Ask HN: How do I reach making $1-1.5k/mo in 13 months?

[noddly]

I'm a dev with almost no experience in a 3rd world country. Considering the COVID situation, In the worst case scenario I'll be without a job for a while. I have finances to manage for (probably) a year and a month or two.

I want to ask what are the ways with good probability of making ~ $1-1.5/mo (enough to live and still have considerable remaining in my situation)

I'm asking for ideas because the popular ideas are out of question:

- Domsetic Freelancing/Consulting does not have much scope, SMB don't seem to be doing well so site-dev work for them also isn't viable

- Making software for companies and govt. here isn't much of an option either, there's corruption and they don't particularly care about having a $99/mo solution when there are people willing to work for that rate

- More of a opinion, but overseas freelancing opportunities aren't gonna hire a newbie and fiverr is a race to bottom.

I'd appreciate any advice on how to proceed, any problem you think is a opporutnity to have a solution for or just your experience from another economic depression.

Meta: Started coding 3.5 years ago and probably have enough under my belt to try multiple projects over this duration. Made a new account as I don't want to link this to my real identity. I'm not looking for job offers out of sympathy. This is just considering the worst case scenario, and I want to have something to fall back to if it turns out to be the case.

[3pt14159]

What I've seen that has worked in the past is this:

Pick an open source project that is in a language that is respectable and commit to contributing to it for three or four months. Full time. Try to make sure that your written English is clear and professional in things like PRs.

Try to keep your code as clean and as well tested and linted as possible. Once the core team gets to know you a bit you'll be able to reach out for introductions to people hiring for remote jobs that you just wouldn't have had access to before.

I've seen people make $500k a year doing this. Just make sure that you choose wisely on the language and project. If you want to do frontend then it's probably going to be a project in TypeScript or JavaScript, but if you want to do backend then there are a lot of projects in tougher languages like Rust. Python isn't a bad choice either, even though it is easy to learn. Google has a Python style guide that is pretty good so look it up.

If I knew you were good at Python and you were asking for $1.5k a month I would hire you and laugh all the way to the bank. Set your aim hirer than what you need to survive.

[latenightcoding]

This is bad advice for someone who has only been coding for 3 years (according to OP).

People who can make $500k/year through connections they make contributing to open source projects could most likely just apply to a FAANG company directly.

It is way more common to see brilliant developers make $0 from open source projects.

[rodrigodlu]

This is nice way to sum it up.

Let me say what what not to do.

Context: 10 year developer in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro. Mostly Ruby on Rails (6 years), now Python (1 year).

I've dedicated my entire career for the companies and projects I worked for.

So I didn't built a profile, or strong connections.

The only thing right I got is financial reserves. So I quit from a interim CTO position (previous I was a Tech Leader), with 18 people below me, due to BURNOUT.

The only thing I got dedicating full time to one basket at time is:

1. financial reserves, that here in my country is enough for some months of food and shelter, but is less than that value you said in US Dollars. 2. Extreme BURNOUT. I'm 80% recovered after two months.

Right now I'm doing some online courses in DataCamp and Real Python. It's easy to stay focused.

Tried to start working contributing on FOSS and Tech Blogs, building some reputation, but I got worse some weeks ago, got back to these algorithmic online courses.

$ 1.5k / month for me is food and shelter right now.

Companies here demanding Spark certifications are offering this for late full and initial senior positions (I'm trying to go to Data Engineering field, because I love data).

Even big companies here are more picky than this, by not returning calls, emails, etc. 3 people from a big co. here called me, having multiple positions open right now, but no response (remember I have no perceivable reputation or connections, except a CompSci degree in a reputable Uni here).

So if you are a junior, let me say it: Build profile and reputation. Seek for good people to follow and be heard. Don't put everything in one company or project. I'm trying this right now.

Big COs. in developing countries are picky anyways. You'll need to spend a lot of energy to receive US$ 3k/month tops (it's the 80th percentile).

