Why Is Everyone Jumping On The Programming Bandwagon

conjamuk

conjamuk

Stakin Stacks
May 27, 2008
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If you program because you love it or to audit your freelancers code fair enough. I just can't see the point of the average affiliate spending thousands of hours learning to program when it can be outsourced.

Mobile
Its nearly impossible to make money doing it unless you are in a job.
Your chances of making in mobile is very small, 0.01% of apps make a decent return and these are owned by corps with big pockets. 60% percent of the apps on the App Store have never been downloaded, even once. Every idea you have has been done already.
Think your brilliant app idea will earn some big bucks? HAH. You fool

Freelance
Freelance is hyper competitive , millions of Indians and talented Russian programmers with good portfolios. Even if you make money it won't be consistent.

SAAS

The odds of someone starting a successful SAAS are tiny. You need massive resources for this. I've seen company's with 7 fig budgets and amazing programmers fail.
 


There are multiple former affiliates on wickedfire who run SaaS, from what I can see they are successful. It's a real business, and is a lot more stable etc than how a lot of affiliates make money. I have no idea about what you do personally, so I can't compare.
 
mattseh said:
There are multiple former affiliates on wickedfire who run SaaS, from what I can see they are successful. It's a real business, and is a lot more stable etc than how a lot of affiliates make money. I have no idea about what you do personally, so I can't compare.
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I know and I actually use a few. Cardine runs WordAI but that requires insanely high skill levels to make. Your average joe affiliate learning php will never reach that level. And even if you are good that doesn't mean you will make money. You are only noticing the SAAS that succeeded not the thousands that failed.
 
Your average IMer makes maybe $20k/year after expenses lol. Most are perpetually broke (not everyone of course). There are exception out there but success/fail ratio in IM is pretty disturbing.

Freelance is not competitive at all. A very average freelancer can easily do about $40k/year working 6 hours days with zero risk involved. That allows them to travel SE Asia living like kings or whatever. Why not?

Good freelancers and those with lucrative side projects make a lot more than that. It takes maybe 1-2 years of hard work but it's a guaranteed payoff unlike IM.
 
absolute said:
Your average IMer makes maybe $20k/year after expenses lol. Most are perpetually broke (not everyone of course). There are exception out there but success/fail ratio in IM is pretty disturbing.
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May we get your source where did you find these success/fail ratios? Kinda hard to believe that he makes $20k/year unless its his first year/he's extremely lazy or living in 3rd world country where this number allows him to live decently.
 
DontShaveMePls said:
May we get your source where did you find these success/fail ratios? Kinda hard to believe that he makes $20k/year unless its his first year/he's extremely lazy or living in 3rd world country where this number allows him to live decently.
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I used to be quite active selling products to IM'ers. Think 3000+ clients (not sales) here on WF alone over a couple years and I got to know many of them...

The majority were broke and/or one-off success stories where they got lucky, made $20-60k over a month or two and then struggled to replicate that success for a year+ until they went broke and got out of IM. Look at how WF has changed since 2008-2009.

I've enormous respect for those who made monies and branched out into other businesses/investments. Also for those who are still making good monies purely from sales/marketing (though the only ones that I know own/co-own agencies these days which is still client work just on a much bigger scale). Way to go.
 
a) It pays good.

b) Is very consistent if you're good at what you do. I have so much pending work, I'm hiring people left and right.

c) It's safe. Technically, I have more control over my client's online operations than they do, so I don't really worry about whether or not they're going to pay my invoices, or continue to utilize my services.

d) It's cool to turn people's visions into reality. :) Concept + some work, and you have a new functioning online operation. I think it's quite cool at least.
 
Because coding is an actual quantifiable skill that can allow you to fall back on a stable job, not some magical gypsy shit like marketing.
 
Phear said:
[...] not some magical gypsy shit like marketing.
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[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOGqubWvbkE[/ame]

... but what does this have to do with marketing?

the-best-of-the-skeptical-3rd-world-kid-meme.jpg
 
conjamuk said:
If you program because you love it or to audit your freelancers code fair enough. I just can't see the point of the average affiliate spending thousands of hours learning to program when it can be outsourced.
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Outsourcing something you don't understand is a road to failure. Sure it *may* work for what you need it for, but I bet it won't scale....

conjamuk said:
Mobile
Its nearly impossible to make money doing it unless you are in a job.
Your chances of making in mobile is very small, 0.01% of apps make a decent return and these are owned by corps with big pockets. 60% percent of the apps on the App Store have never been downloaded, even once. Every idea you have has been done already.
Think your brilliant app idea will earn some big bucks? HAH. You fool
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Entirely false. have you built a mobile app? How about owning one? If you're belief is that you can build just one and go flappy birds, yeah you would be crazy. However, there are more ways to line your pocket then trying to hit it with 1 big app.

Several guys a know who just make 1-2 apps every couple months and they don't need a day job based on the cumulative income. I call that successful.

conjamuk said:
Freelance
Freelance is hyper competitive , millions of Indians and talented Russian programmers with good portfolios. Even if you make money it won't be consistent.
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I kinda agree with you here SOME. Plenty of work needed for Americans though and highly skilled. When I was doing more freelance I had a friend that could snag writing projects all day as an American and he didnt need a day job.

