taprun

I think you may have forgotten an "r" in your URL. http://hackerparadise.org ?

BoxGal.com is currently available. I'm sure others are as well.

I found an available 6 letter domain name ( http://TapRun.com ) about a year and a half ago. I've found others since then...

My suggestion is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. It's a very, very quick read.

Go to an event for people in another field and ask people.

A "shortage of talent" is actually economic shorthand. The full phrase is "shortage of talent at the rate I'm willing to pay." You can always find a fantastic developer, if you're willing to pay more than the other guys.

That said, the hiring process is completely broken. I know barely literate programmers making bank, while exceptional programmers are just scraping by.

Perhaps I misunderstand your question, but doesn't the article say the source is on github? https://github.com/FogCreek/RoslynGenerator

I just wrote a bit of PHP that pulls from a MYSQL table.

It's not fancy, but I can do all sorts of custom stuff with it.

I would suggest picking one field - either security or usability. While you may actually be an expert in both, it will be easier to position yourself as an expert in one. This will make your marketing more straightforward.

Then, you'll have to figure out how to educate your potential customers. If they don't know they have a problem, you'll have to teach them. Where do they hang out (online and in person)? Can you teach them why they would need your services and how you can help? Perhaps with a presentation or a whitepaper?

I would think that if you want to work on challenging things as a freelancer, you'll have to specialize in a niche. Your expertise will allow you to make up for a lack of familiarity with a particular code base.

Anything that requires a lot of processing power and very low latency would be my suggestion.

My first thoughts would be video games and CAD.

Here's a list of some common revenue models: http://taprun.com/revenue/

There are all sorts of business models that work for cell phone games. Here are the three most common:

* Freemium - Get users then try to charge them money later

* Up front - Get paid by people, then provide them with a game

* Ad-based - Get users and then sell their attention to companies

The reason why freemium is so popular is that it makes sales much easier. Users can try a game with zero risk of spending money on something they don't like. For this reason users are more likely to download your game instead of a paid app. Once they get hooked, they are more likely to spend money. I would argue this is a good thing for users and for publishers. Users have reduced risk and publishers can get in front of more potential customers.

Fremium doesn't have to be pay-to-win or scammy. Depending upon your game, you can sell access to more levels, better AI, multiplayer support, new graphic tiles or other items that provide real value without being scammy. The original Doom worked like this... The first levels were free, but if you wanted to play the entire game, you had to pay up. The fact that the first part was free allowed it to spread like a virus and boosted its sales immeasurably.

Freemium can be applied to almost anything. I wrote a book and give away one chapter. Want the rest? Time to break open that wallet. It doesn't feel scammy at all. Folks can read the free chapter and get a feel for the type of content and quality that the rest of the book contains. Less risk for them, more money for me.

How about charging money for your product? You could either charge the providers of the services or the customers.

If you're looking for other models, I wrote descriptions of a baker's dozen of them here: http://taprun.com/revenue

It would probably be less questionable to take the money the firm would have donated and tie it into the creation of new functionality by the software's authors.

If the directors can't put a value on the work, you need to work with them in order to do so. If they don't know the value of a project, they'll never be able to figure out if it should be funded or not. If you can help them at this stage, your value to them will go up, and your opinion will be respected more than that of a "mere technician". You don't want to be the guy who wrote the switching algorithm. You want to be "the guy who saved the firm six million dollars." The latter looks much better on a consultant's resume. Also, the directors can pass your analysis along to their managers to show how well they manage their affairs.

Charging by value isn't simply about setting prices. It's about figuring out how to include items that might not cost you much money but provides extreme value to your customer. As an example, I worked for an organization where I bundled a specific type of graph into their software. Time for me to build: a few hours. Value to the customer: saved thousands of man-hours per year. That's a BIG savings that I could charge a lot for.

The key aspect of value pricing is that you will charge different amounts to different people for the exact same work. Why? The value a given piece of software will create will depend upon who is using it. Want to sell me a system to manage huge amounts of data? I wouldn't even pay a penny for it. Want to sell it to Google? They might spend a hundred million without a second thought.

I think that Sean Wes has a good worksheet for interviewing clients: http://seanwes.com/value-based-pricing/

As a shameless plug, I also wrote a book on how to price software http://TapRun.com/pricing

I keep a blog centered around a niche topic (the pricing and positioning of software applications). I created a backlog of 300+ ideas for posts, but rarely look at it.

Once I got into the habit of writing something every day, my posts became easier to write. The discipline I gained by writing a book on the same topic helped immensely.

It's extremely risky to go with low-bidders for blog content. You'll wind up with low quality articles that make your company appear sub par.

How much is a blog post worth? As with all things, it depends. That's like asking how much a car is worth. Are you buying a Ferrari or a Toyota? Do you want to create content for SEO or to interest potential customers? How much research is required for your articles? How original do you need your content to be?

A link to your site would allow us to provide more detail.

And I'm anticipating that someone will link Patrick's answer... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6717577

That's interesting! I would have predicted that "digital natives" would be the most likely to use ad blockers (thus not seeing the ads at all)...

The title is very misleading and an example of linkbait. It should be something like "Can Employers Request Traits That Older Folks Are Unlikely to Possess?"

If you're asking from a personal standpoint: I would imagine that you'd want to reduce your debt, cut your expenses and increase your personal liquidity.

Yes! I've seen screeners who state that they can't find any suitable PHP developers because none of the resumes also list HTML. This is probably a sign that companies could spend a bit more for screeners and wind up with staff worlds above those of their competitors.

Sometimes you can benefit in multiple ways. As davismwfl suggests, it might raise your profile. You could probably film it (or get them to film it) and stick the result on udemy to recoup your losses...

[Putting on my project manager's hat]: Visible progress toward achieving a goal that is important to you makes motivation easy!

* Pick a specific goal that you care about. It can be as simple as I will lose 10 pounds or I will write software that parses a specific data format.

* Create some milestones. Maybe I can't lose 10 pounds all at once, but I bet I can lose 1 pound. Make sure that these are visible.

* Chart your progress, so you can see how your previous work got you closer to your goal. Review this chart regularly.

I think the biggest mistake people make is not "building their brand." Create a presence online, create one in meatspace and get known as someone worth knowing.

For reference, I took some time off and wrote a book on a technical subject, created two big meetups and got hooked in with the local startup community. Now I go to local events and people are starting to actively seek me out.

You're in a tough spot. The more interest that you build in the series, the more likely that someone with more money and better connections will decide to take your idea and run with it. Further, it's not like you can simply start creating derivative works to demonstrate your abilities - you might get sued out of existence.

I'd suggest creating a website that talks about your plans, how you would approach the TV show making process. What are the types of things that you would do, what are some plot lines, how would you show the story's "card mechanic" visually? Build a community so that there is fan devotion not just to the idea, but to you and your implementation of it.

I don't think there is a need for another one. As you guessed, there's a pretty good reddit sub for that: http://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions

Make sure that you don't tip your hand. If they know that it's your name dot com, they're going to have significant pricing power (you can't get your name dot com anywhere else). If they think that it's just a tentative pen name dot com that you haven't started using yet, you have significant pricing power (you can just pick another name).

The site http://yclist.com/ has a list of YC companies and where they stand.

Revenue can't be taken at face value.

Sometimes sales attract customers that wouldn't have bought before (either the price was too high, or customers were unfamiliar with the product).

Sometimes sales simply pull demand from the future (folks who would have bought, but haven't gotten around to it yet). If you experience the former, great! If you experience the latter, then you're actually losing money.