taprun

I'd suggest that fairness is irrelevant. Businesses will demand as much as they can. If great candidates stop applying to them because of their ridiculous demands, they will either have to reduce their demands or hire only mediocre candidates. If great candidates keep applying, they will continue to be jerks.

This is simply a result of the way economics works. Voting with your feet is the best way to stop it.

I can say that there is little enthusiasm from good developers around here. Event promoters are still milking non-profits, universities and local governments for more backing, but the good developers have moved on.

I would imagine that the people who are most interested in Apple products would already own Apple hardware.

I have a hard time understanding why anyone would be upset by this.

In summary: If it's a low value item that doesn't offer much in the way of customization, it's often best to publish your prices to reduce the difficulty of sales.

As more customization comes into play and larger amounts of value are delivered, you'll want to think more and more about hiding prices so that they can be adjusted on a per-user basis.

I wrote a blog post about that a while ago... http://taprun.com/articles/should-consultants-hide-their-pri...

Figure out which blogs you like the most and then start contacting the owners? It won't work for the huge sites, but it will probably work for smaller ones.

I know it's bad karma, but I really hope this was due to some kind of problem with their certificates...

@vonnik I didn't argue that coding challenges were bad. I'm arguing that it's improper for businesses to offload their hiring costs onto programmers. Any business can offer a hiring challenge, but it should be prepared to pay programmers to take them.

As you say, hiring someone is like getting married. So too is getting hired by someone. If I asked you (the recruiter) to write a 1,000 word essay (tailored to each applicant) on why you'd be a great employer, would you do it? Please be honest. I suspect that you'd suddenly see that your time has significant value.

They're just trying to move the cost of identifying talent from their bank account to yours. You can do the reverse.

Find someone in the company (preferably someone you know). Ask him if he wants a recruitment bonus from his firm. Then send him your resume. He gets money for sending an email on your behalf, and you don't have to take these silly tests. MBAs and HR folk don't have to jump through all of these hoops to get hired. Why should programmers?

I had the urge to write a book on how to price software ( http://TapRun.com/pricing ). Writing it was somewhat fun. Editing it was unadulterated torture.

I stuck it on my website, and it's selling (though much slower than I'd like). Still, it's something that will bring in passive income going forward, and now I can claim to be an expert in something.

1 year ago: http://imgur.com/2TxgOhr

5 years ago: http://imgur.com/jliGkON

Can't you simply get a permanent/alternative number from Google Voice? https://www.google.com/voice

I'm honestly not seeing this. Perhaps it's where I live, but I have a double major in econ/computer science and graduate degrees in each of those fields, and I've rarely seen any job ads that wanted expertise in both...

You're facing the classic problem of a two sided market! The site won't be valuable to seekers without lots of venues and won't be valuable to venues without lots of seekers.

I'd suggest starting with a narrow niche (like music venues in Boston). Make it free for seekers AND free for venues. When you get more of each, you can offer premium features to venues like highlighting their results, better rankings and more information.

The "rule" that you're thinking of is Conway's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Don't get overly technical. Many speakers feel like they have to show every technical detail in order to prove their worth. It's more effective and helpful to focus on concepts and applications rather than details.

The type of project will depend greatly upon the type of work that you'd like to perform. While a novel AI package might be best for some folks, a pretty web page might be better for others.

That said, with two years of experience, I'd think it more important to meet others in your field. A friend who can get you past HR is more valuable than another line on a resume.

Here are a few things which come to mind when looking at your pricing:

* Your pro package is too cheap. If you're in the DevOps market space, I'm willing to bet that 99.99% of your potential customers would be as willing to spend $10 per month as $1 per month. If you can demonstrate a savings of one man-hour of labor per month, you could probably charge $100/month without too much difficulty. * Your pro package is too expensive. As a recent guest to your site, the free and the pro plans look very similar in terms of benefits. Why should I go to the trouble of whipping out a credit card when I can be lazy and just use the free plan that looks almost as good? My guess is that you have a bunch of freeloaders who will never convert to paid either because they are cheap or they don't need any additional service. * It's not clear what the benefit of your system is to your users. On the front page of your site, you should have a clear explanation of how a customer's life would be better if they gave money to you. You're assuming that your entire audience not only knows what IFTTT is, but you're also creating a dependency on IFTTT to explain the benefits of your own product.

