Part 1:Learning to program

[vshetty.vs]

I am writing this thread as a dairy and as a place to plan my thoughts. I will update it every couple of months.

15th September
I am currently a student with 0$ in my bank account and a laptop. I hope to learn web programming by the end of october and get a job so that I can have bank account which is not in binary.

I am learning programming fromhttp://www.theodinproject.com/ .

5:00--> I come back from college
5:00-7:00-->code
7:00-8:00-->gym(every alternate day)
9:00-12:00-->code

 

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[Scot]

Stay focused, keep at it. Udemy.com has great courses when you're looking to break into specific lessons.

 

[TheGrind]

This is not meant to discourage you, but learning programming to try and get a job in a month and a half is quite a challenging task. Not saying it can't be done though. Just keep at it.

 

[vshetty.vs]

Looking back, I was naive. Although I did become a good coder( I actually made it to Round 2 of the Google Code Jam). I am now a Business Analyst for a company that helps marketing pharmaceutical products

My Stint With Web Development
After reading Fox's Web Development thread. I was super excited to make some money selling websites. I even picked up my phone and called some companies.

I would come from college around 12 and call companies until 4. But 3 month's later and I was still broke. The lack of any success and countless brutal rejections destroyed any motivation I had.

I told myself "Indian Industries don't use websites as often. Why would someone hire me? Especially when someone with a lot more experience and a specialized team charges 1/5 my rates.

Analysis:

1. Maybe I quit too easily
2. I should have tried leveraging my personal contacts and should have started selling to my friends.
3. I could have tried to market myself online. I was not restricted to my country but I was too consumed with how "Fox did it". What worked for him might not work for me.

Copywriting
After giving up my web design dreams, I started copywriting on Upwork and till date, I have made around $1000 on upwork.

But I was never able to earn a full-time income through upwork. I still occasionally go on upwork when I'm looking to make some extra income on the side but it's no longer my primary source of money

My job pays me well around $1000/month(for reference my rent is around $150)

All this time my reason for not starting my own business was "It's my parent's money and I don't really want to spend it". But it's been around 6 months since I started making money and I still haven't started a business. Really makes me wonder if it was all just an excuse to protect my ego.

 

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[Ninjakid]

If you wanna make money in web design/development, you need to have a website.

If you want people to pay you big bucks, you need actual proof that you're competent enough to be worth that money.

Look at what other web developers are doing, and ask yourself, "do I look at least as good as them?" If the answer is no, you gotta step your game up bro.

Delusional expectations will kill your game.

I was negotiating a contract with a business a few months ago, first just for copy, but we got into the topic of redoing the website since a lot of things were out of place. Like the search bar was covering the logo and shit. It was BRUTAL.

Dude told me he had a team of web developers already (like really? They obviously suck) but I could still do it if I thought I could do better. But he thought my price was too unreasonable (and it really wasn't!). But here's the hilarious part...

This guy had three websites for three different businesses, and he actually didn't even understand how bad the websites were! He didn't even know how many pages of copy he needed done, because the pages weren't even complete. I asked him to tell me what makes his business unique and he gave me some generic description that he literally just read off landing page.

This guy doesn't care about his own business, he just sees it as a money-making machine, which it will never be because he doesn't care. That kind of client won't invest in some actually decent work.

Anyways...

You have to be REALISTIC about what you can do. You have to have an aura of competence and ability. I can smell a killer and a kid who's trying to peddle some service hoping to make money a mile away.

BE A KILLER!!!