I once did a code review for $3,500 and it took about 8-12 hours. After I was done, they asked me to fix the few bugs I found. I told them I was super busy (which I was) and they offered me $10,000 to do the work ASAP. Since it would only take me 8 or so hours to fix the bugs I could hardly pass it up. For two days of work I walked away with $13,500 dollars, of course there is also tax on that, so I netted like $9,000.
Depending how hard I/you try to find consulting work, you can totally make 20k, of course it depends on the month. The best part, is that you can write off business expenses on your taxes. So, you pay significantly less (if any) tax on that 20k.
If you join a bunch of the freelance marketplaces it's really not hard. I literally receive offers for jobs every day or so, most aren't that good, but probably once every month or two it is as described.
The problem is, I have no idea going in if a code review is going to be easy, or if the bugs are easy to fix. That's somewhat just luck.
> If you join a bunch of the freelance marketplaces it's really not hard
Hmm I've always heard the exact opposite. I haven't seen a freelance type of marketplace that isn't a huge race to the bottom. Whenever I've done consulting it's always been through contacts that I know; I've never found a way to actually make decent money through other means.
You do a few jobs on the cheapish, and quite often they will recommend you. Like I said, most of my jobs are through people finding me through various other projects. Contacts, like you said.
This sounds a lot like gloating. I'm sure a lot of us would like to find consulting work but don't really have an inkling as to where to find it. It feels like more of a matter of knowledge / networking rather than how hard one tries.
I did C/C++ tutoring, and did freelance work on both OpenCV and Qt projects. I get offers from the people I tutored, being active on forums, multiple freelance networks, and having an active github.
It wasn't supposed to be gloating, it was more - it's not as hard as you think.
Be active on projects on github related to areas you are interested in (i.e. Rails, Node) or elsewhere. Also, there are plenty of freelance market places.
Depending how hard I/you try to find consulting work, you can totally make 20k, of course it depends on the month. The best part, is that you can write off business expenses on your taxes. So, you pay significantly less (if any) tax on that 20k.