Carlos On Web :: Going techie without going broke

I Love Money

But… Isn’t the love of money the root of all evil?

Sorry folks, I beg to disagree. I just disproved it.

I love money. There is no denying it. Contrary to what has been embedded in most people’s subconscious, money (or the love of it) is not the root of all evil. It’s the lack of money that is the culprit.

Imagine Haiti without money pouring into the island after the disastrous earthquake. It would be a terrible world indeed.

I Love Time

I love time — lots and lots of it. I’m talking about free time.

Free time allows me to stroll around any place I want while the rest of the my friends are sitting on their office chair waiting for 5:00 PM to tick so they could punch the time card and so that they could stroll around like I do after a long day’s work.

Free time allows me to watch my kid growing right before my eyes. Unlike a remote control dad, this activity is so important to me that I am willing to give up all the business deals in the world just to have time playing with my little monkey.

Time and Money Dilemma

But time and money are not always best of friends like man and dog.

Let me explain it this way.

How do you make money?

For most of us, we make money by exchanging our time and skills for it. In other words, trading time for money.

A programmer makes money by coding, analyzing business processes, and following instructions from the development manager. An accountant makes money by scrutinizing financial information and making intelligible conclusions about it for business decision making. One of the ways a lawyer makes money is by playing the devil’s advocate, finding faults, and dissecting the Law to protect the client from potential punishment.

In all of the examples above, a person is trading time for money. For most people, this is the default business model, so to speak, they follow to earn money. In many cases this is fine – you get paid for what you work for.

And, ideally, this leads to…

• More work means more money
• More projects mean more money
• More clients mean more money

More money means more happiness, right?

Wrong!

Here’s why…

• More work means more money, but less time spent on other activities like:
  • a cup of good coffee with a friend
  • a good physical exercise
  • relaxation and meditation to remove the stress out
  • creative thinking
  • just plain do nothing
• More projects mean more money, but there is a limit on the number of projects you can handle.
• More clients mean more money, but clients are people — and people can mean problems. You can only entertain a few of them before your sanity explodes.

Of course, the less time you spend working means less money in the bank account.

This is the consequence of trading time for money. Since time is limited (a mere 24 hours in a day), it is not always a good idea to exchange your time for money. Exchanging time for money is bad for you. And it limits your happiness up to a certain point.

Time-Money Solution

Is there a way around this problem?

Of course there is.

First, you need to understand that time is more important than money. As a matter of fact, time is more valuable than money.

Money can be made from ZERO, but lost time can never be recovered.

In the next article, I’ll show you some of ways money can be made without trading time for it.

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This article is a little late (as usual) for the simple message I want to convey. To the new graduates, let me echo the special greetings my university friend Don said to me upon my graduation: “Welcome To The World Of The Unemployed.”

I don’t have the time to check the statistics, but it appears to me that the local unemployment rate in the Philippines is on the rise since I bade farewell from the university.

As a new graduate, should you be worried? After school, what now?

To job or not to job? That is the question (which is obviously in wrong grammar).

I mentioned I don’t have time to check the statistics. What I really mean is, I couldn’t care less what the statistics are saying and neither should you. I care more about you, my dear fresh graduate readers. (If you know a fresh graduate, please pass this on.) I believe it will be to your advantage if you scrap the employment statistics altogether and focus instead on how to make it in the real world.

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If the title of this article catches your attention, you are not alone. I’ve had countless visitors who dropped an email or two asking for my sources of clients and projects. Perhaps they wanted to venture into freelance programming and curious about how I stayed after all these times. Indeed, anyone whoever wanted to become a freelance programmer should consider the question of finding clients very seriously.

Though it did not worry me a bit where to find my clients in the beginning of my venture, I honestly did a considerable amount of time thinking about it during the rough times.

Is there a good source of legitimate projects that can be done remotely? Is it better to choose clients based abroad than locally in the Philippines?

There are literally thousands of websites scattered throughout the Web offering jobs and outsourcing opportunities that could match all the skill-set you can possibly think of. Your excellent search skills can be a useful asset if you have the time to try and see what’s out there. In fact, I should suggest that you do that. But if you are already bugged down and wanted to narrow down your search with due consideration on the experience of real people, the following sources might prove to be a handy reference.

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Like it or not, your success as a professional (be it software development, network administration, or anything) depends on how the marketplace accepts the value that you bring into the table. That is, the more value you give that the customers are willing to accept in exchange for something of value, the more successful you become. Increasing your value in the marketplace, therefore, is a necessary ingredient for success in your chosen field. And a sure way to guarantee failure is to contribute nothing of value to others.

I personally know of there are three potent weapons available to any professional who is serious about increasing his value in the marketplace. If you want to DO more, HAVE more and BE more… well, READ more of the following… Read complete article »

Before I start throwing a few suggestions on how to jumpstart your freelance programming career, let me share bit of my own experience on how I started and became a freelance programmer.

The End is the Beginning is the End

Allow me to begin at the end. Circa April 2004.

The American founder of the Web Development team that I helped organize decided to call it quits… and it’s final. With about 13 months of existence, we are finally closing shop. All four Filipino programmers are forced to ask the inevitable question: What will you do next? It’s a question we keep asking each other. If you happen to be involved in such a situation, you would naturally ponder on that question, too.

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