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Not my highest paying role but I write material related to Computer Science. I've written chapters of books, online revision material, online CPD courses etc. So far it is all related to Computer Science education - the books are school textbooks, some CPD is aimed at trainee (or pre-trainee) teachers, whilst other bits are aimed at existing teachers to help upskill them. Most of the work is for well known publishers/training providers etc on a freelance basis.

I enjoy the work. I'd love to start writing/creating CPD etc for other audiences but need to figure out how.


How did you get started in this kind of role? Did you first create your own content and then publishers reached out because of it?


Many years ago I saw a fairly dodgy looking ad asking for someone to write revision material for GCSE IT. I emailed to find out more, found out it was for BBC Bitesize (very popular free internet based revision guide in the UK) and spent the summer writing it. Being able to name drop the BBC helped get further jobs and I've send some cheeky cold-calling emails to see if companies are looking for writers etc. Sometimes they are, often not.

I'm always on the lookout for freelance work. Should anyone need a writer with technical knowledge then my email is in my profile!


I've had cavity wall insulation added to the last two houses I've owned. Made a huge difference to both, especially noticeable was how much longer the house stayed warm when the heating was off. Both were detached which will make a difference in terms of surface area impacted.


Yeah, I know the benefits, just worried about the damp issues. We are on the boarder line of areas where it can start to be an issue, worked out based on amount of rain and wind as I understand it.


Can I recommend you take a look at Miniflux (https://miniflux.app/)? I'm a customer and really like it - it is possible to self host.


Personally I hate monthly payments for things. If it is something I'm going to use I may as well get a bit of a discount and not have yet another payment coming out of my account each month.

Additionally I'm in the UK, so this won't apply everywhere. Some (Many?) bank accounts charge a flat fee on top of the currency conversion rate - again a reason to make just one payment a year.


I am another person that also avoids all monthly payments. Even yearly payments I always disable any recurring fees immediately after sign-up.

I will decide when money comes out of my bank account, how much I am willing to pay, and whether your product is worth the money.. not you. And I'd rather not spend time and energy doing this monthly.


You only need to be able to reach about a 1/3 of the way over the screen to tap the part that changes to the next page. Takes a little time to get used to but I read left handed all the time.


I like pinboard but when I had problems with my archival account a couple of years ago I didn't receive any response to emails even though I chased for months. No longer subscribe but would love to find a similar alternative. Maybe poor customer service is the reason for the number of active customers dropping off.


I run www.historio.us and I reply to emails :P


He does! And unless I'm wrong, historio.us has been around as long as Pinboard but never gets half the HN love.


Most of that is on me, I haven't given it the love it deserves, but I'm currently rewriting it and will be modernizing it, making it responsive, and adding new features.


Enjoy, and congratulations on running a long-lived solvent business that actually answers its email.


Thank you, and likewise, congratulations for running a long-lived successful business!


replying to a goading competitor rather than an honest now-former customer with a legitimate complaint strikes me as a real classy business move.

just my opinion.

(i'm a customer, I love pinboard, and this affects nothing as far as i'm concerned.. I haven't ever needed customer service -- it just strikes me as rude.)


> poor customer service is the reason for the number of active customers dropping off.

I've had a similar experience. Last year the site just wasn't working when I needed it, so I did not renew and moved to Larder.


Haven't tried this yet but worth looking at? https://github.com/yory8/clipman


I find myself buying from Amazon for two main reasons:

1 Delivery is quick and my parcels will be left in a location selected by me - many other companies won't leave parcels. Lockers are great too, when I'm in a location that has them.

2 Great customer service

A billing/shipping API won't impact my reasons for using Amazon. I'd love to use other companies but they aren't getting the basics right at the moment.


You pay $10 per Gb but this is a one off payment rather than annual. The money is supposed to go into an endowment that will pay for the storage costs long term.


Aren't one-off payments to cover running costs provably unsustainable? It relies on continuous growth to support old users. I personally would want to rely on a service that might close at any minute because it stopped growing.


Not if you are able to charge enough, and reinvest the funds such that low-risk investment returns will cover the cost.

Combine that with underlying costs (storage, data transfer, computing power) which are trending downward and there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.


The idea is that they'd form an endowment. So they put your $10 in some sort of relatively safe investment, and every year it grows by, say, 1%. So then they have 10¢/year/GB to spend on storage costs.


At 10$/gb they are charging 200 times what you pay for a gb elsewhere for a month. So they are at least getting 200 months worth of money from you upfront. Even aside from what the others mentioned with the endowment.


Money makes money.

Say they raise enough to earn interest on their capital.

Say they make 1% interest per year.

Storing a GB costs $10. 1% of that is 10c.

How much does it cost to store a GB for a year?

Amazon charge ~1c/m for infrequent access and 0.4c/m for Glacier.

So somewhere between 12c and 5c a year.


See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6358970 for my previous comment about why I chose VB (I'm a teacher and was a developer)

The questions/problems that the exam board sets (considering the number of hours the students get to solve them in) are really suited to VB, or another Visual based language. What I'm trying to say is that the language chosen also has to fit the requirements of the exam board, as the students, school and myself are all judged by our results (GCSE grade etc).

Edited: changed wording for clarity


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