elephant0xffff

Oh, sry, I see.

I guess that it's just a Stripe marketing channel and the number of sign-ups supports some metric.

> That's a fair point I hear quite a lot. Not sure what the reasoning is there (assuming it is the case).

That it's incredible inconvenient? I don't want to do discussion there, but just read what other people tried and did.

The result is that I just make throwaway accounts for such websites to get to the content and I appreciate if I don't have to do that.

Slightly off-topic, but what happened to indiehackers? I liked the page more before the redesign/stripe-takeover.

The page was more clearly arranged and you could browse it without being logged in or having an account. There is also this ridiculous "stripe-verified" badge for businesses doing business with Stripe now, which is not that interesting for indie hackers I guess.

It also seems the interviews are not that important anymore, but being some kind of community is - but I don't think that people want that, because we have that already here or at reddit - the nice thing were the interviews.

> Some sort of service that signs and proves the authenticity of videos.

I don't think that is even possible.

You might want to succeed with amateur efforts, but I would guess there will be a point where it is impossible to tell if a video is fake or not.

> If people named Jane are more likely to eat ice cream, you can't target ice cream ads at them and help keep your site free, without asking them.

Apart from the fact that people named Jane aren't more likely to eat ice cream, you seem to criticize that it gets harder to target ads?

Oh no, that's a real pity. Oh no, poor webmasters.

Why?

> [...] Now if you run a website in the EU, any user who signs up to it has control over the contents of your servers and you have to ask in extremely specific detail to do anything with some of that content, and that "consent" can be revoked at any time.

You are saying that's a bad thing?

Services that require you to sign up, should provide the possibility for users to look at, modify and delete their user data - that's all. Where's the problem?

I don't really get it. So what's the burden for the developer here - he argues that the IP is PII (personally identifiable information), which is true, but I don't think it means you can't log IPs in general anymore?

So is now every standard apache2 installation a non-compliant (illegal?) service, as it logs GETs?

I don't think that's the case.

//edit: It seems to be the case that you are ok if you do log-rotation and delete old ones - which makes sense, so you can still use them for debugging.

> 5. Don't be afraid to learn. Try not to specialise too much. Generalists/full stack devs are very sought after. You'll start a contract as a web developer and soon you'll be doing DB optimisation and securing their infrastructure.

Nice tips but I don't agree with this point.

Being specialized makes you stand out from the crowd and being "the person who does <foo> in the <bar> industry using his extensive knowledge in <baz>". Otherwise you are just "the person who does <computer-stuff> for all industries".

I agree that it's simpler to not be picky at the beginning but later on you should specialize - not just in technology but also in an industry.

> Mind sharing a link to your blog (if it's still active)? Thanks :)

It seems to be there: https://www.brentozar.com/blog/

Bam. Inbound marketing seems to go well, a HNer just linked to the blog by inspecting the HN profile the consultant put on HN ... ;)

What differentiates you from freelancer.com and upwork.com?

The Problem at freelancer.com (currently testing that) is that it is hard to differentiate yourself as a good contractor it seems more like quantity then quality. However isn't that just the result from getting big?

Maybe there is an inherent stochastic process in freelancing platforms that lowers the average rate as more people get on it. So your main challenge should be to avoid that but that seems like a hard problem.

Toptal does screening, which does not scale, Upwork and Freelancer do nothing (or do upselling via courses, bid-boosts, etc.).

After evaluating both platforms in more detail I will probably start with freelancer.com as it is possible to have an arbitrary name (e.g. "elephantdesign") instead of real name only. This makes it simpler to tailor your profile to a specific niche in my opinion and seems more privacy aware. Obviously both platforms are pretty intrusive, but at least freelancer.com guard your real name.

However there seems to be an agency mode on Upworks which might be similar.

Has it been complex to sell your skills because of your previous employee? Did you just cold e-mail your previous contacts that you got while working or did they approach you?

Hey Doreen, thanks for your input. By "service" you mean some of the popular middlemen mentioned in this thread? All the best for your endeavor!

Thanks, this is uplifting information, and sounds like a good plan - start with low-paying jobs and be exceptional and then raise your rates and get first-hand clients.

How professional do they handle freelancer's and client's privacy? I will try to do my best but some things can and will go wrong. If things don't go well I don't want to loose my reputation because of some remote-work jobs site, because they or a client skrewed up.

> The typical situation is that employers need techies LOCALLY and can’t find them in the sort of numbers they’d ideally want which drives rates up: +1 techie.

There are local jobs here, but they are mostly pretty standard and boring (small business web sites and marketing), which I am not really interested to do.

Although there is a lot of competition on freelancer.com et al. at least there are jobs for most areas of expertise.

As mentioned, I am aware of the drawbacks (pay-cut by middleman, competition with a large pool of other workers), but it seems like a good idea to find your first clients.

Hopefully it is not bad reputation later on (this guy worked at Upworks) ...