4 ms·

Not meant to steal your thread, but any advice on picking up good contract work? I'm in the exact opposite situation you're in.

• beachstartup 10y ago
  start hitting the phones, buddy. there's no secret trick to getting work, it's called sales.
  • derefr 10y ago
    Better phrasing: how do you pick up contracting work if you have absolutely no connections? I'm not a particularly social person: I mostly just like staying home and working on coding projects in my off-hours. I didn't made friends or "expand my network" at my last few jobs; I just showed up, did work, and went home. People always say "do contracting to save up money if you want to do a startup", but I have no idea how to get off the ground. I certainly have a lot of skills, but I'm not sure who I could possibly sell them to. Is this when I just start cold-calling? I get the sense that nobody on HN is ever really bothering with inbound marketing for contracting services; I constantly see "programming talent is a seller's market" and "just use your network", but never anything about running ads for your services or anything.
    • beachstartup 10y ago
      here's how i did it: start responding to job ads and offer contracting services instead. local or remote. it requires being social and talking to people. if you can't do this, just get a normal job, dude. you're barking up the wrong tree. nobody just sits around and gets contracts handed to them. anyone who tells you that is bullshitting you.
      • derefr 10y ago
        Oh, I'm not saying I can't be social. I'm just saying that I wasn't in the past—because of some wrongheaded assumptions—and so don't have a network to build off of.