Hi! Traveling Coder

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ElenaKing

ElenaKing

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Hi all!

I've been a coder for 19+ years now, the last 11 years freelance. I travel around the world and work 100% remote. I've worked on everything from large international ecommerce websites, banking software, startup projects and tiny bugfixing projects. I'm originally from Europe but I'm in the USA at the moment. I love NYC and the Caribbean.

My expertise is 100% web development full stack everything from backend, frontend, databases, server optimization, AWS. Although I'm making a really good living with coding it's not passive income. It all depends on me actually coding my a** of ...

I'm evaluating ideas right now what to build and I have a few ideas but not sure yet.
I've done a lot of image recognition lately, basically what's in a photo. I'm working on something with fashion recognition at the moment (figuring out what somebody is wearing in photos and then creating similar looks that can be bought through affiliate links).

I'm into marathon running, yoga, healthy eating, photography, fashion (yes, I'm female...)

Looking forward to connecting with the community here! Have a great day.
 
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Nice, sounds like you've got quite the skillset! I'm sure you'll find some methods and ideas you can enhance with some coding skills and start generating some passive income. Welcome to the community!
 
Welcome buddy! Just curious, how do you get all the clients?
 
Getting those remote clients takes a long time. I'm specialised on ad agencies because they pay high rates. Sometimes crazy high rates depending on how much pressure they have from their clients.

When I do prospecting I usually target a big city and move there. Then I email the ad agencies project managers because they have the pressure to get projects done in time. I introduce myself and every about 10-20th agency I pitch gives me a tiny project. But they want to get to know you personally. It's about trust. You need to speak their language, look apart and be very confident. That's how you get in the door. I do a lot of research before I email somebody and before I meet a company I do even more research.

For them the most important thing is to get their projects done in time. No excuses for a day late. They will also send you Photoshop files if it's a front-end job and they want it pixel perfect. Sometimes they put the Photoshop over the website to see if it matches. They also hate answering any kind of questions and they usually do not give you a lot of information. You need the experience to kind of know what they want.

When you get the first projects done in time and quality they will give you more projects. In the beginning they sometimes want you to work in their offices. But that stops after a while. Then the projects get bigger and crazier. After 1-3 years when they start trusting you. The crazy projects are usually insane deadlines that can not be moved because they booked tv campaigns or it's before Christmas or Olympia or Superbowl or any kind of event that just can't be moved. They usually wasted a lot of time on design and now realize it needs to get coded somehow, surprise!... They don't care how much it will cost at this point because they get fines from their clients if it's not online.

When I take on such a project the stakes are high. It means dropping everything you do and be extremely focused and code 18 hours a day. Don't do anything else. This only works if you know what your doing and you are good in estimating how long what takes. There is no room for mistakes.
Same with bug fixes. I sometimes get projects where you need to fix the bug till next morning and it's a 100% proprietary software you have never seen before. And then it takes 50 steps to even get this thing installed.
I've been doing this for a long time and I sometimes almost feel what's wrong by looking how the site loads or by staring at the log files for an hour and I see patterns.

This kind of work is not for everybody. Because it's so high pressure there is no room during this time for spouses, friends, family, children or doing anything else, no phone calls, no gym, no tv, no social media, no nothing. You order food, you don't go outside.
And you do not always write beautiful code, no time for trying something and you need to know a little bit of everything and stay on top of new technologies at the same time. I'm not sure if I can recommend this kind of work. It's not the 4hour work week lol!!!
These agencies hire me because they know if I commit it will be done. 100%. And I don't ask a lot of questions or bother them with anything. I just get it done.
A lot of outsourcing companies fail to deliver in these kind of projects. I've seen it over and over again. Or they need 100 pages of detailed specification to get it right.
But it took me a looooong time to get here. Nothing that makes good money is easy. There is no easy way in anything.

That's why I'm here. I totally understand that SEO, online marketing, driving traffic and so on will take time to learn. I'm super interested in it though because I think with my coding skills I could really build something that makes passive money but only if I get the traffic funnels right, too.

Have a great day everybody!!!
 
ElenaKing said:
Getting those remote clients takes a long time. I'm specialised on ad agencies because they pay high rates. Sometimes crazy high rates depending on how much pressure they have from their clients.

When I do prospecting I usually target a big city and move there. Then I email the ad agencies project managers because they have the pressure to get projects done in time. I introduce myself and every about 10-20th agency I pitch gives me a tiny project. But they want to get to know you personally. It's about trust. You need to speak their language, look apart and be very confident. That's how you get in the door. I do a lot of research before I email somebody and before I meet a company I do even more research.

