Plus the money is good, no?

I wish I could find more interesting contracts, but I am pretty much pigeonholed into Java Web Applications.

Today I finally received the "Collective Intelligence" book in the mail, it is so much fun (I always wanted to do things like that). Perhaps if I focus my projects on doing stuff like that, I could acquire different kinds of contracts. So far most of my own projects are also just "normal" web applications, because I try to make money. Mistake? I believe in the "do what you love and you will be successful" mantra, but in reality I still tend to make compromises with the projects I choose (because of the money scare).

It all has to do with risk profile -- how much risk are you comfortable with? You always hear these stories about founders who made it work just running on credit cards and family loans until they took off. But what happens if you don't take off? You can only max out your cards and family loans every so often. So there's short-term risk like "let's live on noodles and saltines for the next six months" and then there's long-term risk like "I'm going to go bankrupt, lose my house, and my wife is going to leave me". If you're single without a lot of commitments, go for more risk and chase your dream. But remember that even if you get your dream, life is always about compromise.

But if you decide to go to some kind of hourly-rate consulting for a while, take my advice and stretch your skills some. Instead of just Java Web apps, be a team lead for project, or an architect. I think as nerd we focus on the technical aspects of a project, but there are all kinds of good business lessons in there that can help you with your startup, if you go looking for them. YMMV

Now how is that different than being a cofounder? I got paid more, and I was able to move on to other contracts without a lot of fuss.

But most of the time, selling yourself by the hour (or day or project) sucks. You're always making somebody else's dream come true instead of your own. Having said that, money is a good thing! And over time you can get better and better at your skills. I guess there is a difference between honing your skills doing stuff for other people and honing your skills doing stuff for yourself. Sure, I'd much rather work for myself, but there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Another (potentially big) problem is IP ownership, if your paying client tries to claim that the work on your own project is really theirs.

The problem is that if you're writing Web 2.0 apps then really _anything_ could be considered close to anything else. Writing a 3-D chat program for E-Bayers? Any business with a web site might could use a chat program, and if you have access to their site and their plans, who's to say what parts of your ideas you're getting from them and what parts you're coming up with yourself?

On the flip side I am always telling my self that each hour I spend on consulting, is one that I am not spending on my company.

For now, we are trying to think of ways to increase our day one revenue for our company so that we can stop consulting sooner.

We have considered other options too like offering a sliding pay rate depending on the number of hours per week we are consulting. At less than 20 hours per week, we might charge 50$ per hour, where hours over 20, we might charge 150$ for those impatient customers. Hours would be pre-booked. We have yet to try it, but WE ARE STRONGLY considering it.

Something else we have thought about, is having a consulting division to manage our time, our rate, and to increase our marketability as a group. As a company we might be able to bill out of the gate at 150$ an hour, vs. as an individual we might be able to bill at 50-75$ per hour. This would also give us a way to charge for custom features.

Some thoughts on our side, now that we did not get into YC, we need to figure out how to stick around long enough to turn a profit.

We also got an offer from a local marketing company, that is interested in what we have, but we do not yet know how to productize what we have for them and licence it.

This way I get the best of both worlds. Try it.

Edit: anyway, good advice, I will try it ;-)

I have noticed since I have been 100% on my startup I have not only worked harder, Ive worked smarter. Save up from consulting and hit the startup....

Full Time

Smaller projects also come through recommendations, but not the big fish - most of them also have a policy to not work with individuals.

i have always found bennifit in having a lot of things going on, especially in community building. people tend to want to help those that are generally fairly selfless.

Serious Linux nerds are in high demand and low availability almost everywhere I've ever lived. But, if you're not well-equipped for IT, that might not be the way to go. Tech support is also the highest stress technical career (there was a study about it a couple of years ago, and if I weren't lazy I'd look it up), so you don't want to do it for long if you haven't the patience of Job. But billing $100/hour is not at all difficult, so you only have to work three or four days a month to scrape by...don't underestimate the time spent on paperwork and such, though...some companies make you work an extra day for every couple of days you work, in dealing with expense forms and other assorted crap. I much preferred working for small companies, where one person made the decisions and when he or she said to the accountant, "Write Joe a check", it would be in my hand before I walked out the door.

But, IT has the advantage that you're generally working on small jobs--things that can be fixed in a few days, or a couple of weeks, tops. They are well-defined, like, "We need to move our web servers to a new data center", or "our mail server isn't filtering spam and it's letting viruses through". You know when you're done with this kind of project, generally.

That said, startups are kinda like a marriage. Having a little something on the side isn't likely to turn out good for the startup. Have you considered raising a little money to get you to launch and revenues?

Even if you're not an expert at all of these things, if you know what they're for and can read the documentation and make all of them work in an afternoon, then you're well-equipped (better equipped than many Microsoft "certified" techs) for the job. Most small businesses don't even know what they need, much less how to set it all up. So, when you go in, you'll find that they have no idea what you're doing, why you're doing it, or how it all fits together. How you explain it is more important than how you implement it when it comes to whether you're called back or recommended to other businesses. It has to work, of course, but as long as you're explaining the job clearly and in simple terms, the customer will remain happy (try to look busy, as well...sometimes you'll be waiting for installs and such...do something else during that time, even if it's busy work).

Note that I'm not necessarily recommending this path. IT support sucks. It's a very stressful field, where the only time you hear from people is when there's a problem. In fact, the only time you hear from people is when there is a problem so severe that they can't get work done (people are so afraid of computers, and of thinking about technology, that they'll ignore trouble signs until the breakage is complete). Thus, your customers are almost always stressed out. I frequently worked for a company that had a quarter million in daily revenues, and so a day with all of their people off-line cost them significant sums of money. I have great respect for the fellow who built and owned the place, as he kept his cool like a champ, no matter how tight the downtime schedules were...but some of his employees (and share holders) did not.

Oh, yeah, you'll also work a lot of nights and weekends, because that's when companies can afford to be completely off-line.

I wonder if anyone has ever created anything notable while working that sort of job.

Bonus: You get to meet/interface with lots of people, and maybe you can score some hot chicks on the side.

Sucks: Pay. 8/hr or 10/hr is not really much, but I guess enough to buy lots of ramen noodles for a starving programmer.

Plus, rigid hours?

Porn-ish sites like that do attract advertisers.

I've found that advertising rarely even pays for your server bills when you're getting started. More often it just annoys your users and gets in the way of doing something more productive with your time.

It's also interesting to see that when AdBrite loses an adult advertising partnership, it's an important loss for them: http://valleywag.com/tech/online-advertising/philip-kaplans-...

AdBrite is private, though, so we don't know what percentage of adult ads account for revenues, but they do have an entire other site -- BlackLabelAds.com - dedicated to adult ads.

Anyway, it was just an obvious suggestion, given the 3boobs site you'd already created.

Best of luck to you, whatever you do.

you have a finite amount of (creative) energy. it's all or nothing.

It varies on how much (smart and well funded) competition there is, barriers to entry, your own personal ambitions. In general, larger and stupider the competition, the more likely you can do ok with part-time effort.

Joel's post on being a Ben and Jerry's vs. an Amazon can give some insight on this topic: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html

check out Paul's early work at pg13bootstrapping.com [nsfw] [login required].