

Ask HN: Turn a hobby into a profession? - jessehorne

I enjoy studying programming languages in my spare time. More specifically I like to study how to implement them, subsequently learning about DSLs as well. I believe that there is a market for this, but I am wondering how much of one. How could I turn this into a profession? Also, please feel free to share your experience(s).
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contacternst
Hey There, I'm in a bit of a similar situation to you. I enjoy studying Web
Design in my spare time. I also really like helping nonprofits and small
municipal organizations. I've taken some first steps to turning this into my
profession, and the key to this was two-fold: 1) The nonprofit I worked for in
the summer had a terrible website. I made a portfolio website that showed what
I could do, sent it to the director, and asked her if I could redesign her
website. She agreed, and we went for it. Things went well, but one thing about
starting your own business is you really work closely with people, and if they
are very difficult people, you have to find a way to deal with them. 2)So I
had my first success at an opportunity I found by leveraging my current
connections. How to proceed from there? Offer to volunteer your services. I
reached out to a local Americorps worker offering to volunteer my web design
skills. We emailed back and forth for weeks and just recently say down for a
meeting of 4 people in a small municipal government office. We are currently
putting together a proposal to update the current website and if it goes
through, I'll have my second client.

I'm not where I want to be yet, but I've started to get some traction and very
hopeful that I'm on my way.

I'd love to talk to you more and see if we could help each other if we can
find similar interests.

\- Max

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jessehorne
Would love to chat as well. Just PM JesseH on Freenode or shoot me an email.
j.horne2796@gmail.com

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Wezc
In addition to contacternst I would say that you maybe that thinking
freelancing to small organization and some other thing like that. Feel free to
share your personal portfolio I'll go visit it and give you my opinion ;)

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jessehorne
Fresh out of highschool so don't expect TOO much ;) but I'm working on it.
jessehorne.github.io Check it out and tell me what you think.

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Wezc
Don't worry I'm pretty much fresh out of HS to :) I like what I see, keep
being active on github that's great !