As a first shot, I'd try to think of the types of users who would benefit from using your product.

You could tier by many different characteristics - response time, monitors, types of reactions, monitoring intervals - even access to https. If you can break down your potential customer groups by willingness and ability to pay, you'll have a better idea as to which characteristic(s) should change from tier to tier.

I have a free chapter up on customer value that you might help - http://taprun.com/pricing

Ask you champion the following questions:

* How much money will the company lose if the project is significantly late / cancelled?

* Who at the company will have the most egg on his face if the project is late / cancelled?

* How much competition do you have from other vendors?

* How risk averse are they (would they pay more for fixed-rate payment?)

As an added bonus, you also get money sooner (pulling purchases forward).

The defining characteristics of your ideal customers doesn't have to include size. Think about an expert in embedded programming. A big company like Intel could use his skills, but so could a small electronics startup. Yet neither a big office supply store nor a tiny supermarket would be interested in his skills at all.

I'd suggest thinking about the types of problems that you can solve. The closer to profit streams the better. Is there a common thread that you like to address? The narrower your focus, the more you can charge and the easier it will be to figure out how to market yourself.

Maybe your tagline is "I rescue software development projects that are failing." Maybe you could be even more specific "I rescue software projects that involve financials and are failing due to uncertain requirements."

Focus on what pain you solve first, then look to see who has that pain.

In other news, United and Orbitz are about to learn of the Streisand Effect[0]...

[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Read up on Conway's Law[0], and think about dividing your project into two semi-independent portions (one for each side of the team.) I worked at a company with two locations in different time zones and keeping everyone informed of everything would have been a nightmare.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

I always wonder if these "female only" conferences, awards and events are beneficial for women.

Many folks might (mistakenly) see them as an admission that women can't hack it on a level playing field. Such thoughts would only serve to harden their chauvinistic mental models and cause gender discrimination to be more (rather than less) likely in the future.

I would like a more powerful search.

Without knowing more about your site, it's hard to say. My first suggestion would be to start collecting email addresses and sound out interesting jobs from sponsoring recruiters.

I created a free book of revenue models that might help you think about the possibilities - http://TapRun.com/revenue

The way to think big is to think small. You can't go head to head against Amazon all at once. You need to pick a very small area and specialize.

Can you be the best site for selling pewter figurines, plumbing supplies or bowling equipment? I think you can!

By niching down you can develop a reputation, have a custom-tailored search and navigation setup, etc. As you start getting more customers and income, you can broaden your offerings.

For instance pewter figures -> fantasy art -> fantasy books -> board games.

Amazon started with books before it started selling everything else. You could try the exact same strategy.

I find it hard to believe that no one would figure out how to game the system with shill buyers, once commissions moved above 100%. Could you point such a program out? My google skills have failed me.

I built my own. It's very handy because I can make my blog do all sorts of customized things very easily. Plus, I'm a tinkerer at heart.

I may be reading too much into your question, but it sounds like your existing customer base is too small to support your development activities.

Have you thought about seeking out a trade association and selling them the rights for their members to use your software? You may be able to grow your customer base while reducing your transaction costs.

My field of expertise is software pricing, so feel free to contact me!

People will download it if and only if:

1) They find your app 2) They want your app

Posting on relevant message boards, forums, twitter and the like well help with #1. For #2, you have to frame your description and talking points to the pain point that your app addresses.

#2 will help you figure out where to post and how to describe you app. What is it that you've built?