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.

Hello,

This will be my first post on my first blog. Because of this I would like to introduce myself. No, I will not reveal my name but I want to tell you some words about me.

First you should know that I am a Romanian student, currently studying in Cassino - Italy with an Erasmus Scholarship.

Back in Romania I’m studying two faculties: Robotics & Computer Science. More related to our blog subject is the Computer Science faculty on which I am in the second degree.

My first contact with programming language was at age of 11 when I’ve studied Q-basic for 1 semester. Also this was the time of my first income from scripting ( with the money I’ve got from 1 homework I was able to buy about 2 sodas, 2 less expensive sodas ) .

The moment in which I really got into programming world was at the beginning of high school. More than learning a programming language I’ve been learning programming technics and algorithms . The language I’ve been working with was C compiled with old Borland C++ DOS compiler.

For those of you who know both PHP & C is really not a mystery how I’ve switched from one language to another. Beside the thing that we are talking about two languages that have completely different uses, the similarities between the codes are obvious.

Now you know how I’ve got to know PHP. But why PHP & not another C like language?

First of all the friends & support I was able to get. Second because it was easier for me to find freelance jobs. I’ve started to work as a freelancer just after I’ve finished my high school. But I will talk about that in another post.

Now let’ s see what I want to share with you on this blog:

First there will be things I know about programming in general & web programming in special.

Second I would like to share with you my experience about freelance work & freelance websites.

I will close this post now with an excuse for my English witch I’m hoping that is at least understandable. If you ever have any observations to make about my English please feel free to speak.

In the next post I will speak about my freelance experience.

See you tomorrow.