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Ask HN: Is there a way I can make $10,000 before the end of December?

35 points by fadelakin 13y ago

I want to earn $10,000 before the end of December. I'm a student and an app developer (iOS and Windows Phone). I took the fall semester off to do some more work but my apps aren't really making much money. My goal was to develop more apps which in turn would net me more money but I don't think it's a viable plan. I just want to make enough so I can get through school without any problems. That's how I settled on the 10K figure. What do you guys think I should do? I'm open to any and all suggestions.

smokestack 13y ago
That's only about $18/hour if you're working full time.
- fadelakin 13y ago
  Does that really matter? At least it's something.
  - foyle 13y ago
    He means you can make that much by working full time.
    - fadelakin 13y ago
      Oh. Sorry. I'm a bit tired and I'm a bit out of it. While I could make that much working full time, there are no jobs that pay that rate around here. Most jobs I've found around here pay minimum wage. The most I've found for someone like me pays $11.50/hr.
      - X4 13y ago
        $11,50? I am serious. You get 10Eur/h for cleaning floors in Germany. I can't believe that you'd get $11,40/h for coding an iOS App. No way! Even the cheapest company I know pays 50Eur/h for an iOS dev and they're currently valued between 120Eur/h and 200Eur/h here. I know some law students, who clean floors, because they don't want to fill their head with useless stuff, when they can get along with 80Eur a day and concentrate on studying instead of work.
nanomage 13y ago
You can develop apps on the iphone? Well, look at craigslist, freelancer websites and hustle hustle husetle. You can sell your ability to those with an idea who are posting. However, you will only be studying/schooling/working/looking for work. No GF/BF, not much social time. Be a freelancer, and the future is in your hands.
cstrat 13y ago
Back when I was at university I did a lot of work on rent-a-coder, now vWorker. Initially it was hard to win business, the first few jobs I did were worth almost nothing. After I did those smaller jobs and built some rep I found that local contractors (I am Australian) preferred to hire me over some of the others due to language difficulties. Ended up earning more than $10K from projects, however not in such a short timespan. In short, sell your skills and make sure to emphasise that you're a good communicator.
lsiebert 13y ago
How quickly can you throw together a website for a local business that lacks one? Say that you will set one up for a flat fee is they pay for Domain and hosting. Hundred bucks for a few hours right there. As for app sales, marketing is incredibly important in ios sales. How are people finding your app? Finally if you are going to school, reach out to alumni.
deleted 13y ago
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patio11 13y ago
Find businesses which require apps. Contract out your services in app development to them at e.g. $100 an hour or $4k a week. This gets you to $10k fairly reliably. You'll eventually want to raise that rate substantially as $100 is rather below what the market is currently paying for iOS developers, but that's a decent place to start. (This assumes that you're capable of delivering on a level of professionalism commensurate with that rate. Your code should actually work, you should respond to emails, you should not miss deadlines because "lol partied hard last night", etc.)
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  This seems like it might be based on the assumption that OP is in SF. What about a place like, say, Chicago? Is $100/hr still below market rate for iOS devs there? If so, well, I'll happily make you an iOS app for $120/hr. Wow. In fact, this is more than "Wow." Either patio11 lives in an alternate world, or I've completely missed the fact that devs have become that valuable outside of SF. I mean, we're talking about someone who hasn't even graduated uni yet. Nothing against undergrads at all -- they're some of the most productive devs -- it's just that the world tends to pay more for grads. Another question: how should one "find businesses which require apps"? Door to door? EDIT: The more I think about this, the more absurd this advice sounds. Patrick, would you give a more thorough overview of the steps necessary to accomplish what you're suggesting, from the point of view of someone with zero experience except with the technical and artistic aspects of delivering a product? (I.e. no experience with the social aspects of landing a gig like this.) >$100/hr is roughly nine times what a college student working fulltime can expect to get at an average job, so what you're suggesting is no small feat, especially for an undergrad. What kind of social tricks are involved to pull this off?
  - ohashi 13y ago
