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Contracting! Many people, most of them non-contractors or people who have limited contracting experience will tell you contracting is risky. If you are good it'

Contracting! Many people, most of them non-contractors or people who have limited contracting experience will tell you contracting is risky. If you are good it's actually much more secure than getting a "real" job, once you get going. You can't really get fired and as long as you are able to juggle a few clients at a time you will always have plenty of work. If you can consistently deliver results faster than the average deskjocky you can earn a lot of money too.

tajen 11y ago
I second contracting. You are responsible for your own skills, but you can start very young, and you usually get better skills than permanently employed people. Then only drawback is the lack of social ties with your employer, but nowadays employers don't really care for employees, and having more money than a permanent employee will give you more latitude.
- bentcorner 11y ago
  I'm completely unfamiliar with this - does this mean working with a staffing agency, or working on your own (freelancing?)?
  - jerguismi 11y ago
    Contracting is essentially freelancing. Only minor differences, contractors maybe make bigger contracts and work maybe longer periods of time per one client. It is up to you if you want to call yourself contractor or freelancer :)
    - pikachu_is_cool 11y ago
      How exactly do you start contracting? For instance I've made a couple of decently popular jailbreak iOS apps, which is nice passive income, and a good niche, but I don't really know where to find clients... through friends, on a website, or what?
      - wingerlang 11y ago
        I looked for a job on normal websites, happened upon one which was a contract job, got it, and since then I've been fed several projects over the span of 1.5/2 years of increasing sizes. Coincidentally, I am also a jailbreak "app" dev (tweaks only) and I did that almost full time for over a year, almost 1.5 I think. It is indeed a nice little niche. Hard to make real money though, unless you get something really hyped up.
      - zzalpha 11y ago
        Three ways I'm personally aware of: 1. Respond to public RFPs. Most government contracts are bid this way, as are many private contracts. Be prepared to be undercut by the competition. It's pretty cutthroat. 2. Agencies. I know a number of successful contractors who work through headhunting agencies. Downside is the overhead they add to the contract. 3. Networking networking networking. In the case of the latter, in the beginning it'll be networking through your peers. Join user groups, industry trade groups, local entrepreneurial meetups, that sort of thing. And make sure you stay in touch with your colleagues... you'll never know when some company they're working for puts a project out for tender. Once you have a few contracts under your belt, if you're good they'll lead to more thanks to referrals, and that can pretty quickly snowball. If you go this path the best advice you can probably get isn't what you'd expect: be prepared to say no! The quickest way to fail as a contractor is to take on too much work too quickly. At the beginning folks are usually paranoid and take on anything that comes their way, but trust me, that way lies madness! Edit: As an aside, it's worth noting there's different types of contracting, and you should decide what, exactly, you want to do. A few examples I can think of: 1. Discrete project contracts. You bid to produce a solution, after which you offer some sort of support or maintenance contract. You probably give up the IP in this case, as it's work-for-hire. 2. Contract positions. You're brought in as labour on a new or existing project. Oftentimes specialized skills are valuable, here, as you're often brought in to fill a gap in the existing skillset, whether that's project management, design or architecture experience, or specific technical skills. 3. Really a variant of the first, and is what I think of as contract-to-product. You bid on an initial contract to build a product, after which you provide follow-up services to expand that product on some regular basis. This could be done by billing out on a line item basis, or via a retainer of some kind. It's possible in some cases to retain rights to the IP for a job like this. So think carefully about what you want to do. Each model has pros and cons and may effect how you bid, what skills you develop, etc.

tajen 11y ago

I second contracting. You are responsible for your own skills, but you can start very young, and you usually get better skills than permanently employed people. Then only drawback is the lack of social ties with your employer, but nowadays employers don't really care for employees, and having more money than a permanent employee will give you more latitude.

bentcorner 11y ago
I'm completely unfamiliar with this - does this mean working with a staffing agency, or working on your own (freelancing?)?
- jerguismi 11y ago
  Contracting is essentially freelancing. Only minor differences, contractors maybe make bigger contracts and work maybe longer periods of time per one client. It is up to you if you want to call yourself contractor or freelancer :)
  - pikachu_is_cool 11y ago
    How exactly do you start contracting? For instance I've made a couple of decently popular jailbreak iOS apps, which is nice passive income, and a good niche, but I don't really know where to find clients... through friends, on a website, or what?
    - wingerlang 11y ago
      I looked for a job on normal websites, happened upon one which was a contract job, got it, and since then I've been fed several projects over the span of 1.5/2 years of increasing sizes. Coincidentally, I am also a jailbreak "app" dev (tweaks only) and I did that almost full time for over a year, almost 1.5 I think. It is indeed a nice little niche. Hard to make real money though, unless you get something really hyped up.
    - zzalpha 11y ago
      Three ways I'm personally aware of: 1. Respond to public RFPs. Most government contracts are bid this way, as are many private contracts. Be prepared to be undercut by the competition. It's pretty cutthroat. 2. Agencies. I know a number of successful contractors who work through headhunting agencies. Downside is the overhead they add to the contract. 3. Networking networking networking. In the case of the latter, in the beginning it'll be networking through your peers. Join user groups, industry trade groups, local entrepreneurial meetups, that sort of thing. And make sure you stay in touch with your colleagues... you'll never know when some company they're working for puts a project out for tender. Once you have a few contracts under your belt, if you're good they'll lead to more thanks to referrals, and that can pretty quickly snowball. If you go this path the best advice you can probably get isn't what you'd expect: be prepared to say no! The quickest way to fail as a contractor is to take on too much work too quickly. At the beginning folks are usually paranoid and take on anything that comes their way, but trust me, that way lies madness! Edit: As an aside, it's worth noting there's different types of contracting, and you should decide what, exactly, you want to do. A few examples I can think of: 1. Discrete project contracts. You bid to produce a solution, after which you offer some sort of support or maintenance contract. You probably give up the IP in this case, as it's work-for-hire. 2. Contract positions. You're brought in as labour on a new or existing project. Oftentimes specialized skills are valuable, here, as you're often brought in to fill a gap in the existing skillset, whether that's project management, design or architecture experience, or specific technical skills. 3. Really a variant of the first, and is what I think of as contract-to-product. You bid on an initial contract to build a product, after which you provide follow-up services to expand that product on some regular basis. This could be done by billing out on a line item basis, or via a retainer of some kind. It's possible in some cases to retain rights to the IP for a job like this. So think carefully about what you want to do. Each model has pros and cons and may effect how you bid, what skills you develop, etc.