Since I've been unemployed since I quit Verio and moved up to NY, I've need to help pay the bills. So, I've started my own consulting business. I'm gearing towards local business', joined the Chamber of Commerce, blah blah blah. But, in order to make some money I do odd Perl jobs for people. I'll install some things, write some custom scripts, give general Linux help, troubleshoot, etc...
I'm used to programming within the corporate world, so I'm learning a new side of non-corporate Perl. There are quite a few "companies" (groups of programmers) who write a boatload of scripts, and sell them. Auctions, affiliate scripts, multi-level-marketing, etc... They write them, sell them, then seem to not support their products. This is where I have been coming in. People pay me to fix this junk. And, I mean *junk*. The crappy code sometimes makes my cringe.. and I cringe more that people buy this stuff.. and even more that people are selling it!! But, it's good for me since I get a few bucks here and there.
I now see a lot of what people do to start their websites in the attempt to make money, as opposed to the large corporation. It's sort of interesting, although I'm not sure what kind of revenue these people make.
Most of us are probably in the corporate world, and don't see this side of the Perl-world and internet-biz world. At least, I was somewhat shielded from it. I've considered re-writing all these bad scripts and just selling them myself. May as well sell a cheaper, well-written, version of someone elses crap. But, I don't want to maintain them since I wouldn't be using them personally.
Anywho... it's been interesting seeing this side. I get a decent share of repeat business (fix a script, then write a custom one, etc...) although I don't pull in the cash I used to yet. I need more steady work. I do, however, like not having a 9 to 5 anymore. Making my own hours, working from home and being able to choose what I want to work on is a *great* thing.
