
What is the fastest way for a programmer to make $10000? - FahadUddin92
What are some proven ways for a developer to make an extra $10000 in a year doing anything (freelancing, starting a company etc) which has the most chances of reaching $10000 working on weekends?
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muzani
I've done it all, from freelancing to startups to starting a cafe.

What consistently worked for me is teaching, in hours worked,
risk/repeatability, and overall time (3 months).

The cafe brought me that kind of sales in about 10 weeks, but after factoring
all the other costs, the income was lower than an average salary.

Startups are very slow to set up. Something with 5%-10% margin would be faster
to set up - get a product, hack together an online shop, drop some money on
Google ads. But when you look at profitability it could take way more than a
year for that kind of money. Cafes are faster.

A startup with 90% profit margin would bring in the income much faster, but it
may take a very long time to build such a thing, easily 3+ months.

Freelancing is good. A fixed price project would pay that well in about 1
month if you're good and reputable. I've been offered about 4 projects
crossing the $10k mark, but all of them failed for some reason (mostly
miscommunication).

A beginner freelancer might make about $25-$50 an hour.

But with similar experience, you might get about $50-$75 an hour teaching
bootcamps or individuals.

The reasoning being that most people who hire freelancers instead of in house
programmers are broke startups or don't have tech as their core. The price for
freelance coding is also pegged against people all over the world. So some
lady in India or Indonesia would be equally happy making 5x less. With
teaching, your competitors are geographically limited.

Also, programming is very tiring work and teaching not so much. So you can put
in many more hours and it's more suitable for someone working full time.

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zapperdapper
You are starting with the wrong question - How do I get? Ask yourself what can
you give instead. Find people who have a problem - and help them solve it.

I'll give you an example. A few months back I was chatting with a friend and
she was saying how she had this problem at work where she wanted to get
customer lists out of a (huge) spreadsheet. I whipped up a Python script to do
it - for free. She was delighted. A few weeks later her boss came back to me
directly - he wanted a simple web app put together for one of their internal
processes and he was prepared to pay $$$.

You'll need to network, build up a body of work. Look for problems to solve
and the side income will come.

Your other option. Teach what you know on the side - you can run workshops on
the weekends.

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meric
1\. Bet $10000 on black at the casino. If you win, well done. If you lose
continue.

2\. Bet $20000 on black at the casino, if you win, well done. If you lose, you
lost $30000.

There is 75% chance to make $10000 - casino edge using this strategy. You can
do this on any day of the week the casino is open.

~~~
amingilani
Doubling down, also called a martingale strategy. This was awesome while it
lasted. I used this while playing with dogecoin, the trouble started when I
automated it using a script.

Trouble is, even when the chance of losing is 0.25%, you'll lost once every
400 games.

And at one point, the loss will be greater than all the money you had.. and
there's no coming back from that.

~~~
csomar
He said 75% chance, so odds are against you.

~~~
amingilani
Actually, he meant a 75% chance of winning..

Given the chance of winning a round is p=0.5, the chance of losing is q = 1 -
p = 0.5

If you've lost the first round, the odds of you twice in a row are q = 0.5^(2
rounds) = 0.25

Which means the odds of you winning are p = 1 - q = 1 - 0.25 = 0.75.

~~~
0x8BADF00D
Right, but the expected value of the gamble is negative.

~~~
dfinch
Expected value is 0, right? .75 * 10000 - .25 * 30000

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shahbaby
if there was such an answer to your question, everyone would be doing it, and
then it wouldn't work

but of course there are many people who will try to sell you turn-key business
solutions

programming is hard, it takes a lot of time and effort, if money is your real
objective, there are probably easier ways

~~~
csa
You would think that this would be true, but I humbly suggest to you that it's
not.

A lot of people seem to like the _idea_ of making/having money much more than
actually doing it. A lot of very good and relatively easy money making ideas
require boring/unsexy work, a small amount of sales behavior, or both. This is
an unusually high threshold for most people to cross.

I see a lot of smart people who think that people are just going to drop sexy
problems in their lap along with a pile of money to solve those problems. I
humbly suggest that this is a relatively rare occurrence.

Anyway, any answer to OPs question is probably going to be some form of unsexy
work and light sales. There are a lot of opportunities that meet this
description.

