Looking for urgent career/freelance advice
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I'm in a very unfortunate situation, and I'm hoping to hear some concrete advice to help me choose a direction for my programming career. Here's a summary of where I am in life: I just finished a Computer Science degree at a small college in my small hometown. My parents were very unsuccessful in life, and can't offer me real-world advice besides "Get any job you can!" I managed to graduate without retaining much information, and I completely failed to prepare for my life ahead. Now that I'm out of school, I can clearly see how unprepared I am for working with people in a corporate environment. I'm also very reluctant to move somewhere else to find work because 1) I basically already own my own small dream home in a decent neighborhood, and 2) my mother is getting old and won't be able to support herself much longer. She doesn't have any retirement savings, and I'm the only one left in her life to support her. So, now I'm trying to grow up real fast and make some responsible decisions. I feel like my only hope is to find a way to make money remotely online. I would love to do freelance work, but I can't afford to travel to meet with clients, and I'm afraid I won't understand the projects I'm lucky enough to get. Alternatively, I'm considering developing my own software/apps and marketing them myself. I'm creative enough to design novel and useful software, and I'm not afraid to handle the marketing and business aspects, but I don't know what "running a business" really involves. I want to make it clear that I'm not looking for an easy way out. And I don't need to make loads of money to maintain my lifestyle. We've been supporting ourselves on minimum wage income for years. I'm just looking for a feasible plan to support a modest life without risking poverty. I would welcome any realistic ideas/perspectives about my situation, or a better website to post my questions. Thank you for anything you can offer.
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I'm in a very unfortunate situation, and I'm hoping to hear some concrete advice to help me choose a direction for my programming career. Here's a summary of where I am in life: I just finished a Computer Science degree at a small college in my small hometown. My parents were very unsuccessful in life, and can't offer me real-world advice besides "Get any job you can!" I managed to graduate without retaining much information, and I completely failed to prepare for my life ahead. Now that I'm out of school, I can clearly see how unprepared I am for working with people in a corporate environment. I'm also very reluctant to move somewhere else to find work because 1) I basically already own my own small dream home in a decent neighborhood, and 2) my mother is getting old and won't be able to support herself much longer. She doesn't have any retirement savings, and I'm the only one left in her life to support her. So, now I'm trying to grow up real fast and make some responsible decisions. I feel like my only hope is to find a way to make money remotely online. I would love to do freelance work, but I can't afford to travel to meet with clients, and I'm afraid I won't understand the projects I'm lucky enough to get. Alternatively, I'm considering developing my own software/apps and marketing them myself. I'm creative enough to design novel and useful software, and I'm not afraid to handle the marketing and business aspects, but I don't know what "running a business" really involves. I want to make it clear that I'm not looking for an easy way out. And I don't need to make loads of money to maintain my lifestyle. We've been supporting ourselves on minimum wage income for years. I'm just looking for a feasible plan to support a modest life without risking poverty. I would welcome any realistic ideas/perspectives about my situation, or a better website to post my questions. Thank you for anything you can offer.
Hi Conway, after reading your story, I understood that you need a job near by your home town or else you want to do a freelancing job. Well, let me explain you one thing here as you said, you are just a graduate passed out. Freelancing on your own is a little difficult. Freelancing is the thing that people will do who has got a good experience. I am not going to discourage you in this point. I am telling what a freelancing is. Even if you said to some one that you want to do freelancing, the first question that comes from them is "How many years of IT experience do you have?" So trying for a own freelancing is really a tough at this point of time. rather I suggest you can go work under some one who does freelancing. I wanted to know - Where do you stay? Why can't you go for a job search as you are fresher - No one is going to ask you to write a program on how a nuclear reactor works? My real suggestion is go and search a good job - once you got a good job you can bring your mom to your living place. Yes, I would agree you have own a good home. But people who works need to travel from one place to another place. The scenario works for an experienced freelancer as they will have a lot of projects in hand and they can work from home (in their own decent home). But as you are a fresher and I think you opinion on living in your village and asking that you wanted to do or wanted to achieve seems to be not a right track that your are in actually. There are many freelancing sites available in internet. Just do a simple google search - freelancing websites list. That's it you will find a hundred's of pages giving a list of freelancing web sites. Here are the some of the top most list 1. Elance 2. oDesk 3. Freelancer.com 4. Guru.com 5. PeoplePerHour.com 6. freelancermap.com 7. Fiverv many many are there... only thing we must have enough knowledge on how to bid on projects and how to mange the projects once it is assigned. Might be delivering the projects in right time or some other key factors. If you need any more help, feel free to ask us.
Regards, Ganesh
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I'm in a very unfortunate situation, and I'm hoping to hear some concrete advice to help me choose a direction for my programming career. Here's a summary of where I am in life: I just finished a Computer Science degree at a small college in my small hometown. My parents were very unsuccessful in life, and can't offer me real-world advice besides "Get any job you can!" I managed to graduate without retaining much information, and I completely failed to prepare for my life ahead. Now that I'm out of school, I can clearly see how unprepared I am for working with people in a corporate environment. I'm also very reluctant to move somewhere else to find work because 1) I basically already own my own small dream home in a decent neighborhood, and 2) my mother is getting old and won't be able to support herself much longer. She doesn't have any retirement savings, and I'm the only one left in her life to support her. So, now I'm trying to grow up real fast and make some responsible decisions. I feel like my only hope is to find a way to make money remotely online. I would love to do freelance work, but I can't afford to travel to meet with clients, and I'm afraid I won't understand the projects I'm lucky enough to get. Alternatively, I'm considering developing my own software/apps and marketing them myself. I'm creative enough to design novel and useful software, and I'm not afraid to handle the marketing and business aspects, but I don't know what "running a business" really involves. I want to make it clear that I'm not looking for an easy way out. And I don't need to make loads of money to maintain my lifestyle. We've been supporting ourselves on minimum wage income for years. I'm just looking for a feasible plan to support a modest life without risking poverty. I would welcome any realistic ideas/perspectives about my situation, or a better website to post my questions. Thank you for anything you can offer.
Hey i'm sorry to hear about your current situation. Have you tried http://en.yeeply.com/? It's a freelance website that allows you pick and chose what projects you want to work on (can make a free acount) so it's good if you've not got much money :-D hope that helps, all the best