More advice about becoming a freelance Perl programmer

[AJ Dhaliwal]

On 07/03/13 02:54, Peter Corlett wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 04:34:30PM +0000, AJ Dhaliwal wrote:
> [...]
>> I hope someone can kindly help me with these questions
>> 1) How can I go about finding work?
> Don't typecast yourself as a Perl developer, as that just limits what roles you
> can do. If you can do Perl, you can quickly pick up Python or Ruby, for
> example. (Or Scala if the JVM/.NET is your kink.)
>
> Sign up with the job boards. Jobserve and CWJobs have been the most useful for
> me. Jobsite and "Careers 2.0" from Stack Overflow haven't found me anything
> useful yet, but are low-effort. Monster was a spam magnet and an utter waste of
> time. Consider using tagged email addresses so you can see where the leads are
> coming from, or at least don't sign up with your primary email address.
>
> Find other tech groups that may be relevant, such as GLLUG and DJUGL. Join the
> lists, go to the meet-ups, and network. London.pm has a social tomorrow, and as
> a newcomer you get a free drink. Now there's an incentive!
>
>> 2) What should I charge per hour?
> How long is a piece of string? Look at the advertised rates on the job boards
> for roles that fit your skillset, and adjust to taste.
>
Thanks to everyone for all the good advice. I have done a little summary 
here:

1) Job sites: I had actually forgotten about the job boards for 
freelance work. Somehow I associated them with full-time jobs. Thanks 
for reminding me about that. Now I have a few that I haven't heard of 
before to try...

2) Specialise or generalise: We touched on the question of being a 
language specialist or "casting a wider net". For the past two years I 
have been concentrating on PHP and Perl. I think I am going to "cast a 
wider net" now. I like learning languages but I think either approach is 
valid and it depends on the individual and the market. There was some 
discussion about this topic in this thread also:

Re: Perl School 4: Database Programming with Perl and DBIx::Class

Seems like on of those topics that people will keep discussing.

3) The jobs mailing lists. I haven't used those before. Thanks for the 
pointer.

4) Network. I am just starting to get the hang of this.

5) A piece of string is 3 inches long with the null pointer. I always 
felt this was the answer.

So much to do...
AJ