Try different. 10 years later you'll be much better than me.

[brainless]

I am from India and this is how I started my career about 14 years back. I used to contribute bits and pieces to Drupal and other open source projects. Drupal was really new in India but also like globally.

I got my biggest clients (all over the world) from there, then got into Google SoC, contributed to Drupal Google GData plugin. Made lots of money (through consulting)*, lost all in bootstrapping, rest is history.

[snide]

I actually think this is excellent advice right now. I would add the caveat that I would target contributing to OS software that is maintained by a large company, not an individual. There are lots of them floating around.

This is by far the best way to get recognized at those companies that are hiring. I will admit it's a long sell, but it has fairly predictable results if you're steady with your contributions.

As a former college drop-out that made it into the industry this is the route I would have taken were I joining the workforce today when I was younger. Great way to learn on something real and get your foot in the door.

Note too this is possible for designers as well. There are lots of design libs floating around and contributions to those repos is so rare it's very easy to get stand out.

[langitbiru]

This is correct. One has done it. He needed 4 months to join Gitlab from the day when he started contributing to Gitlab.

https://medium.com/@shinya_55783/how-i-joined-gitlab-and-wen...

I heard from my friends that because of pandemic, Gitlab is focusing on outbound recruiting. So I don't know whether the way still works or not in Gitlab.

But I concur that contributing to opensource is one of the best way to get a high-paying job.

I recommend these opensource projects: React, Vue, Angular, Typescript (because everyone is crazy about JS). If you don't fancy JS, pick Rust, Go, Deno (Deno is written in Rust), Python, Kubernetes, Flutter.

[localhost]

+1. I found my most recent hire at Microsoft this way. She was the top performer on my team and continues to do excellent work at the company. Also it’s important to choose your project wisely as well. I wasn’t looking to hire anyone in particular. The recommendation came out of a casual conversation with the creator of the open source project.

[starpilot]

This just seems impossible. Any nontrivial open source project with a decent amount of stars (i.e. something that will give OP visibility) is impenetrable for a noob. I don't know why people keep recommending this as a way to break into software dev. It will take a couple months just to setup a testing environment AND get familiarity with the codebase where you can actually start modifying it. Then you need to identify an issue and hope it'll pass muster with the maintainers who have a bazillion years of experience.

Can you name a single example project on Github where you think a Python programmer with 2-3 years experience could contribute?

[tiborsaas]

> I've seen people make $500k a year doing this.

That even crazy in California onsite level and you've seen that in remote?

I liked the part about positioning in your comment, it does matter a lot.

[cancerSpreads]

I wish someone told me this sooner..

Instead people told me to do personal projects.

Sure they are impressive, but I can't get an interview.

[jfkebwjsbx]

Jobs paying 500k a year are very rare. You need to be a top programmer and you need luck.

It is like recommending to be an elite athlete.

[kthartic]

How likely is it that one will get a job at the end of this? "Three or four months. Full time." is a hell of a commitment for a, what sounds like, 'maybe someone will notice you, and maybe they're hiring'.

[downerending]

> If I knew you were good at Python and you were asking for $1.5k a month I would hire you and laugh all the way to the bank.

One way to avoid exploitation like this is to try to develop a number of offers simultaneously. Go in with the plan of getting a couple of offers early, and then let them twist in the wind while you develop better ones. Having an offer is good leverage for getting a better offer from another place without seeming "greedy". (Be courteous and humble, of course, or at least fake it.)

Also, the FAANGs seem to recruit endlessly, even when they're not really hiring. Good place for practice interviews, even if you don't care to work there. My offer from one got me a lot more money elsewhere.

[ericmcer]

If his goal is to guarantee a reasonable (actually very low) developer salary this feels like bad advice. There is no guarantee he will get hired, no backup plan if the project does not hire him, and he could very well walk away with nothing.