For them the most important thing is to get their projects done in time. No excuses for a day late. They will also send you Photoshop files if it's a front-end job and they want it pixel perfect. Sometimes they put the Photoshop over the website to see if it matches. They also hate answering any kind of questions and they usually do not give you a lot of information. You need the experience to kind of know what they want.

When you get the first projects done in time and quality they will give you more projects. In the beginning they sometimes want you to work in their offices. But that stops after a while. Then the projects get bigger and crazier. After 1-3 years when they start trusting you. The crazy projects are usually insane deadlines that can not be moved because they booked tv campaigns or it's before Christmas or Olympia or Superbowl or any kind of event that just can't be moved. They usually wasted a lot of time on design and now realize it needs to get coded somehow, surprise!... They don't care how much it will cost at this point because they get fines from their clients if it's not online.

When I take on such a project the stakes are high. It means dropping everything you do and be extremely focused and code 18 hours a day. Don't do anything else. This only works if you know what your doing and you are good in estimating how long what takes. There is no room for mistakes.
Same with bug fixes. I sometimes get projects where you need to fix the bug till next morning and it's a 100% proprietary software you have never seen before. And then it takes 50 steps to even get this thing installed.
I've been doing this for a long time and I sometimes almost feel what's wrong by looking how the site loads or by staring at the log files for an hour and I see patterns.

This kind of work is not for everybody. Because it's so high pressure there is no room during this time for spouses, friends, family, children or doing anything else, no phone calls, no gym, no tv, no social media, no nothing. You order food, you don't go outside.
And you do not always write beautiful code, no time for trying something and you need to know a little bit of everything and stay on top of new technologies at the same time. I'm not sure if I can recommend this kind of work. It's not the 4hour work week lol!!!
These agencies hire me because they know if I commit it will be done. 100%. And I don't ask a lot of questions or bother them with anything. I just get it done.
A lot of outsourcing companies fail to deliver in these kind of projects. I've seen it over and over again. Or they need 100 pages of detailed specification to get it right.
But it took me a looooong time to get here. Nothing that makes good money is easy. There is no easy way in anything.

That's why I'm here. I totally understand that SEO, online marketing, driving traffic and so on will take time to learn. I'm super interested in it though because I think with my coding skills I could really build something that makes passive money but only if I get the traffic funnels right, too.

Have a great day everybody!!!
Click to expand...

I really envy you. I wish I could do all of what you just wrote. Coding 18hours a day is no joke, how do you cope with hubby, kids, friends and family. Welcome to BHW I will be following you :)
 
When I'm coding nothing else matters really. Don't have kids or pets and my boyfriend is easy going.
I'm also into minimalism, so I don't have a lot of stuff. I feel like a lot of people spend so much time just maintaining >things< Everything gets so much easier when you have less stuff.
I can't do the crazy coding projects forever though.
 
Love your positive altitude towards work. Hope to work with you in the near future...
 
ElenaKing said:
When I'm coding nothing else matters really. Don't have kids or pets and my boyfriend is easy going.
I'm also into minimalism, so I don't have a lot of stuff. I feel like a lot of people spend so much time just maintaining >things< Everything gets so much easier when you have less stuff.
I can't do the crazy coding projects forever though.
Click to expand...
Yea. . As Tyler Durden said "the things you own end up owning you"
Impressive skills and work ethc. Welcome n all the best
 
Can I ask why a coder (or programmer) needs a community like this?
 
@airsocks
"Build it and the customers will come" doesn't work. I've seen it in many projects where I built something crazy big for a client that believes it will just take off by itself. And then it just dies. You need to market it. That means you either have a lot of money to spend on ads or hire specialists or you need to really master marketing, branding, customer acqusition, driving traffic. I totally suck at marketing. It's a skill. I need to learn it.
So I'm reading every book I can get my hands on, I watch all kinds of videos, I study examples from startups and I also want to know everything about the blackhat world. I want to understand how to drive traffic from every view point in it's entirety. That doesn't necessarely mean I will use any of the methods talked about here but I want to know about it. I believe you can only be really creative when you master the skill first and then take it up a notch :)
 
Usually marketing takes a lot of money and time. If you want your website to become very popular, you won't handle this task alone. I tried and it was obvious that more investments are needed.
 
Read the whole thread and posts from OP.

Professionalism. Wow!
 
Welcome To BHW , That's Was A Really Impressive Introduction & You Have Some Damn Good Skills xD
Enjoy The Forums :)
 
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