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Ask HN: How to earn $400 per month?

11 points by icemelt8 ↗ HN
Hi everyone, I am a regular reader of HackerNews. I am from Karachi, Pakistan, a third world country. HN lets me feel to be a part of the main tech world, which is very exciting.

I am a developer by heart, with lots of skills in all areas, mobile, desktop, web etc. I have friends who are good at design.

My dilemma is that I need $400 per month to spend a solid life, since I left my day job to take part in a startup incubation program; which pays just $200 per month and since I'll have to live out of city, $50 will be spent on rent and food.

I am willing to do anything, build anything, can someone guide me how do I start something that earns me exactly $400 per month? Thank you for reading.

12 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 30.5 ms ] thread
tgflynn
If you're a skilled developer you can easily make that much freelancing on elance.com.
thatusertwo
Not sure if this is the answer you are looking for, but you could build 1 Wordpress site a month for a North American client and likely make more money than that.
mkelley
Where do you reliably find the client?
a3camero
Look on Craigslist and Kijiji in North American cities and reach out to people looking for websites. Charge people $500-1000. Repeat monthly.
mmahemoff
Good developers can charge $20/hr or more on oDesk.

Looking at your profile, there's no link. I'd suggest linking to your homepage and generally maintaining an active profile on at least Twitter and GitHub, and preferably some personal projects of the kind of thing you want to be paid to build. Anything like that will stand out when contract providers are looking to hire, given that self-reported work history is dubious.

canterburry
I also endorse oDesk or elance. I frequently find help there and have spent $400 many times over...so I know you can make at least that on even a small project.

The trick is how to make it every month. On these sites, your reputation will either help you or kill your business.

andyswan
Like others said, use odesk or elance to grab initial clients, then move them over to something like voomly for subscription-based payments to support them via email, etc.
factorialboy
Don't underplay yourself. Become demonstrably good at what you do and freelance with hourly rates.

Start with charging ~$30 per hour and keep increasing as you feel more confident.

You can make much more than $400 per month.

dutchbrit
What are your skills programming language wise, experience etc...
icemelt8
Thank you all for the replies, I guess what I learnt that freelancing is the way to go. I also learnt about Voomly, nice thing.

I always thought that if I could make my own Android or iOS app I could make that much too.

zoltar92
Email avi@trustable.com we can discuss