If your goal is to get a job just look at trends in job boards (probably very skewed towards web/mobile/data science), figure out which area you like/excel in and hone in on that. Keep iterating on your resume, upping your skill set, and learning from interview failures. Remember: selling yourself and your skill set is more important than actual ability. That is something you can really only hone with practice and repeated interviews.

[foxbarrington]

I second this. I regularly hire remote devs who can prove themselves with react or node for $2500/mo

[NicoJuicy]

I wouldn't recommend this method personally though, only a small amount of people can achieve it.

To give an alternative way:

Find a successfull expensive software product in a country that isn't in the same language as yours.

Ask to translate it and if you can sell the product in your country. Acting as a middleman.

Start selling, get the commission.

In my experience, I've seen this work more than the one i'm replying too. And I think it's unknown in big countries, eg. The US

[xondono]

This sounds like a “follow your dream” pitch.

Great for the survivors, bad for 99.99% that did not make it. I’d be curious to know how many people tried that got nothing for their effort.

[ravioli_fog]

Just wanting to add support for this strategy.

As I mentioned in another similar post awhile back[0] I did an in person version of this and have seen it first hand from those who were online.

I've worked with a bunch of people at this point who primarily were connected by a shared language or project and relationships that developed online.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21167473

[Blackstone4]

Many companies will not hire outside of certain countries i.e. US, UK....you may need to setup a corporate entity i.e. a Delaware LLC and work through a contract.

[admax88q]

This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice."

Might I suggest people stop giving advice if they haven't actually done it themselves? Just spewing what you think should work, or what you think you've seen people do could be super harmful to this person's career. Let's hear some first hand stories of what worked, not second/third/imaginary hard stories of what people think should work having never been in this situation.

[dgellow]

I would even add: if they haven’t done it themselves deliberately and multiple times.

Survivorship bias and “after the fact rationalization“ are both way too common in those discussions.

[Hitton]

"This is terrible advice." No exceptions.

[exolymph]

> This thread is great, every suggestion has a reply that says "This is terrible advice."

That's good! Someone smart and driven will inhale every reply and pull out common tidbits for experimentation.

[nurettin]

@noddly I have some actionable advice. You are in an excellent spot.

week 1, 2 maybe 3: search for popular android applications that have low ratings that you can implement, sort them whichever way you prefer, do some wireframes and plan your first project. Do not spend less than 3 weeks. Do not spend more.

Week 4: This is the most important week. Figure out the tech you will be using. Make lots of demos projects, fail a bunch of times, set up libraries, APIs, accounts, integrations, link them to your project, whatever you need to get this to work. You have to know what you are doing before starting the project.

month 2, 3: implement a very simple frontend and a backend for that project. Cut corners on features, but make sure it doesn't crash. Test, test, test. Plan ahead. When a feature is done, do not look back. Do not spend less than 2 months. Do not spend more. Monetize, that's why we are here. Free to download, but put 1-2 features inside the app that can be purchased via google play. Make them $10 each.

month 3 week 1, 2: Automate deployment on server side, deploy on google play, send to friends, go on reddit, HN, itch.io, spread the word. Your goal is to get at least 20 customers a month. So one person a day. Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case), you need 2,000 people to see it every day. Google play will do most of the work for you.

Start the next project. Hopefully the first project will start getting traction.

Repeat this 3-4 times. Let your previous project's ratings and money motivate you. Things will accumulate over time.

Things don't work? No problem. Now you have four apps on the market to show to your next employer and a bunch of new experience.

[theblackcat1002]

This is actually what I did, but with web application and services. I tried app development in the one of my first few projects but finally gave up for web apps because it allows faster trial and error ( mainly I can push changes in UI and UX faster to a wider audience ). My take away is that stay away from "hot" topics ( news, game app ) unless you have a solid background because you need a really polish product to compete.

[exolymph]

Good advice IMO, but I want to nitpick something: "Assuming you did something that has a conversion rate of 1/100 (worst case)"

The worst case is making something terrible that no one wants, despite all that effort. And it is definitely possible. (Don't let that hold you back though, anyone reading this! Failure is the best way to learn, because it sucks so much.)

