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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 translate

by whack 6y ago

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.

ncputo 6y ago
Yesssss you can definitely make 1.5k/month with Fiverr and upwork. It might be a grind right now but it's possible! You can get in with companies pretty quick too if you're just a nice person that works hard and communicates.
neurostimulant 6y ago
I started my career 10 years ago doing exactly this (also from a 3rd world country). Within 3 months I reached 1.5k/mo while finishing my engineering degree. It wasn't that hard (not sure about now) since all you had to do is demonstrating that you're capable of completing the project in your bid. I did this by describing what kind of stack that I'll use, potential problems that will likely arise and how to address it, or even try to steer the project owner to use stack I'm more capable of by describing its benefits compared to their chosen stack (if they requires the project to be written with a specific language/framework). I imagine those freelancing sites is 10x more saturated now than 10 years ago, but perhaps it's still possible to reach 1.5k/mo in a few months. Like other people said, it's probably best to pick your niche to narrow down potential projects and reducing competition. I was mostly bidding on python projects back then (not as many python programmers back then and a gazillion of php programmers). After I got my degree, I emailed one of my past client that I'm now available for full time work and he connect me to someone that was looking for full time developer and the rest is history.

by whack 6y ago

ncputo 6y ago

Yesssss you can definitely make 1.5k/month with Fiverr and upwork. It might be a grind right now but it's possible! You can get in with companies pretty quick too if you're just a nice person that works hard and communicates.

neurostimulant 6y ago

I started my career 10 years ago doing exactly this (also from a 3rd world country). Within 3 months I reached 1.5k/mo while finishing my engineering degree. It wasn't that hard (not sure about now) since all you had to do is demonstrating that you're capable of completing the project in your bid. I did this by describing what kind of stack that I'll use, potential problems that will likely arise and how to address it, or even try to steer the project owner to use stack I'm more capable of by describing its benefits compared to their chosen stack (if they requires the project to be written with a specific language/framework). I imagine those freelancing sites is 10x more saturated now than 10 years ago, but perhaps it's still possible to reach 1.5k/mo in a few months. Like other people said, it's probably best to pick your niche to narrow down potential projects and reducing competition. I was mostly bidding on python projects back then (not as many python programmers back then and a gazillion of php programmers). After I got my degree, I emailed one of my past client that I'm now available for full time work and he connect me to someone that was looking for full time developer and the rest is history.