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How often do you get consultation requests through your technical blogs?

by logicziller on 9/18/24, 5:14 AM with 2 comments

I'm in my mid-40s and I'm really tired of my normal work and I'm thinking of leaving the city and move to a village. If can I do just do remote consultations occassionally and make even 20% of what I make right now, I can live comfortably over there.

I have experience in a number of areas (Asterisk, ERP systems, Software Defined Radio, Embedded Systems exploitation, etc.) but one thing I never got around to do was starting a technical blog, so as far as SEO is concerned, I'll have to start from scratch. There are a number of software projects I've done as personal projects and I've never put anything out in the world, mostly due to fear of it being called garbage code, but I now realize this fear was also irrational and a big mistake.

I really don't want to sign up on any freelancing sites and want potential clients to contact me directly instead. I already have a registered corporation and can take up contracts.

I see that many of you here on HN have technical blogs so I'm really curious how often you get contacted by potential clients because of something they found on your blog. Looking at it purely from a monetary perspective, I'm trying to understand the effort-to-reward ratio. I'm even considering technical content for YouTube.

  • by gus_massa on 9/18/24, 11:48 AM

    This is not exactly what you want, but patio11 has(had) a somewhat similar method of using blog posts and email newsletters to get consulting task. https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/

    Probably you should start with https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick... HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4533498 (173 points | Sept 2012 | 45 comments)

  • by gregjor on 9/18/24, 8:23 AM

    My web site generated a few leads over the years (first post in 2007 I think) but not many, not enough for me to live on. I think a few high-profile people get sufficient leads from their web presence but most of us probably won’t.

    Anecdotally I don’t think the people who hire me read a lot of programmer blogs.

    I get almost all freelancing work through referrals/word of mouth. About ten years ago I went with an agency that still represents me, and that has proven more reliable than my own efforts at self-promotion.