the first year. If you want to bypass that (at least for now) you can set up a free blog on blogger.com (which allows the use of Adsense and will qualify for applying to the service) or other similar sites. (Wordpress.com won't allow monetization.)

1and1.com has a $.99 sale on .COMs and Godaddy has $4.95 .COMs right now for instance. For hosting you can use the 50% coupon code "whts50v2" at hawkhost.com (as per this thread: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=972982, webhostingtalk is a good forum if you're looking for other types of hosting later on too) for their basic package and pay for the whole year at once. Even though it's their smallest plan it's plenty of room for a Wordpress blog or 10 even. Later if your site really takes off (tens of thousands of visitors a day) you can transfer to better hosting.