Re: any luck with freelance work on the Internet?

myheartinamerica wrote:
I am looking to supplement my income doing small-scale freelance work
over the Internet. After a quick search, sites like Guru.com and
RentACoder.com show up. Has anyone had any success with these? Are
there better ones out there?

I'd be interested to hear anyone's success/horror stories on the
topic.

That is really just consultancy by a different name. As a consultancy firm,
we have done quite a few contracts. Recompense has been anything from £100
to £35,000 so far. However, it leaves you really open to being bankrupted
by bad debtors, a problem that kills 80% of startups!

Merjis in Bedford:

http://merjis.com

are our worst debtor ever and have owed us money for completed consultancy
for three years now. I doubt they will ever recompense us for the work we
did. They are the web analysts for Thomas Cook travel agents, BTW.

I believe we have otherwise been very fortunate with our employers. Wolfram
Research, IdTechEx, XenSource and others have all paid us within 1 month.
Microsoft took 6 months for our first contract with them but have since
paid *in advance* without us even asking.

So we actually did the exact opposite of what you are proposing: we ditched
freelance work in favor of building product lines and selling through our
website because that brings in a stable income. Indeed, our products now
account for most of our income and we are focusing entirely on building
products and not on advertising consultancy services.

You may also like to try building and selling products rather than doing
freelance work. You just have to code something useful, write compelling
sales-speak on a sales page and watch the money come in. I personally find
this far more gratifying that the odd one-off consultancy gig.

Best of luck!

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u
.

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