[volkk]

> Things don't work? No problem

i think that OP should also continue applying constantly for remote jobs in US while he's doing the aforementioned. if he spends 13 months writing android apps that go nowhere (which is an extremely high probability of that happening), he'll basically be no better off monetarily than before.

[nihil75]

If you actually did this you'd know that:

A. Things break. Especially MVPs. You can't just park it and move to the next project.

B. Nothing just grows on its own. It takes constant work to market and promote your app. It can be the most amazing thing ever and still get no traffic because you failed promoting it.

[anaxag0ras]

As someone in a similar situation to OP, I really appreciate this advice. Thanks.

[tbran]

Some business-y ideas:

1) Build an affiliate site. Some of the older posts on /r/juststart [0] are helpful.

2) Organize information and sell it. See the stuff made by Pieter Levels [1] or BuiltWith [2]. I just put together LotsofOpps [3] (which is just bunch of information on online/offline ways to make money). There is lots of info out there that will be interesting to someone if you can find the right angle.

3) Unbundle Craigslist [4]. Craigslist is terrible for some things. I'm working on BuiltRigs [5].

4) Unbundle Zapier [6]. A great example is BannerBear [7].

None of these things are particularly easy. Marketing is the hard part, but it's most important to actually build something and release it quickly.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/juststart/

[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio

[2] https://builtwith.com/

[3] https://www.lotsofopps.com/

[4] https://thegongshow.tumblr.com/post/345941486/the-spawn-of-c...

[5] https://www.builtrigs.com/

[6] https://kamerontanseli.ghost.io/first-it-was-craiglist-next-...

[7] https://bannerbear.com/

[Gustomaximus]

My view is coming from someone who hires people last few years.

1) People hate on Freelancer sites, but get on them and and build a profile. If you are good it will show in time. Expect to work for peanuts at the beginning - consider it advertising.

2) Don't lie about what you can do. Always do a good job. I've tried a bunch of people from poorer countries and those seem to be the 2 main issues. Dont have a mentality of cutting corners.

3) Build stuff hired or not. I watch guys blossom from jr to mid/snr after work and work. You learn by doing. If your not working, work anyway. Pick a business, and build something that would be good for them. Contact them and see if you can sell it cheap. But keep building and getting better. This is a long term game. You might pick up a 1 decent client a year, but 5 years from now you will be flooded type deal.

Good luck - I think many of have the fear of what might be if this economy truly tanks.

[jdhawk]

Possibly an unpopular opinion on Freelancing work, but generally avoid anything that is highly saturated. Become a very deep expert in something older or niche.

These can lead to opportunities to maintain older software, or work on very specific projects. I did well updating and maintaining ancient Microsoft Access databases for small and medium size businesses who relied on them for day to day operations.

I'm currently utilizing several contractors who specialize in single products, and know them like the back of their hand (Lucine/ElasticSearch for actual full text search, not just elk stack)

There are TONS of "Full Stack" developers out there, so trying to work in that environment until you have a solid client base is, like you said, a race to the bottom.

On the local SMB side, I never told clients I was a Software Developer. I was a problem solver who could use technology when appropriate. Ask some local companies or SMB employees what the most painful part of their day happens to be. Maybe its something you can solve with some out of the box open source, a repurposed desktop as an SMB Server, or a little software development project. These things turn into recurring revenue as you save the companies money and time.

[rubber_duck]

> I'm a dev with almost no experience

> Started coding 3.5 years ago and probably have enough under my belt to try multiple projects over this duration

This isn't enough information to go on, 3.5 years of programming could mean you've built your own game engine and a CMS from scratch in an attempt to do some project of yours, or it could mean you've been watching random programming courses sporadicly in hopes of landing a higher paying job eventually. (What third world country has median income of 1500$/month anyway ?)

