I need a little amount of money to sustain myself while doing open-source and building my own product.<p>I imagine that finding a full-time job won't be hard. However, I have no idea where to approach this when it comes to short-term work. I have a lot of experience and I think I can be useful to a lot of teams, even in the short-term.<p>Do you have ideas on how I can approach this?<p>Update: I think either 2-4 week project or 2-3 hours a day for a longer period will work for me.
Increase your surface luck area.<p>Put this in your HN bio: "I'm available for short-term MacOS / React consulting for $100/hr. Contact me at: <email>"<p>Obviously, adapt this to whatever technology / price is good for you. The point is: make it clear what you offer and at what price.<p>Do the same for every other place: GitHub bio, Twitter bio.<p>Put this as a banner bar on your website.<p>Add a page on your website where you sell yourself i.e. describe your relevant achievements.<p>Put a link to that page in your popular open source repos.<p>Every month HN has "who wants to be hired thread". Post there. Research all other freelance websites (upwork, fiverr, codementor, <a href="https://remoteok.com/" rel="nofollow">https://remoteok.com/</a> and many others) and post there if relevant.<p>Continue refining how to "sell yourself" i.e. how best to describe your skills and achievements to convince people to hire you.<p>You wrote open source libraries.<p>Write a blog post about each library, promote it on relevant reddit etc. forums, and at the bottom add "I'm available for contract work" and a link to that page on your website where you sell yourself.<p>This is now a process: write useful, technical blog posts, promote them at relevant social forums, add a link to your contracting offer at the bottom.
Codementor. You jump on brief calls to help people out. Often it can turn into short-term projects like you're seeking. You can typically charge better rates than you'll see on sites like Upwork, and the clients/work tends to be higher quality.
I feel this. As someone who has ADHD I really need to come up with some kind of enterprise where I can just build something and sell it, without the meetings and time estimates and deadlines which are always tripping me up. Something where I can work at my own pace and my own schedule. Otherwise the sword of Damocles is always over my head- forget one meeting, give a bad estimate- and I have no income. Maybe software, maybe I'll just make furniture.
Daniel Vassalo writes about this extensively. He talks about building a portfolio of small bets. Lots of great resources to parse through.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/dvassallo?s=21&t=tGgSR5Ycxu1oYZLJQA-mPg" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dvassallo?s=21&t=tGgSR5Ycxu1oYZLJQA-mPg</a>
You could try contract work. The contract house will handle finding the jobs and you could do short contracts as needed to earn enough to sustain you for a while while you build your own products.
Get a job for a year or do a six month contract full-time. Save as much as you can, then use that money to bootstrap your side project into your main source of income.
I've been struggling with this myself since the 90s. Had high hopes for independent income streams like eBay and Etsy that didn't pan out.<p>I'd like to expand the list of income sources where the worker has 100% control over their own schedule and is not beholden to a client, does anyone know of more?<p>* Donating plasma (upwards of $1000 per month due to pandemic)<p>* Uber/Lyft
For self-sustenance, I would consider making actual working clones of phone, pc or pad apps. I would choose a bunch of apps that have high download counts and less than stellar scores, do something simple, like keeping calories, reading lists, bluetooth coms, keeping track of people, locations, etc. Or maybe simple puzzle games. Use easing and buy stock images / music for higher impact. Then I would spend a week or two replicating it, set it up for ads or in-app purchases of things that require server upkeep or unique features, and that's it. Increase apps to increase passive income.
You should reach out to any local recruiting firms you have any contact with first and tell them precisely that you're looking for projects that are short term, that way you can get paid reasonable wages, and you save your money so you can go weeks or months without pay. Especially if you're skilled, do not undersell yourself!
A great option can be teaching. Many coding bootcamps offer part-time courses and/or part-time corporate training classes, and nowadays most of them are online.