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csa
Copied from elsewhere in this thread:

\- Go to stackingthebricks.com from Amy Hoy.

\- Learn how to find a niche market of professionals and find their pain
points.

\- Learn the fundamentals of making a product or service that these people
want (e.g., an e-book) and how to market it via Amy's various writings and
those she links to (her network has many prolific writers).

\- Execute.

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muzani
Another way to make fast cash is hackathons, but you'd need really good
presentation skills.

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qubex
Considering 2 days per weekend, 52 weekends, and 8 hours of work per day,
$10,000 in a year turns out to imply a wage of $12 an hour. That's
substantially below the US national average of $25 an hour in 2016.

So basically, do any average job.

~~~
FahadUddin92
I am based in Karachi, Pakistan :(

~~~
qubex
Ah. That would have been a handy datum to put in there. I'm in Italy but based
on your mention of US currency I assumed you were in America.

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faisalhassanx
Take a course on Shopify dropshipping and start an ecommerce store.

~~~
muzani
I tried that. You'll get it in sales rather than profit, and it was slower
than just getting a job.

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throwaway26960
Tell your boss to give you a $10,000 bonus or you quit.

~~~
segmondy
I suspect this is someone outside of the US, say in Africa or India. Their
yearly salary is not up to $10k.

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tyingq
Start a Bitcoin tumbler? The market lead apparently just exited for personal
reasons, so there's an opening. Of course, you become a big target for hackers
and maybe US law enforcement.

------
e59d134d
Freelancing

------
0xc000005
get a job

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mcappleton
This is some of the best advice I ever got for business:

Ask and you shall receive Seek and you shall find Knock and the door will be
opened

The only way to get 10k short of stealing is for someone to give it to you.
And nobody will give it to you if they have no connection to you. So the first
thing you need to understand is that your success depends on connecting with
people who can be convinced that it is in their best interest to give you
money in exchange for something you offer. As a coder, you can definitely make
10k on one project or two, so that's a great goal. There are many people out
there who would benefit from paying you 10k because you have valuable skills.

Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky said "100% of shots you don't take won't go in the
goal". Similarly you won't get any business at all if you just sit around. You
have to get up and keep trying things. Attend meet ups. Even go door to door.
That's what I did selling a side product I built but now one of the guys I met
I'm in talks with to build software for about 15k.

The thing is if you go out and keep trying to find people who might give you
money, eventually you will find someone who will give you money. This is one
of the secrets to life.

------
SirLJ
Systematic stock market trading, it's not easy, but if you apply yourself and
spend the time, it'll be possible to develop working system and after that the
sky is the limit...

~~~
Lordarminius
I am skeptical about this. If it were possible, would many programmers not do
this ?

Moreover, the OP lives in Pakistan not the US

~~~
SirLJ
this is what I am wondering, why smart knowledgeable people are afraid to try,
it costs nothing, but time... There are many international brokers, you don't
have to live in the god old USA to trade the stock market...

~~~
csa
Because the road is paved with the bodies of those who have tried and failed.

I mentioned this to you in another thread, but you simply need to be more
specific with your advice. Your median smart person trying to do QT does not
beat the market over any reasonable time horizon. Most just flat out do worse
before quitting.

This person is looking for a solid $10k per year. Suggesting that they do QT
is about the same level of usefulness as telling them to write a book and get
it published. Sure, it's doable and perhaps even not that difficult for some
people, but it's not particularly actionable information.

To provide a contrast, the advice I would give would be something like this:

\- Go to stackingthebricks.com from Amy Hoy.

\- Learn how to find a niche market of professionals and find their pain
points.

\- Learn the fundamentals of making a product or service that these people
want (e.g., an e-book) and how to market it via Amy's various writings and
those she links to (her network has many prolific writers).

\- Execute.

This is a formula that is actionable but also has enough abstraction such that
the reader can tailor it to their own preferences.

If you could do this for QT, your suggestions will likely stop being down
voted so much.

~~~
SirLJ
Yep, writing an ebook for 10k is a great idea!

~~~
csa
Agreed... some people hit $50k or more.

~~~
SirLJ
So the question is settled, I am sure the OP will do a few of those and will
retire at the end of the year...