    I am based in DC, $100/hr isn't unreasonable at all if you can actually deliver results. You seem too focused on external factors like college student, average salary, etc. The real factors are how much value are you delivering for a company and how can you convince them you are the right person at the company to get the job.
webhat 13y ago
If you really want to make $10000 be stupid.* Take a simple and successful app and do it better and sell it for less than the other guy. Don't try to be smart, innovative, or creative and hope that it succeeds, just be better. The stupider and more successful the idea, the more chance you have to get your cash by being better. *@FAKEGRIMLOCK says it much better.
- X4 13y ago
  haha, yeah like the Samwer Brothers, they copy existing startups. http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-samwer-brothers-are-germany-s-titans-of-internet-entrepreneurs-a-833374.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-samwer-brot... To be honest, you probably won't make money with this until December.
hackingdreams 13y ago
How much money do you have now? Depending on your starting amount, the $10,000 number becomes more or less realistic. If you have $0, it's not very likely. Your best hope is to find a job and re-evaluate in a couple months. If you have $10,000, doubling it becomes more realistic, but not exceedingly so. Writing an app costs money (yeah, I know, it's amazing to think that you can't just do this shit for free!) and you still have to live while developing it. If you have $100,000, that's a 10% growth. Betting correctly on the stock market should be pretty straight forward in this market. If you have >$500,000, this is cakewalk. If there were a manual to life, it'd tell you that having money is the easiest, most reliable way to make more money. Social climbing is still extremely hard in our generation, but at the very least computers have made it easier for the intelligent and dedicated.
tagabek 13y ago
I am in nearly the same boat as you. I am a college student, who makes iPhone Apps, and I've just recently become a freelancer/consultant. Here's a tip. $10,000 might seem like A LOT now, but it is really just ($1,000 x 10 projects), ($2,000 x 5 projects), ($4,000 x 2.5 projects/weeks), etc. What I'm saying is that if you break it down, it isn't that much, and it becomes quite easily attainable in 2~3 months time. First off, look at patio11's comment in this thread, memorize it, and make it your new business mindset from now on. His blog woke me up to the reality of doing business (If you haven't, check it out:http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/blog/). Ok, now onto what what you really want to know - how specifically do you make $10,000 in a few months? 1st, have a specific goal and a desire. Check! 2nd, set up a business to do your freelancing through. I set up a sole proprietorship for $52. Now make a website. I used SquareSpace to set up an already-designed website that I modified just a bit, and they provide the whole website-in-a-box package for $10/month. Now set up personal Twitter & LinkedIn accounts if you haven't already. This whole process took me 30 minutes online. 3rd, find clients that are willing to pay you for your services. AHHHH! This is impossible! No one is going to pay for MY skills, right? VERY, VERY, VERY WRONG. You say that you've already made apps. You can already prove that you can make an app and put it in the App Store. You're way ahead of a lot of people. Make a list of 20 local businesses that might like to have an app. I'm talking about locally-owned restaurants, dental offices, ice cream stores, etc. Now, make an overall script of what you would say to them, and modify it slightly to fit the business. Call them up in the morning when you expect them to be less busy, and sell them on the idea that they want an app for their business. I know what you're thinking - UGH... COLD CALLS? REALLY? Well, they work, and they're a great way to get started! They are just the first step! Soon enough, you will never have to do it again! Oh and, things will go wrong. Don't let that stop you, because you'll be the one that is laughing when you have reached $15,000 instead of your originally planned $10k. Read patio11's example of an ideal pitch, as posted above. How would you convince e.g. a financial adviser that he urgently wants to have an iOS app written? That might start with "How much do you make on your average customer account every year?" "A few thousand dollars." "How often do you get to talk to them?" "Mostly commonly, once or twice a year." "Do they ever cancel saying 'I don't understand what I'm paying you for." "That's my #1 cause of losing clients." "Wouldn't it be better if you were on their home screen every day?" "YES."
korelhem 13y ago
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- bachback 13y ago
  ouch
- vldx 13y ago
  This is just ridiculous.
ffumarola 13y ago
Hey, reach out to me. I might be able to help. Do you have examples of iOS or Android apps you've made?
- ffumarola 13y ago
  iOS or Windows Phone

