

Ask HN: Is there a way I can make $10,000 before the end of December? - fadelakin

I want to earn $10,000 before the end of December. I&#x27;m a student and an app developer (iOS and Windows Phone). I took the fall semester off to do some more work but my apps aren&#x27;t really making much money.<p>My goal was to develop more apps which in turn would net me more money but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s a viable plan. I just want to make enough so I can get through school without any problems. That&#x27;s how I settled on the 10K figure.<p>What do you guys think I should do? I&#x27;m open to any and all suggestions.
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patio11
Find businesses which require apps. Contract out your services in app
development to them at e.g. $100 an hour or $4k a week. This gets you to $10k
fairly reliably.

You'll eventually want to raise that rate substantially as $100 is rather
below what the market is currently paying for iOS developers, but that's a
decent place to start. (This assumes that you're capable of delivering on a
level of professionalism commensurate with that rate. Your code should
actually work, you should respond to emails, you should not miss deadlines
because "lol partied hard last night", etc.)

~~~
sillysaurus2
This seems like it might be based on the assumption that OP is in SF. What
about a place like, say, Chicago? Is $100/hr still below market rate for iOS
devs there?

If so, well, I'll happily make you an iOS app for $120/hr. Wow. In fact, this
is more than "Wow." Either patio11 lives in an alternate world, or I've
completely missed the fact that devs have become _that_ valuable outside of
SF. I mean, we're talking about someone who hasn't even graduated uni yet.
Nothing against undergrads at all -- they're some of the most productive devs
-- it's just that the world tends to pay more for grads.

Another question: how should one "find businesses which require apps"? Door to
door?

EDIT: The more I think about this, the more absurd this advice sounds.
Patrick, would you give a more thorough overview of the steps necessary to
accomplish what you're suggesting, from the point of view of someone with zero
experience except with the technical and artistic aspects of delivering a
product? (I.e. no experience with the social aspects of landing a gig like
this.) >$100/hr is roughly nine times what a college student working fulltime
can expect to get at an average job, so what you're suggesting is no small
feat, especially for an undergrad. What kind of social tricks are involved to
pull this off?

~~~
patio11
I get this a lot, and I understand it, because when I was 20 and earning the
princely sum of $12.50 an hour it was outside of my experience that any
business anywhere would pay $100 for anything which was not e.g. a lawyer. I
am now older and, knock on wood, wiser.

There are no "social tricks" involved -- well, not in the sense that you're
thinking. You don't need a magic mind control beam to sell things to
businesses. Here, I'm a geek like you're a geek. Can you (or J. Random
Hypothetical Dev) outline how you would convince me, a fellow geek, that you
could successfully program iOS applications? Showing me something you have
made would suffice. Talking about the process of building iOS applications in
a way which made it sound like you knew what you were talking about would also
suffice.

Now pivot from the technical question to the business question. Given that I
(or K. Random Small Business Owner) has a business doing $FOO, how does that
business make more money or spend less money as a result of having an iOS
application built for it?

I know exactly how you'd sell _me_ an iPhone app. You'd ask if any of my SaaS
accounts had ever canceled because of lack of an iPhone app. I'd tell you that
that happened X0 times. You'd say "How much was their aggregate spend per
month?" I'd say "A few thousand bucks." You'd say "So, to a first
approximation, an iPhone app being available is going to be worth a few
thousand bucks per month to your company within a few months." (n.b. This is
just an example rather than a request to get proposals, guys.)

How would you convince e.g. a financial adviser that he urgently wants to have
an iOS app written? That might start with "How much do you make on your
average customer account every year?" "A few thousand dollars." "How often do
you get to talk to them?" "Mostly commonly, once or twice a year." "Do they
ever cancel saying 'I don't understand what I'm paying you for." "That's my #1
cause of losing clients." "Wouldn't it be better if you were on their home
screen every day?" "YES."

How would you convince a restaurant that they want want a delivery app? Fill
in the blank.

How would you convince a plumbing company that they want something their
plumbers can use to check-in and check-out of work sites? Fill in the blank.

