Review my new business idea, Friday. Coders for $2000 a month.
Published in 2012, this chronicle by @toblender details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $2000 a month.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 9 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 25 comments
For 2K you aren't getting world class developers. World class developers won't work for that, let alone what you are actually paying them. I assume you would have to make twice what you are paying the developers to pay overhead and make a profit. So, I'm betting these developers are making somewhere around 5 - 7 dollars per hour.
I live in the Philippines and I know how hard it is to find good talent here. I know of a number of startups and dev agencies which have tried. The Philippines isn't exactly the tech hub of Asia. I'm assuming this is located in Manila, because you wouldn't be able to find people anywhere else. Unfortunately, the wages that these guys are making is barely enough to scrape by, even in the Philippines.
Working a straight 8 hours doing dev through the night (working on U.S. time zones) is too much to ask for what you are likely paying these guys. I have done that shift many times and it's hard. By the time the sun comes up you are a zombie and it only works if you are single and living in a man cave (block out all the windows.) If you have a family and want a somewhat normal life then forget it. Your developer would quickly burned out. Better to give them more flexible working hours.
The cost of the development is just one of many factors (code quality, time to market, etc) so cheap development isn't really a selling point. I get a lot of work cleaning up after crap developers. In the end, your ROI is likely far better with strong developers.
However, the average Joe with a low budget who knows nothing about development probably doesn't think about these points. So, you are probably asking the wrong crowd.
Cool idea, dislike the stock photo though :P.
Even at South African rates, that's low considering risk and other factors towards the programmer.
Furthermore, freelance is generally by billable hour or fixed rate. By billable hour, I mean something built of worth for that hour - that's usually around 80% of actual time spent.
Unfortunately at that rate, the only programmers I can see that will find this offer attractive is: 1. Those who did crash courses and have no real world experience. 2. Programmers who lost their jobs and need something for the interim. 3. Freelancers trying to get into the market (or get clients).
My standard freelance rate at the moment is about $40/hour and I consider myself a pretty good developer with 4 years commercial development experience and have done quite a few freelance gigs (I have been coding for 6 years prior as a hobbyist). I consider this money as my 'spending' money.
$2000 per month is very low. Even when I take the most basic freelance jobs (from elance/odesk etc.) I get paid at least $30 per hour (on more serious projects, the sort where the client came to me, I get paid at least double that). Where are you sourcing the programmers from? Programmers just starting out can get paid more than you are offering.
A $12.50 per hour wage for skilled programmers for 1-12 months?
First of all, the wage is ridiculous. Second of all, the wage is ridiculous.
How do you do your sourcing? Vetting? Matching? I'm skeptical and don't believe this would work. Many startups would pay $10,000-30,000 just as a referral fee and double that as a signing bonus.
Perhaps "lowpaidinterns.com" might have been a better domain. No adequately skilled coder that I've worked with would work for McJob rates.
$4k might get you some young and hungry coders keen to get some work on the CV, but is the job market really that oversupplied?