Self-employment in IT?

U4EA_2

Hi,

I hope this is a good place to ask this.

It's pretty simple and straight forward - I am looking to become self-employed in some kind of IT.

I currently work from home but I am not always very busy and have plenty spare time that I would like to use to generate more income or perhaps develop something into my main source of income.

My background IT is varied. I am a former quality manager on a database and have used MS Excel extensively. Many moons ago I did a Diploma in computing and several Microsoft quals, which I never actually got a chance to really use. While I do not have lots of experience with specific IT systems, I am a quick learner and pretty technically minded - I've not come across any concepts etc that I have not been able to understand pretty easily.

Prior to becoming slef-employed, my constant use of MS Excel had lead to me becoming pretty good with it and I got the MS study book with the idea of doing the exams in it. This was partly to do with career, partly me wanting to understand the whole program and partly with an idea to perhaps becoming self-employed in IT.

I think the thing I would like to get into more than anything is website programming, perhaps more technical stuff and I have had it suggested to me that I should learn VB Net and Excel interfacing (if that makes sense!?!!?).

I am eager to get going and learn something new and something that may lead to self-employment. I am not looking to make myself rich at all - even if I am just earning £5 per hour, time spent generating that is better than time spent thinking about how I would like to be earning more money.

Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could do? I have recently started re-reading the MS Excel book and I have started to learn Visual Basic.

Thanks,

U4EA

U4EA_2

Can anyone offer any advice?

[Deleted User]

I don't believe that there's much demand at all for Excel/spreadsheet specialism out there. If you want to go into website design backed with some database entity then you should look to become proficient in; HTML/PHP/SQL/C#/.NET/ASP/Perl at a bare minimum.

£$&*"($£&(

You need to be able to offer services that aren't available in house. This probably means doing complex things like visual basic programming or specializing in specific areas. Just being quite good with Excel might not get you much work except some voluntary work with charities. The IT self employed I know include a friend who is an expert in Oracle database development and two people who specialize in training and development for a specific program for which there is a small but ready market.

I think you need to look beyond Excel and become an expert in Access and Sequel Server because there is far bigger need for such people. Perhaps there might be a market for visual basic front ends in Excel.

iamadave

I cant advise on the Microsoft route as I only use there stuff and database use for work, then part time I am more familar with PHP/MySQL for all my website stuff rather than dotnet.

I would suggest a good book or find some online guides to get a feel for which language you wish to learn.
If your likely to be doing smaller bits on

U4EA_2

Thanks for the info guys.

I understand that MS Excel in itself is not a huge skill and I would certainly be looking to learn something more substantial.

anewhope wrote: »

you should look to become proficient in; HTML/PHP/SQL/C#/.NET/ASP/Perl at a bare minimum.

OK, lets says I am aiming to learn this with the idea of self-employed. If I work very hard at this and learn all these skills, how can I translate this into self-employment? My databse experience is a little while ago now so I do not have the IT credentials on my CV. How could I pitch myself to potential clients? What sort of level on competition would I be facing?

kwikbreaks

Most "self employed" IT work is in fact contracting for large companies through agencies and you will be expected to be operating your own limited company. To stand any chance at all of getting a contract you need demonstrable experience in whatever the client is looking for. Often multiple skills are needed to secure the role.

If you really want to take this path you'll almost certainly need to take a permanent role first and get the skills.

You may find you can get work with small companies - I've been contracting since 1995 but never with anything other than corporates so I don't know how the small to medium business market operates.

Jaffa.

U4EA wrote: »

OK, lets says I am aiming to learn this with the idea of self-employed. If I work very hard at this and learn all these skills, how can I translate this into self-employment? My databse experience is a little while ago now so I do not have the IT credentials on my CV. How could I pitch myself to potential clients? What sort of level on competition would I be facing?

You need a portfolio of art work/graphics that you've previously done and through that your customers/employer will see you are good at the techie stuff. Showing a CV with HTML/PHP/SQL/C#/.NET/ASP/Perl means nothing if you havn't got a portfolio

U4EA_2

First off, thanks to everybody who contributed here. You have certainly helped me to understand the situation better.

One thing that I am also studying right now is (human) languages, with the aim of becoming a translator in the next 2-3 years. For fun, I will also be (at very least) playing around with Visual Basic a little bit. So I guess from there I will get some kind of experience with programming and I can decide that if I want to do it badly enough, I can pursue it and see. I may look to combine linguistics and websites or whatever a bit further down the line, but only time will tell.

Thanks again guys and good luch with everything.

buglawton

I think that post 7 is the most accurate pointer.

Dime_Bar

All of the advice given is certainly worth taking on board. I personally would not recommend any small (or large company) to use a lone contractor to develop any kind of critical app, which is all most would pay for, unless they can get some very good references and the back up of a ESCROW agreement. The only reason for this is I have seen far to many occasions where people have paid someone to develop an app or website and then 6 months later they are uncontactable.

If you want to use your excel skills try looking for jobs in Management Information.