As to where you find businesses: I suppose you could sell things door to door,
but most people don't. One way which works for a lot of people is to throw an
event with the local e.g. Chamber of Commerce about some technology topic
(maybe an overview of how mobile is changing the Internet, a subject on which
you're vastly more educated than the average owner of a firm with $2 million a
year in revenue in your local community) and having business cards and a
willingness to continue the conversation when people try to talk to you after
the event.

~~~
sillysaurus2
Okay, so we've gone from "You can make $100/hr making iOS apps" to "You can
make $100/hr making iOS apps if you happen to live in a city that lets you
throw an event, figure out which people you need to convince to let you throw
that event, have enough public speaking skills (along with presentation skills
and "appearance skills") to wow the audience, _and_ you can somehow get local
business owners to attend your event."

The overview is really excellent, it's just that I'm getting the feeling
"connecting competent iOS devs to business owners" is a huge unsolved problem.

Could I persuade you to throw out some more ideas for how to connect with the
right people to land a $100/hr gig?

(I appreciate that this thread is rather not-very-visible, so maybe your time
is better spent elsewhere. But I figured I'd at least ask, since the advice
would be so valuable.)

~~~
patio11
_Could I persuade you to throw out some more ideas for how to connect with the
right people to land a $100 /hr gig?_

Write up a case study on how you made a business $MONEY using your iOS
programming skills, submit to HN.

Contact other iOS freelancers, particularly those who appear to be doing well,
and ask if they could provide you referrals for overflow work or work which
does not fit their interest (wrong budget, wrong client pool, wrong location,
etc).

Cold call or cold email people. Dirty secret: it works.

Work your offline and/or online social networks, asking people if they will
warm-intro you to business owners who fit the general profile of "People who
could conceivably write very small [+] checks."

[+] This goes against everything in my upbringing and what I believed about
the world as a college student, but it is an important lesson for
technologists to learn very early in their careers: $4,000 is _not a lot of
money_ to many businesses.

~~~
caw
Since you're current in college, you can actually use that to your advantage
with certain people. You can now reliably cold call certain people all by
saying "Hi $COLLEGE alumni! I'm currently in $COLLEGE" and people will talk to
you. I'm sure there's a lot of people still local around the school. How do
you find the people? LinkedIn or through your college, they always have things
to connect with alumni.

You can then ask 'if they will warm-intro you to business owners who fit the
general profile of "People who could conceivably write very small [+]
checks."'

------
webhat
If you really want to make $10000 be stupid.* Take a simple and successful app
and do it better and sell it for less than the other guy. Don't try to be
smart, innovative, or creative and hope that it succeeds, just be better. The
stupider and more successful the idea, the more chance you have to get your
cash by being better.

*@FAKEGRIMLOCK says it much better.

~~~
X4
haha, yeah like the Samwer Brothers, they copy existing startups.
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-samwer-
brot...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-samwer-brothers-are-
germany-s-titans-of-internet-entrepreneurs-a-833374.html)

To be honest, you probably won't make money with this until December.

------
smokestack
That's only about $18/hour if you're working full time.

~~~
fadelakin
Does that really matter? At least it's something.

~~~
foyle
He means you can make that much by working full time.

~~~
fadelakin
Oh. Sorry. I'm a bit tired and I'm a bit out of it. While I could make that
much working full time, there are no jobs that pay that rate around here. Most
jobs I've found around here pay minimum wage. The most I've found for someone
like me pays $11.50/hr.

~~~
X4
$11,50? I am serious. You get 10Eur/h for cleaning floors in Germany. I can't
believe that you'd get $11,40/h for coding an iOS App. No way! Even the
cheapest company I know pays 50Eur/h for an iOS dev and they're currently
valued between 120Eur/h and 200Eur/h here.

I know some law students, who clean floors, because they don't want to fill
their head with useless stuff, when they can get along with 80Eur a day and
concentrate on studying instead of work.

------
nanomage
You can develop apps on the iphone?

Well, look at craigslist, freelancer websites and hustle hustle husetle.

You can sell your ability to those with an idea who are posting.

However, you will only be studying/schooling/working/looking for work. No
GF/BF, not much social time.

Be a freelancer, and the future is in your hands.

