Going Self Employed as a Software Developer

Please note that the legal and business aspects Rosetta Stone software of this will vary from country to country so I cannot provide country specific information. I live in the UK so my experiences all come from there apart from an Italian website I worked on ten years ago that got me a weekend trip to Pisa and Florence! However, much of what I've said applies to other countries as well. Your MissionTo work for yourself as a self employed software developer, getting paid for creating software. Although there is an immense amount of software around, much of it free or even open source, many businesses want to have something that works the way they do and are prepared to pay for it. How much they are prepared to pay varies. To give examples that I have done over the years:From 1984-1986 I was in a partnership creating computer games on the ZX (aka Timex) Spectrum, CBM-64 and other home computers. Both partners had Enterprize Allowance (a UK Govt initiative) funding for a year on 163;40 a week, but I was living at home so able to manage on that then. I was working 50-70 hours a week. Our initial plans to market and sell games ourselves failed (if anyone has an original Rosetta Stone Greek ZX Spectrum or CBM-64 tape game of CityFighter by Choice Software please let me know!). After I wrote a fast tape loaded for the CBM-64 we sold some to games companies and got into game conversion. That was taking an original game produced on one home computer and rewriting it for others, all of it in Z80 or 6502 assembler. Publishers were happy to do that, paid well and the business expanded up to 5 employees but I fell out with my business partner and left in mid 86 and went to work for one of our customers.Thanks to a friend's recommendation, I got a job converting business software from an old version which was very poor to a much more modern version with lots of new features: I got paid 163;10,000. The company that contracted me provided me with the original source code which helped as it had a particularly complex algorithm at the heart of it. That code though was procedural and I restructured it to be Object Oriented. I maintained that for several years on a retainer of 163;300 a month. Find out more on Object Oriented Programming with an Introduction to Object Oriented Programming?I created a simple game to demonstrate Stereograms that were all the rage in the mid 90s and earned about 163;1,500 for that. Around the same time I worked on a computer football game full-time in C and 8086 assembler and that development was bringing in gross of 163;2,000 a month. Unfortunately the designer left after 6 months and that killed the project! I maintained a couple of websites (both static i.e. pure htmlimages) and dynamic (in php), adding new features, for a monthly retainer of 163;100 during 2001-2002. That was for a maximum of 6 hours a month so it fitted in well. In the early 90s when shareware was popular, I bought one of the first CD-ROM drives (0.7 x speed- cost 163;700) and imported a lot of shareware from the US and then resold it at computer fairs. I'd written a cataloging program so people could search quickly and select the software they wanted and fill a disk. Mind you it was cheaper and faster and much more profitable to just bundle up software on floppy disks with a nice label. I think that brought in a couple of thousand over Rosetta Stone Hindi V3 a few months so not very profitable given the time spent on it!Between 1991 and 1994 I wrote a monthly column for a UK retail magazine on programming called Program Now. Each issue had a 500 line application created by myself plus 1,800 words. I also reviewed software and books for the magazine, a very cheap way to get them and that's how I got the Watcom C compiler and into C programming. In all I earned about 163;25,000 over that period from the magazine which sadly went bust in 1994.Getting StartedIf you want to go self-employed and you are all ready in a full time job it is a difficult thing to do. The best way is to build up the business (as much as your spare time can afford) and when you are able to earn part time as much as you need to live on. This is called "Ramen Profitable" because that's all you'll be able to afford to eat! Once you get to that level then you can give up the full time job and then use the extra time you now have to make more money for your business.Do I need an Office?Unless you are planning to recruit lots of staff to begin with and are familiar with "How Do I make a small fortune on the Internet? Answer start with a large fortune" i.e. have lots of money to spare you must keep your costs to the minimum. Got an office at home with good Internet connectivity? Bedrooms and garages are famous for being where many startups started.Managing Your TimeI'm a fan of the Getting Things Done philosophy by David Allen. One tip that helps is to move all distractions like books, magazines, computer games, TVs etc out of your work area. Keep your browser closed unless you're hunting down a bug solution or code suggestion. The Internet is the perfect way to avoid work so use it wisely for you own stuff.What Tools Do I need?Much of this is dictated by the type of software you are writing. If you're into creating games or ASP.NET websites then Visual Studio is probably high on your list of tools. Programs like BizSpark from Microsoft can help keeping those costs down. Of course if you're into Open Source then you'll be using Linux and mostly only the hardware has to be paid for.ConclusionGoing self employed isn't for everyone as you have to spend part [ Rosetta Stone Software ] of your time chasing new work and supporting existing customers when you really want to be coding! Those aren't tasks that come easily to everyone but it can be very rewarding both financially and for your self esteem.