Going off on what this sounds (because you didn't provide the info above) it seems like you aren't even close to an independent developer/freelancer but you're starting the discussion by determining your expected income.

IMO start with anything where you see you have potential to progress at any price point - if you actually have technical skills it shouldn't take you long to reach the level that matches them and if you don't it will give you time to learn.

[notRobot]

> What third world country has median income of 1500$/month anyway?

Many of them: https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/median-income-by...

[rmsaksida]

Don't bother with domestic freelancing. Chances are you will be worked to death and struggle to even get paid. Software engineers are rarely taken seriously in developing economies. Focus on overseas freelancing.

Start small and gradually increase your rate. You probably won't get big projects or a nice pay rate in the beginning. It's fine, in the long term things will work out. You will build a reputation over time.

Impress people with the quality of your work. Even if you are working on a small issue for a low amount, go the extra mile. Write stellar code and work long hours to deliver it quickly. Your effort will pay off, as clients will recommend you to others.

Communicate. I can't stress this enough. A big problem in outsourcing is that it's hard to find engineers who are good communicators. Never disappear, update your clients often, don't be afraid to show up in calls, write detailed answers. This makes a huge difference.

In your free time, study. Practice. Become a better engineer. Don't limit yourself to technologies you are comfortable with. Learn something new every day.

When applying for a freelance gig, take everything I've said above into account. Write a detailed proposal that makes it clear you understand the problem at hand and are more than qualified to solve it. If possible, attach a code sample that demonstrates how you'd tackle the problem. Don't forget to mention you are available for a chat whenever and respond quickly if you get an answer.

[eaxix]

Don't ask for $1.5k/mo. No one will think of you as valuable if that's what you ask for. People who do pay you that much will treat you like shit and are not the kind of people you want to work with.

The problem is you're referring to yourself as a newbie. I don't know where you're from, but generally in America that would be seen as lack of confidence. Don't be humble. You can learn on the job. Working from home you can easily work 12 hour days if things take you longer than an experinced developer.

Look for companies you'd like to work with. If you're fine with startups which can be generally more approchable I'd look on AngelList. Email the founder or CTO. Talk to them about their problems. Try to be genuinely helpful and understanding. If they have job openings talk about how you can help them. Put everything you did on your CV. Upload your projects on GitHub.

You can absolutely do this, but first you need to change your mindset.

[whack]

You say you don't want to use Fiverr because "fiverr is a race to bottom". But your goal is to make $1,500/month. If you work just 25 hours/week, that translates to $15/hour. If $1.5k is truly your goal, then Fiverr is the perfect platform for you.

Platforms like Fiverr and upwork get a lot of hate from the HN crowd, precisely because their expectations are to make $50-100+ per hour. And that's much much harder to do on Fiverr because you're competing against people like you who are charging $15/hour. Their frustration is your opportunity.

Once you've grown your skills and have more financial stability, you can start branching out into other career models. But as a newbie with low salary expectations, don't be afraid to do unglamorous grunt work. It will give you experience, build up your reputation, grow your skills, and most importantly, pay rent.

[blizkreeg]

Your best bet is going to be freelancing/software dev contracting. There are many platforms other than Upwork and Fiverr. If you're on LinkedIn, post it to your network that you're looking for some consulting work. Talk about what you can build - focus on outcomes (how you can help clients deliver stuff). Join Slack communities focused around your skills. Find any community you can join and keep an eye out for work.

Even in a "third world country" (fwiw I don't like that term), you can easily get $25-40/h doing freelancing for US/Europe based clients. At $30/h, you only need to freelance 50h a month to make $1.5K. It is very doable.

My personal 2c is ignore all the other advice you're getting in this thread (some of it is outrageously impractical and divorced from reality) and focus on finding freelance work.

NOTE: I'm talking from experience (though I'm in the US). Heck, I'll send some work your way if you're good at your stack. Send me an email (in my bio).