tptacek 13y ago

Chicago is not a wonderland where companies can procure high-quality iOS application development for a fraction of the going rate. If it was, we'd be the iOS app hub of the US.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
"The going rate" differs by location. Are you saying there are companies in Chicago willing to pay $100/hr to a lone-wolf iOS dev? It just seems like that kind of work would be farmed out to established players.
- ChristinaM 13y ago
  I haven't had clients in Chicago but I would be very surprised if that weren't the case. I've done remote dev work (mostly iOS) for clients in Canada, Portland, and Minneapolis that paid better than $100/hr without working hard to increase rates. The one client who made an initial hourly offer started at $100/hr and I negotiated up from there with little resistance. Remote gigs are a real possibility, even at $100/hr if you're a decent communicator and can get things done. I've had several clients within a day's drive that I've never met because it just wasn't necessary. It does help to be in a convenient time zone. Most clients I'll see once or twice a year. I've talked to several local companies looking for freelance mobile web devs for interesting projects lately. They all want solo independent devs since (1) they're small and built their companies on reputation and (2) they've had better experiences working one-on-one than with big firms in the past. They all have clients or partners that are large companies. Don't expect to be able to bill 40 hours a week or have no expenses though. If I were looking to make $10k quick, I'd cold call local web/marketing agencies and propose having them offer iOS app development to their clients. A lot of them are thinking about it but don't know how to get started.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Our org in Chicago has an iOS dev making ~$100K/year salary (+ benefits, etc). They get offers constantly for $100K-$130K/year. Our lead dev gets exec/manager level mobile offers for $150K-$170K/year several times a month. So not lone wolf consulting from what I've seen, but the money is definitely there in the mobile space. Feel free to come get coffee if you want more info; I'm in the West Loop off Halsted.
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    Cool, thanks for the offer! What's the best way to contact you?
- 27182818284 13y ago
  I think you can fetch something close to that in Nebraska even, but YOU CANNOT phrase it as $100/hr. The mindset doesn't work. You just need to do that math behind the scenes and give them the flat total of how many hours you think it will take, with some padding for yourself.

sireat 13y ago

While it is nice to see well written inspirational advice from Patrick, this particular advice reminds a bit of the advice from the $40 get rich quick book I read as a teenager a long time ago. The advice was: open a walk-by pizza restaurant in New York. The book went into a bit of detail on all the advantages this particular business entailed but skimped quite a bit on the downsides. Despite all the upbeat advice here you should be realistic, you will have to sell yourself pretty hard to achieve more than the going rate in your neck of woods. Personal experience, I worked on a 10k USD data mining project in a Eastern European country last year so 10k is doable even there. However, my take was 1k for maybe 2 months of weekend work. The hustler/rainmaker got most of the money, while some money went to a PhD brought in for prestige. While I could complain that I did 90% of the programming/dredging/analysis involved, I was under no illusion that I could procure the job myself. The amount of BS that was involved in procuring the job was beyond my tolerance level. Now some people can do both: handle corporate BS and do programming but I doubt it is true for most of us. TL:DR It takes more hustle than programming skill to get those $100/h gigs. Advice: If you want to be realistic, try to go 50/50 with a hustler, you are unlikely to get to $100 an hour within 4 months by yourself.

tagabek 13y ago
It is true that getting the client can be the "hardest" part, but I believe that is only in the beginning. What you really need to do is make local business owners believe that they A. Need an X SOFTWARE for their business immediately and B. You are the one that can and should provide it for them. If you're the one that convinces them that they need this software for their business, and you provide this service, they're going to immediately come to you. Don't think about it as getting gigs. This generally implies scanning through existing listings. Try to reach out to your community and hold that free (1-2)hour-long workshop on how (INSERT YOUR LINE OF WORK HERE) is increasing businesses revenue streams.
- sireat 13y ago
  I agree that the reach out to community approach can work, just doubtful it can work in the 4 month time frame before the end of this year. It takes a while to build up a reputation.