so you want to be an information entrepeneur?
This is a new technology, people (read: businesses) want to take advantage of it. They are often ignorant, or simply too busy to learn to harnass it themselves. Many of them will pay you to weave their way on the web.
html programming is one of the most lucrative, and most facile consulting jobs in the computing industry. Setting up basic web sites is not at all hard to do, panicked businesses looking to build their tolllane on the infoway will pay you unprecedented piles of cash for no more than a day's labour.
It is easy to charge exhorbitent rates for passing work.
As with any job, be sure what you are charging is appropriate, that you feel proud of the work you are doing. If you are working on something you couldn't give a shit about, reconsider your project. There's enough out that there that you can do cool shit and still make money.
You may not be struttin' in the Armani, but the web could end up the better for your efforts.
here's the strategy:
(If you use a commercial online service, get off).Use my tutorials to learn html.
Make for yourself a decent looking web page. Couple of pages together linked, with some graphics, and some sense of your view, design perspective.
Start a small scale web publishing business. Post a flyer in your neighborhood, or a classified ad in the local paper. Make sure everyone at your old job, you high school, your Mom's friends, they all know you'll make web pages for a pittance (everyone's got to start somewhere).
If you are an individual, and you've not done this before, don't expect to start with the Fortune 500. Making simple flyer-type pages and helping people with their resumes is your best bet for starting to make a living off this stuff. Most sizeable businesses will want you to help them make money off the web, this requires a greater level of expertise and computing resources.
Many of the folks who call you for help won't even be on the net, get them hooked up with a local service provider. You and your service provider could learn to be good friends.
here's the payment:
I ask in return that you extend your gift. Share the power.Sure, make a living off html, but also take the time to do community service. The more work you do, the larger your portfolio, the sharper your skills.
Help a school, or a church, or a prison get on the Internet. Take a laptop to the barrio and let some folks type their stories. Show them their page as it will appear on the net, and invite them over sometime to make some more.
Make the web a better place by extending your skills to the voiceless. Be a tool for the disenfranchised. Make the web a better place by bringing someone cool and different and non-commercial in on the party.
Take a little, give a little.
If you're going into this as a business, you might want to draft a contract.
personal publishing | net evangelism |
justin's links by justin hall: contact