[thelist] rentacoder.com

[rytames at telusplanet.net]

On 27 Jul 2003 at 22:23, pete wrote:

Hi Pete, I too enjoy the articles.

[snip]

> Obviously this fellow is not going to get anything useful for $300,
> but it strikes me as sad that there are no real alternatives that seem
> to be even a little realistic.

> Someone care to prove me wrong?

I cannot prove you wrong, but I can support your claims. Some/Most
of the buyers at rentacoder are cheapstakes. In some cases they want
the world for less then 100 bucks.

The problem is, it is very hard to take seriously. Even for me,
a guy who needs that expereince, and references in development.
I would much rather concentrate on my things, rather then sell my
work for beans. Especially if I can eat beans every day at my current
job.

I'm hard up, but I am not that hard up.

Anyway, I bid on some projects still, but it has become a game,
where I don't expect to actually get a buyer to accept my bid 
(they seem to disappear alot), but instead, I use it as a way to
see how my communication skills are, and to test various portfolio
interfaces and what not.

Since I never have actually worked in the industry, if one my bids
get accepted, i'll know what things to concentrate on. That first
bid is all I need to beable to compete on rentacoder.com, and it
seems to be the damned hardest one to get.

Instincitively though, the buyers themselves, are users; I have not
yet tried it, but my next bid I am going to play up on the 'users' notions.
Maybe I'm trying to hard to 'engineer' my way in, but that's the way I am,
a thinker.

Still, not just rentacoder.com, but all similar sites are hard for
me to take seriously, its like a night of gambling, for the buyer
and for the coder. Where most of the time, the buyer wants
flashy blinking beepy designs, and the bidder uses a dreamweaver
template and simply changes the colour scheme, and logo, text and
its done.

Your milage may vary.

All in all, i'd rather concentrate on developing my own ideas first,
since I have a lot of them.

Have fun,
Ryan Tames.