Mipi’s programming blog

A popular subject on the internet is: ” How can you become rich in front of computer” The answer is: “By working”.

The internet has the advantage of making the connections easier, but this doesn’t mean that thous connections will make money for you just like that. Like in the real world you will have to offer services to people that needs them in order to get revenue.

There is a long list of services you can offer like displaying advertising on your website, selling products online or working on different industries.

The particular industry I’ve chose was web programming. I don’t want to talk about the other things I’ve tried that where promising a lot of money with no work because I didn’t got anything. I’ve chose this because I had some kind of previous experience ( because I’ve made before a few web pages for myself with a good PHP background, one of them being a browser based game ).

First I didn’t knew about the existence of any freelance sites. I’ve just finished my high school & I was in need of money to… you know… buy a new computer… play better games.

Although I could use some money in plus this wasn’t the main reason. By working as a freelancer I was able to learn a lot of things & also get payed for what I was doing.

I’ve took my first project from rentacoder.com. My first bid was my first project. I’ve wrote him very nice that this will be my first project on rentacoder & that I don’t have any previous to support my knowledge. I’ve placed what I thought to be a lower bid amount & waited to see what is happening. In about 4 hours I’ve got an reply from the buyer asking me to make some good suggestions for his website. I’ve told him what can I do for him & next day I had my first real internet job.

Now why I’m telling that you have to work? This is why: Having no previous I had to bid as low as $80. I was stupefied when I’ve seen the other bids that were about -15 -20 $ below me. But maybe the offers in the bid message made the difference. For my first $80 I had to work hard about 4 days. In about a week I had the money into my account & the buyer satisfaction who took his time & wrote me a nice description that was really helpful at bringing me new projects. Beginning from my second project, beside the elaborate description I’ve also got a nice bonus to sustain it.

Looking back now to what I’ve earned is not much. The real gain was in my experience, as I’ve told you before. But good experience usually turns later into good money. Now I have a good portfolio to be able to get a real job in this industry.

In the next articles from this section I will try to make a walk through  some of my projects presenting you all the stages, from the first bid message to the moment I was giving a raiting to my buyer.