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I chose to write a hugely boring open source product that no one in their right mind would bother with. Old tech, competing with a ton of other similar projects. I focused on the documentation, make it as simple as 'cut and paste this code to get it working' every time someone had a question, bam - a cut and paste example.

Did some serious SEO and soon was racking up a couple of thousand hits a week. This soon hits the million mark. That gets me interviews, even with people who don't want that old tech, they just see results.

I am currently doing a bit of Drupal for a client, there are a TON of half baked modules. Take some of them and make them work. Make them work with the backup module, the restore, the import.... then your CV is padded with a ton of neat stuff.

This is super common advice, the trick is to actually take it. Get all OCD about it and make it work.




If you're getting millions of hits per week, you might want to consider doing something to monetize the open source project...


No, sorry, not millions a week. It was a thousand or so a week. What I meant, is that those thousands add up to a more impressive number. The numbers have dropped off over the years.


That's what I was thinking. Find something 1 in 1000 would pay a dollar for and you're golden.


1,000,000 / 1,000 = $1,000. Hardly golden. Still, I take your point, with a million eyeballs you don't have to monetize much to make a pretty penny.




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