Sorry for the top-post, and please don't be offended by the following...
Much as you would probably like to think it's a good business model,
bidding low for projects and then expecting other developers to help
you for even less is not sustainable. I appreciate your position but
you need to understand that freelance PHP developers charge what they
do because that's what the market will pay.
I've recently taken on 2 PHP contractors and even though there's only
20 GBP difference in their daily rates one is miles better than the
other, to the point where I'm having to check everything the slightly
cheaper one is doing and I've found a number of killer bugs that would
have caused major issues had they gone live. The point I'm making is
that you get what you pay for and you're kinda illustrating why.
Unfortunately the general market out there doesn't value quality over
"it works" so the gap between the excellent and the downright awful is
pretty small.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't be taking on work that either
you can't do or you can't afford to sub-contract. Appealing to the
community for cheap help is just not cricket!
"You wouldn't go broke on not getting such amounts" - every penny
counts when you're a freelancer, as does every minute. Some will be
able to afford to lose a few dollars here and there due to non-
payment, but others (in fact the ones likely to take up your offer if
you can find any) probably can't.
I hope you take this the way it's intended - as some friendly advice -
and not as an attack of any kind. I applaud anyone who's embarking on
a freelance career since it's a pretty risky route to take, but you
need to approach it in a sustainable way if it's going to be a
success. If you can make a success of freelancing you can do very well
out of it so I wish you the best of luck.
-Stut
--
http://stut.net/
On 19 Aug 2008, at 15:17, V S Rawat wrote:
On 8/19/2008 4:53 PM India Time, _metastable_ wrote:
There are many channels out there that would be beneficial to your
goals, e.g. wendo, ogone and the likes.
Please take your commercial goals there.
Oh, like ODesk?
I wouldn't be able to pay that kind of King's ransoms the developers
over there are charging.
I thought that if I look in help ngs where veterans are already
providing voluntary help, they might not mind if I manage to pay a
humble amount for their tips for correcting or even developing a
crucial cryptic part of my code.
Actually, I had seen, especially in Java groups, threads like:
http://groups.google.co.in/group/comp.lang.java.help/browse_thread/thread/7b610ded8e22098f/8d083f8ff374f4b0?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=paypal#8d083f8ff374f4b0
Email Java tutor needed! $20 each homework!
http://groups.google.co.in/group/comp.lang.java.gui/browse_thread/thread/afb2cca2c29d5b03/d0fe80666226af6f?hl=en&lnk=st&q=JAVA+PAYPAL#d0fe80666226af6f
get $10 through paypal upon finishing this small java prgram..1st
come 1st win
http://groups.google.co.in/group/comp.lang.java.help/browse_thread/thread/ed2007c157e55cde/7b34426e63f07520?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=paypal#7b34426e63f07520
Will Pay $50 for help on Java swing project
http://groups.google.co.in/group/comp.lang.java.help/browse_thread/thread/71baa9425c6f56ce/c597a93e0a526c0e?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=paypal#c597a93e0a526c0e
Please help me
In the last thread above, members helped a person, and then, this is
a part:
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.help
From: Andrew Thompson <SeeMySi...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:25:25 GMT
Subject: Re: Please help me
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:25:33 +0100, april wrote:
> I have just had a look at the sites listed but could not find
anywhere
> to dontate some cash. Do you have a paypal account and prehaps
then I
> could do it that way
Sure do,
<http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ >
the 'Make a Donation' button is hidden
over on the left, below the menu...
(Tah!)
--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology
--
> Oh yeah now I see it. Sorry its not going to be mega amounts of
money as
> I really can not afford it right now so please understand. Sorry I
can
> not afford more.
Make no apologies April, and thank you.
With the two donations I have received recently
(1 from a student in Ireland) I now have almost
half what the *huge* ads on my site have earned
over 4 months!
All the best with your new Java
enabled browser, April. Take care. :-)
--end
So, I thought that I might also utilize similar help against humble
payments.
No, it is not my school homework. I don't study - I mean, not any
more. :-)
I am a surviving dinosaur of DOS/GWBasic/ Pascal/ Fortran/ Cobol/
dBASEIII/ foxpro and unix days when windows and Linux were not born.
I am (was) a master of procedural languages but then my ratbrain
couldn't grasp 4GLs if you know that early 90s term.
I then learned HTML and bits of Perl, Java and Javascript, but I get
scared by their vastness and can do only elementary half page coding
in them.
I work by freelancing - bidding and getting jobs on net sites,
getting paid for them. My own areas are Translation, Transcription,
MS Office, Excel, HTML. But, nowadays nothing is working in
isolation. e.g., go to that site, extract 200 pages of data, only
this-this-this fields, save that in csv file and open that in excel,
do such and such processing on this and this field of the data and
arrange the results in such format, convert that to pdf and send the
pdf to me. whoosh!
Stumbling blocks:
- foxpro 2.6 has been rendered obsolete even by its makers. I had
never even looked into its Visual counterpart.
- perl is manageable, but PerlScript doesn't work in Firefox.
- PerlScript is working in ie, but greasemonkey ready scripts and
ff's wealth of extensions don't work in ie.
- I have been told that JavaScript is not able to save things on hdd.
so on. Wherever I start, something comes up that stumps me and I
loose another project.
I was surprised to see PHP becoming increasing popular for web
related work. Clients are mentioning php by name. I thought that I
could manage it with my Perl/ CGI bits of knowledge. I installed win
WAMP Server 2.0 and everything else is working fine but php refused
to work on my box. Even if it starts working, i wouldn't be able to
become a master of it overnight. I inquired about command line
processor or javascript like shell of php, but seems there are none.
Why not ask for unpaid help here?
Well, the usual culture in techy ng-s/ ml-s is NO-SPOONFEEDING. If I
ask questions here, members would surely help me but would ask me to
read such and such webpage or manual and tryout this and that
command. When the client is sitting on my head through the other end
of chat window threatening to cancel the project and even forfeit
expert guarantee amount committed by me, I can't say, wait, I am
learning.
I thought I could find some persons to help me against humble
payments. I could get some tips from them on cryptic parts of of
JavaScript, Perl, PHP, etc. that I can't yet manage. Then, I would
be able to do projects needing interfacing with these also. The
missing part of the puzzle.
I just needed one person - or 2 or 3 just because of timeline
differences, who could give me tips/ algorithms/ commands to develop
my code, and if I still can't get it working - to check my code and
tell the problem line point blank or may be correct it. Payment
would be small and made then and there - irrespective of whether or
I I get paid by my client in due course or not. In all probability,
due to repeated interactions with same persons, a periodic cycle
will get formed when I pay a variable or fixed retainership fee
weekly, etc.
And how much can I cheat you if I promise to pay for help and don't
pay you afterwards? $5? $10? $20? You wouldn't go broke on not
getting such amounts and i would loose my credibility and none of
you would help me on my next question and I stop getting further
project.
There are bigger projects also that I come to know of but I don't
touch them as I know I wouldn't be able to clinch them even with
help here. If the persons who would have helped me felt that they
can do such development, I could forward such projects to them as
such projects are of no use for me. Thus, my humble payments would
get partly supplemented by the earnings they would do through such
developments.
--
If the suggestion of help against payment is really so offending to
you guys, my sincere apologies.
Stijn
--
V
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