------
cstrat
Back when I was at university I did a lot of work on rent-a-coder, now
vWorker. Initially it was hard to win business, the first few jobs I did were
worth almost nothing. After I did those smaller jobs and built some rep I
found that local contractors (I am Australian) preferred to hire me over some
of the others due to language difficulties. Ended up earning more than $10K
from projects, however not in such a short timespan.

In short, sell your skills and make sure to emphasise that you're a good
communicator.

------
lsiebert
How quickly can you throw together a website for a local business that lacks
one? Say that you will set one up for a flat fee is they pay for Domain and
hosting. Hundred bucks for a few hours right there.

As for app sales, marketing is incredibly important in ios sales. How are
people finding your app?

Finally if you are going to school, reach out to alumni.

------
tagabek
I am in nearly the same boat as you. I am a college student, who makes iPhone
Apps, and I've just recently become a freelancer/consultant.

Here's a tip. $10,000 might seem like A LOT now, but it is really just ($1,000
x 10 projects), ($2,000 x 5 projects), ($4,000 x 2.5 projects/weeks), etc.
What I'm saying is that if you break it down, it isn't that much, and it
becomes quite easily attainable in 2~3 months time.

First off, look at patio11's comment in this thread, memorize it, and make it
your new business mindset from now on. His blog woke me up to the reality of
doing business (If you haven't, check it
out:[http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/)).

Ok, now onto what what you really want to know - how specifically do you make
$10,000 in a few months?

1st, have a specific goal and a desire. Check!

2nd, set up a business to do your freelancing through. I set up a sole
proprietorship for $52. Now make a website. I used SquareSpace to set up an
already-designed website that I modified just a bit, and they provide the
whole website-in-a-box package for $10/month. Now set up personal Twitter &
LinkedIn accounts if you haven't already. This whole process took me 30
minutes online.

3rd, find clients that are willing to pay you for your services. AHHHH! This
is impossible! No one is going to pay for MY skills, right? VERY, VERY, VERY
WRONG. You say that you've already made apps. You can already prove that you
can make an app and put it in the App Store. You're way ahead of a lot of
people. Make a list of 20 local businesses that might like to have an app. I'm
talking about locally-owned restaurants, dental offices, ice cream stores,
etc. Now, make an overall script of what you would say to them, and modify it
slightly to fit the business. Call them up in the morning when you expect them
to be less busy, and sell them on the idea that they want an app for their
business. I know what you're thinking - UGH... COLD CALLS? REALLY? Well, they
work, and they're a great way to get started! They are just the first step!
Soon enough, you will never have to do it again! Oh and, things will go wrong.
Don't let that stop you, because you'll be the one that is laughing when you
have reached $15,000 instead of your originally planned $10k.

Read patio11's example of an ideal pitch, as posted above.

 _How would you convince e.g. a financial adviser that he urgently wants to
have an iOS app written? That might start with "How much do you make on your
average customer account every year?" "A few thousand dollars." "How often do
you get to talk to them?" "Mostly commonly, once or twice a year." "Do they
ever cancel saying 'I don't understand what I'm paying you for." "That's my #1
cause of losing clients." "Wouldn't it be better if you were on their home
screen every day?" "YES."_

------
ffumarola
Hey, reach out to me. I might be able to help.

Do you have examples of iOS or Android apps you've made?

~~~
ffumarola
iOS or Windows Phone _

------
korelhem
check out this -->
[http://www.therightmarketingidea.com](http://www.therightmarketingidea.com)
<\--

~~~
vldx
This is just ridiculous.

------
hackingdreams
How much money do you have now? Depending on your starting amount, the $10,000
number becomes more or less realistic.

If you have $0, it's not very likely. Your best hope is to find a job and re-
evaluate in a couple months.

If you have $10,000, doubling it becomes more realistic, but not exceedingly
so. Writing an app costs money (yeah, I know, it's amazing to think that you
can't just do this shit for free!) and you still have to live while developing
it.

If you have $100,000, that's a 10% growth. Betting correctly on the stock
market should be pretty straight forward in this market.

If you have >$500,000, this is cakewalk.

If there were a manual to life, it'd tell you that having money is the
easiest, most reliable way to make more money. Social climbing is still
extremely hard in our generation, but at the very least computers have made it
easier for the intelligent and dedicated.