[drorco]

As someone who has been hiring a lot of freelance engineers for web dev projects, here are my tips assuming you'd like to check that path and assuming you are still not very experienced:

1. Only take projects you're confident you could ace. Customers would often not tolerate work that isn't accurate, not built according to best practices and is not delivered on time.

2. NEVER fail your client. Assuming the clients is honest and not someone looking to abuse you, if you've committed to a project you must complete it on time and deliver something great. If you can't make it one time, let the client know ASAP. If you can't get the right quality, let the client know ASAP. The client may ask to cancel the deal and get the money back but your reputation will not suffer as much as if you'd waste any more of their time by being late or delivering low quality deliverable.

3. Never submit your work without THOROUGHLY TESTING IT. I see way too many junior engineers saying "I'm done, check it out" only to find out whatever they build easily breaks the moment we start playing with it. CHECK YOUR SHIT before you deliver it or else your client will lose trust in you.

Even if your first few projects turn out to be not that great, if you'll learn from your mistakes and push through, you should be able to maintain clients who will be working with you for the long-term.

The amounts of money you're looking for are a non-issue for many companies.

[ednc]

If you are a good dev, with a good work ethic and some hustle this won't be that hard.

Although the "almost no experience" and "Started coding 3.5 years ago" aren't very congruent - you should really clarify that.

Here are two options for you:

1. partner with someone and develop a SaaS product. There are thousands of "business" people with no tech experience who have ideas and are looking for a technical partner. But spend a lot of time doing due diligence and make sure they really have done the market research, have customers lined up, and really know the space well. From my personal experience, this usually doesn't happen - they have an idea, get excited about it and want to find someone to work for free and build it on speculation. So be really careful here. BUT if you find the right person, this could be an amazing opportunity for you.

2. As others have said, work on sites like Upwork, and start building a portfolio. At $6.25 / hour (your $1k month goal) this is pretty low risk for the customer. Start with small projects you know you can knock out quickly - get the positive reviews and feedback, and raise your rates accordingly.

I'd be willing to help you with either #1 or #2 - get in touch if you are interested.

[fipar]

Since you mention having finances to manage for some time, I can share that in my personal experience, when I lost my job amid a regional financial crisis, I focused my efforts on an open source project (something I built, I didn't join an existing one, though at first I did have former coworkers hack on it with me). I did it to stay busy (I found back then that it's important to stay busy and maintain a routine when you're out of work) and improve my skills, but as a side-effect, it got me a contractor offer from a remote company that found my project useful (it was a set of ha scripts for mysql, this was 2002, before there were proper ha tools for this database) and "hired" me using the project as resume.

I'm not saying it's a sure path to getting income, but at the worst case, you'll be left with something to show and some programming experience too.

[grwthckrmstr]

I'm probably biased, but you can build a Shopify app and have a very, very high chance at earning $1k or $1.5k per month within 12 months.

Here's a list of ideas that I researched last year, if it helps.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hnpcl1VAlPC9MuFvvsl2...

If you do decide to go this path, I've written a guide from my experience that might help you get things off the ground.

https://www.preetamnath.com/blog/shopify-micro-saas-growth

Whichever path you choose, all the very best!

[goatherders]

Learn to write well. You can make 1k-1.5k/month starting next month if you can author good blog posts for businesses. Writing content, like coding, is something where the time investment cannot be "hacked." For a 1200 word blog post someone has to sit at the computer and actually write the 1200 words. That takes time. In many cases there is no content writer on staff and someone has to do the work.

I'd say 90% of the posts you read by a company CEO, CTO, or COO are in fact written by someone else and at least half the time in those cases they were written by someone that doesn't even work there. My first professional writing gig was for a German industrial paint company entering the US market. I earned $50 for a 600 word post and wrote them 3 posts per day. Related: I nearly failed chemistry in high school and know nothing about paint.