Personally, I snagged a lot of top end PPC/Conversion type jobs and had no issue with competitors.

For a lot of things though, it is hyper competitive and will get worse.

conjamuk said:
SAAS

The odds of someone starting a successful SAAS are tiny. You need massive resources for this. I've seen company's with 7 fig budgets and amazing programmers fail.
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Massive resources? hmmm. I think it depends on the goal. Looking back, SERPWoo needed massive resources in the form of time/code to be what it is today. However, I see a lot of SaaS ( because Im pretty in-touch with the community ) that are simple apps that can do several K a month, affording the owner to not have a day job. It's more common then you think.

If you're talking building just 1 and hitting it out of the park, yeah.. it will take time. However, I think a lot of your post comes down to defining what success is.

If success is hitting 7-8 figures on all the above, i'd say you are spot on.

If success is being able to do what you want, when you want ( like travel and not worry about bills/boss ), you are way off.
 
Ok, different kinds of affiliates.

PPC affiliate might not find a lot value in it, unless for reasons such as Mattseh and Eluiqid mention.

SEO/website affiliates are almost forced to learn today imo, as Wordpress has gotten so easy and so widespread the barrier to entry and mode of setting yourself apart has gotten higher. Programming allows you to make tech driven sites or neat little apps for your site which acts as both linkbait and as the 'real biz' part of the instead of everyone trying to outcontent each other, which becomes increasingly harder in a time of Buzzfeed type journalism.

Outsource yes, when you know exactly how long stuff should take it and how to do it. Otherwise good luck burning through freelancers or overpaying by 10x for simple stuff.

I'm primarily an SEO guy, have done both black and nearly white. Not interested in running massive pbns or spamming for the next 10 years, that's why I am going the tech driven / viral site route, since I am really good at seeing creative ways to apply tech, but less interested and able to maintain the scope of a huge modern SEO campaign. I also don't want to turn into a 'content marketer' for life.
 
Just to further what rusvik said...

As a PPC affiliate myself, I find a tremendous amount of value in programming actually that goes way beyond just wanting to learn it.
 
I learned to code just so I can test ideas. For example last week I had a great idea but I wanted to test it. It took me about 6 hours to hack out a simple website + backend code. A freelance coder wanted 15 hours over 2-3 weeks. Sure I could have paid him but I banged it out myself on a Sunday and tested my theory on Monday.

No waiting, no sending code back and forth. Just code -> test -> results.
 
It's one of the most empowering skills available in this world.

You can get a good job in any country in the world, you can work from anywhere you have a computer. You don't need a piece of paper from school to get a job. Costs almost nothing to learn but time.

And if you pick projects that interest you to learn, it's not "work" to learn. It's addicting.

My income has tripled in the past 2 years and I've never seen so much opportunity in any industry.
 
Actually this is kinda funny but I just noticed your (OP) sig. and it says:

Freedom from financial encumbrances, freedom to travel, freedom from bosses, alarm clocks, two-hour commutes; freedom from bad ratios (9-to-5, 5-for-2, 2 weeks every 52 weeks and 8% over 40 years) and freedom to enjoy the world as your playground.
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And I can honestly say that I'm about half way there over the last two years all thanks to programming.

I've been travelling for a couple of years now (Europe mostly), work less than I used to, earn a lot more than I used to (probably because I sucked at IM), don't have an alarm, no commute, and no 2-4 weeks off in a year. I have savings and investments which is something I always dreamed about but never managed to acquire as a IMer/service provider (again - I'm a IM peasant).
 
You also have no clue of what opportunities lie ahead or what your niche will be when you're just getting into programming. I thought I wanted A, found I liked C better.

I never knew my job existed, I never could have planned for it because I had no idea it was even a "thing".

And I don't see a problem with getting six figs for a 9-5...it's a much different work environment than pre $50k...and you still have time to work on your pro bono shit.
 
conjamuk said:
Mobile
Its nearly impossible to make money doing it unless you are in a job.
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No doubt its competitive. But think about what you're saying here. If its possible to make money doing it as a J-O-B, who is out there providing those jobs?

conjamuk said:
Freelance
Freelance is hyper competitive , millions of Indians and talented Russian programmers with good portfolios. Even if you make money it won't be consistent.
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A good programmer, who speaks native English, who understands business and marketing? They shouldn't be playing in the same sandbox as a $20/hour programmer on oDesk.

If they can't figure out a way to position themselves so they're not competing on price against offshore programmers, they probably don't understand business/marketing as well as they think.


conjamuk said:
SAAS
The odds of someone starting a successful SAAS are tiny.
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Isn't that entrepreneurship in general though?

Only on an IM forum can affiliate marketing be seen as some kind of surefire formula to success, while developing a high-demand skillset and trying to build an actual technology business is seen as a pointless endeavor.

conjamuk said:
I've seen company's with 7 fig budgets and amazing programmers fail.
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So? Talented people with large budgets have failed in every field.

Demand Media had a 1.5 billion dollar market cap at one point, now its barely above 100 million and almost none of that comes from their content business. Does that mean an individual SEO can't beat Panda and make a good living?

Fab.com blew through 300 million in VC money in 2 years, does that mean no one can ever start a successful e-commerce business?
 
What's wrong with learning something for the sake of learning something new?
 
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