Fwd: Fw: Question about how to make a living from open source

[Shlomi Fish]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at shlomifish.org>
Date: Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 11:49 AM
Subject: Fw: Question about how to make a living from open source
To: shlomif at gmail.com




Begin forwarded message:

Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 11:48:01 +0300
From: Shlomi Fish <shlomif at shlomifish.org>
Cc: "linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il" <linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il>
Subject: Re: Question about how to make a living from open source


Hi Tzahi,

On Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:15:40 +0300
tzahi ml <tzahi.ml at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
> I am in need of assistance.
>
> I am currently working as a freelancer coding stuff in a company.
> However, although I am making good living, this does not scale much (and
> promotion is out of the question :) ).
>
> Anyway, I am looking for ways to scale.
>

I've written about some business models for web-based publishing here:

https://plus.google.com/+ShlomiFish/posts/MRLntf3xu5Y

Some of them have correspondence to open source. See:

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Alternative profitable business models for Web-based commerce.

This is a list of 5 business models for web-based commerce that do not
require
depending on advertising:


1. Collect donations or ask for money for public appearances in advance -
see
https://plus.google.com/+ShlomiFish/posts/GUpTuA6641x .

2. The Flickr model - charge people for a premium model.

3. The Bandcamp/Humble-Bundle model - pay what you want (people can be very
generous).

4. The cloud model - pay for hosting or a MMORPG account
(World-of-Warcraft/etc.) or whatever.

5. Pay to liberate - collect money to make a CC-by-nc-sa work CC-by/etc.

6. Sell merchandise - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNZove4OTtI .

7. One can also set up non-intrusive ads like those provided by
http://projectwonderful.com/ , but I doubt they'll be profitable.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Another suggestion I can give you is to work a lot on publicity, social
networking, etc. - both in real life and in Internet-based social media
venues.

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Objectivism/comments/2c1fue/the_importance_of_human_networking/

A chauffeur with whom I stroke a conversation at a McDonalds restaurant
close to
Heathrow airport in London told me he now gets most of his customers from
social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter. The newfound possibilities
from real-life and electronic social networking are very much reflected in
stories here:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour/Buffy/A-Few-Good-Slayers/

There are plenty of online communities for various topics on the Internet.
Find some of them that you are interested in and contribute to them. There
are
Reddit subreddits, wikis (Wikipedia, Wikia wikis, etc.), IRC channels on
Freenode/etc., Facebook groups and pages, Twitter feeds, mailing lists, etc.
and you should be able to contribute to some of them.

The greatest threat for any business is obscurity.

You may also wish to invest some money in buying ads, commercials,
promotions or whatever - nothing wrong with that and this money may be well
worth it in publicity.

Finally note the Carpe Diem / "He who saved one man has essentially saved
the
world entire principle" - don't try to maximise your audience immediately.
Invest time in each and every friend and recipient:

* http://www.shlomifish.org/humour.html#carpe_diem

Finally, I should note that your English does not sound idiomatic (although
I
admit I heard much worse). You should work on improving it. See my advice
for
how to do that here:

* https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/hackers-il/conversations/messages/5143

Regards,

        Shlomi Fish

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