Until about a year ago I had been blogging for others for close to a decade. 4 or 5 years ago I surmised that I probably had someone in the neighborhood of 4 million words out there on the internet, mostly applying to subjects I have no training in. I just like to write and people will pay for that. I've easily made $400-$1000/month writing posts for businesses as I have a beer in the evening and my wife makes dinner.

Businesses of all types will pay between $500 and $1000 for a well written, well researched blog post between 800 and 2000 words. Can you create a technical whitepaper or even an eBook/lead magnet with citations and some science in it? That STARTS at $2000.

That means companies (like mine) that have those opps are more than happy to farm them out to someone else for a few hundred bucks. You can easily command a dime per word if you are reliable and write with quality. In fact, I don't have $1k of budget for you/anyone right now but I'd be glad to pay a dime a word starting Monday for someone to start pumping out all the posts for my business that I've been meaning to write but - wait for it -simply cannot find the time to prioritize the work.

THe content creation/professional blogging space is still full of opportunity and based on the short post you have here it looks like your English is just fine.

"So where do I find the work?" Craigslist - tons of opps, tons of competition Fiverr Blogmutt and similar Content co-op sites Cold approach - send me an email I'll send you the exact instructions for doing this.

Good luck.

[hrishios]

It'd be hard to say without more information. Third world country is a wide and shifting definition, and it's the most important aspect of your question. Couple of general points:

1. A large number of countries have agencies that will aggregate freelancers and take on large jobs. I'm not suggesting large players in the size of TCS or SAP, but smaller shops that hire out devs. It's a good place to start to get contacts into companies you'd like to work at, then move to a direct position there. Most countries make anti-poaching clauses practically unenforceable, especially if the candidate is the one approaching the company.

2. This is higher risk higher reward, but building micro-B2C/SaaS for a different market then launching on sites like Product hunt have the opportunity to bring in revenue. This is only if you're cut out for it.

Can't say much more without details, but I wish you luck in your search!

[rukshn]

I'm a doctor from a third word country and we make around ~$1.2k per month.

Imagine training to become a doctor and being a doctor with no family life and making ~1.2k per month?

If I can make around 2-3k per month I would quit being a doctor and do that job any day.

And someone from a third world country I can totally relate and understand your situation. The politics and corruption has rotten the country to the core.

If you would like to connect I'm open for taking. Hit me up if you are interested on taking and maybe brainstorming something.

Good luck

[graeme]

> More of a opinion, but overseas freelancing opportunities aren't gonna hire a newbie

Everyone on upwork is new at some point. You do a few jobs, do the, well, get reviews for reliability, then you can seek better stuff.

$1000 a month at $10/hr = 100 hours, which is a bit less than 25 hours a week.

Your long run rate would trend much higher, I’m just considering the very initial rate when you’re building a reputation and a client base. I’m sure you can get at least $10 an hour with your skillset, even if only doing random upwork jobs.

If you can get $20/hr, then the hours needed cut by half. Others have more programming specific advice, but wanted to lay out some of the economics of upwork. And I did hire newbies when I hired from there.

[napolux]

This is what I'll do, I've personally tried some of these (not the onlyfans account :P) and despite people will tell that it won't work, it will, somehow.

* Create info websites and put banners/affiliation there. Target a specific niche where you have some knowledge, try to write at leats 15/20 articles for 2k words per article, optimize a bit for SEO and taget the eu/usa market, there are plenty of guides out there. After some months if you're lucky you can make 100/200€ per website, with not much effort. * Sell stuff online. Is your country famous for some specific thing? Are you able to create templates, plugins, etc? Sell them online using gumroad or something similar. Create a landing page and include gumroad, that's it. Avoid marketplaces, they're overcrowded * Try to write for some tech blogs, they pay peanuts, but it's ok if you can't find anything else. * Do you have the guts to open an onlyfans porn account? That can be an emergency solution. * Scrape websites and sell interesting data. Like I don't know, a list of all the shops of a specific category in the state of Illinois for 5$, always on your website using stripe, gumroad, etc...

Many small activities can at the end of the month ammass a decent amount of money.