I've been working a lot these days too. Mostly into developing my skills in photo/video editing and other skills so that I can become a freelancer or something. Everything seems to be moving in a positive direction and here I am visiting my family in Canada after 3 years in China and I spend most of my time learning. I feels good but I also wish I can see some monetization. Your scraping tool sounds good and I want to be able to leverage my YouTube/Steemit as well to get clients.
The problem with working on "skills" is that you are inadvertently commoditizing yourself. If you learn how to edit videos, people will compare you to other video editors, mainly on price.
Instead, try and turn yourself into a connector/deal maker. Not only do you not have to waste time learning skills that they'll do in Eastern Europe for 10% of the price, but you also make it seem like you're a special person who can get shit done no matter what.
The best way to do this is to just meet a lot of people who can do a lot of different things. Then when you reach out to clients, all you have to do is sell the services and contract them out to other people. Once you get a big enough rep and meet people you trust, you can work on joint ventures that will ideally lead to bigger profit margins. These are also less work than doing any freelance "work" because you're not actually responsible for anything. You just come up with the idea, make the connections and let the two parties work together while you take a cut.
When it comes to getting clients, there's no substitute for contacting as many people as possible and promoting yourself. I used to say 50 people a day would lead to clients. And that's true. But these days I'm contacting at least 100k per month. The increase in efficiency is unreal. I could easily sign 30 new clients this month.
How can I go about finding developers? Let's say I wanted to build an application on the steem blockchain. I don't know if I will go through the time to learn programming and all that so I'd rather just outsource/partner up with someone else to try and create something.
How do I lose weight?
How do I learn French?
How do I build a bookcase?
There's no special answer. You just fucking do it. You put one foot in front of the other until you arrive at where you want to be or realize that it's not worth the effort to get there.
If I wanted to find developers who wanted to build something on the Steem blockchain, I would start by asking everyone I knew on here if they knew any developers who wanted to build something on the Steem blockchain. I guess that's kind of what you're doing now that I think about it.
I guess my situation is a bit unique because I have a high rep on here and people probably recognize my name. So when I say I want to do something I tend to get a decent response. But I'm sure you know people here too who can help you. Just ask them.
The biggest question is what are you building and why? I'm not super optimistic about Steem and never really have been. Yes, it has helped me and serves it's purpose, but I feel like we're on borrowed time over here because of the lack of advertising and serious brain drain by most of the freebie-seekers on the site. People come here because they want something for nothing. So it attracts the dregs of humanity, the people who are lazy and greedy, the ones who are unsuccessful in life because they apply the same thinking that they have on here to every aspect of their life: spreading low effort garbage everywhere in hopes that they'll win the lottery somehow.
Anyway, I didn't have any desire to create something on the Steem blockchain. I just met @tibra who struck me as someone I'd like to work with, so I asked him what his background was and how we could work together to monetize it. I was very blunt about it. He said he was some math/AI genius, so I asked him what we could do with that. He came up with some idea that I didn't really understand, but I trusted his judgement so I was like "Ok, let's do it."
Then we both used our reach to start working on it and 3 months later we've got a strong crew who is ready to bust out a prototype as soon as we work out how exactly we're going to work together with my client.
In other words, it all just comes down to connections. And with all of the social media sites out there, you have plenty of options to connect with people. Social media gets a bad rep because of all the Kim K wannabes out there posting duck-faced gym selfies, but if you look at it logically you have access to virtually the entire world's population for free. This is a new phenomenon in the human race. I just think it's funny how you have so many business owners who claim to be motivated but won't touch social media with a ten foot pole.
Anyway... good luck.
vaya! interesante.
you don't need to reach out via social media when the shortage of drivers is so bad that there are 50 loads sitting around for every driver!
but yeah, in a hyper-competitive hellhole like NYC I guess the supply of workers far outstrips demand!
Welcome to New Hampshire baby. Just go where you'e in demand and mucho problemas will go away!
Thanks a lot for that @yallapapi. Funny you said all of this and I am actually looking into creating a business as a middle men related to this. When I first read your comment, I wasn't sure how I would be a "deal-maker" or middle man but I was chatting with my brother in law yesterday and he gave me a great idea for how I can act as as middle man or "referrer" to many different businesses with regard to tourism. As soon as he started talking about it, I remembered this comment you wrote and laughed. I'm gonna take what you said and try to do my own thing!
Thanks!