Hi,

I'm a new member. Does anybody know how to get started developing software via the internet. Most of the projects that I have seen are being let at $10 to $15 per hour. Being from the San Francisco Bay area, I can't compete with those prices. Does anyone have any ideas?

I charge $100/hr and have no shortage of leads. In this business you are selling yourself, not your pricing.

Thank you very much for your response. I was getting very discouraged, but it feels good to know that there is hope. But I am unsure as to how to begin. I have searched the various freelance sites (scriptlance, rentacoder, takeacoder, odesk, etc.). I find very few jobs that I feel compfortable bidding on. What do you look for? Where do you look? Any help you could give me would be greatly appreaciated.

Anyhow, thanks for the encouragement.

Hoppy

Forget those sites. The people looking to hire someone from there are looking at price only so you can't compete.

I don't look for jobs. Instead I (actually we) established ourselves as experts and good developers any way we could and eventually our reputation got us leads which got more more word of mouth which generates more leads.

Dear John,

I just noticed the links below the dotted line on your response. It looks like you took a job that you had done, turned it into a product and created a website to promote it. Then you hang around chatrooms and answer questions for people like me, always including a little ad for your website(s).

I think that this a brilliant idea. (Maybe you think it's just basic, but you are more sophisticated at this stuff than I).

I would like to ask you another question. How long did it take to start getting work from this technique?

Hoppy

It takes a while as you really need to be consistent to build a reputation. It really is part of a long term strategy rather then a quick method to get business. It also is a lot of work but when you break it down into about an hour a day, or less, it doesn't seem so bad and can add up quickly. Creating threads that are worthy of being stickied is always a great way to get extra attention.

Thank you very much for your help. It looks like I have a couple of months work ahead of me to create a product, a website to sell it on and all of the other associated stuff.

If I need to ask any other questions along the way, it would be really helpful if I could get in touch with you.

I am going to leave this thread open for a couple more days, just in case anyone else has any input they wish to share.

Hoppy

John is absolutely right. If you do good work that would eventually pay off. Stick to basics, spread the word out and you will get it one day. Good Luck

You can advertise yourself as a freelance programmer in your city offline, which could give you more leads.