The book review: “How to earn $10,000 while learning to code”

The book “How to earn $10,000 while learning to code” (By Rob Percival, Cambridge, UK) is designed as a companion to The Complete Web Developer Course, but you can use any method of learning to code you like.

The book contains over 20 ‘challenges’. As per Rob, some of these ‘challenges’ will directly help you make you money. And others will just move you in the right direction to earn. Each ‘challenge’ is clearly explained, and the author recommends trying out all the ‘challenges’ before you move on to the next section. He further adds that you will earn money from day 1, but your ‘hourly rate’ might be devastatingly low.

One of the early ‘challenges’ mentioned in the book is to get your website live. For that you need to decide a domain name and purchase it. You can do this on Rob’s website, Eco Web Hosting (£6.99+VAT per year for a .com domain) if you like, or any one of many domain name providers. If you don’t buy the domain name with Eco Web Hosting, you can link it to your free web hosting by putting in a support request to your domain provider asking for the ‘nameservers’ to be changed to ns1.ecowebhosting.co.uk and ns2.ecowebhosting.co.uk. This will link the domain to servers of Eco Web Hosting and allow you to run your website and email through them.

I liked the line “The beauty of learning to code is not just that you can learn very cheaply, but that you can start making money almost immediately, if you know the tricks of the trade.” The book provides some interesting branding ideas, good tips and advice to earn a decent amount of cash.

Few examples of good sites providing valuable tips:

•  Great getting started tips
•  Advice on finding your niche
•  Tips on building your Twitter following
•  A solid introduction to constructing great websites

The book mentions some very good examples of freelancing websites which can help you to earn decent money. Rob correctly mentions that getting web development work in the early stages is tough. But primarily, you’re here to learn how to do freelance web development, and build up your online portfolio and positive reviews.

Few interesting examples of freelancing sites:

• freelancer.com
• peopleperhour.com
• elance.com

The book further explains more good tips (in detail) for freelancer like:

• Use your real identity
• Be honest
• Link to your Twitter feed
• Complete the exams
• Keep your bid low
• Explain why your bid is low

For new freelancers, the author recommends fiverr.com mainly for practicing your skills and earning a little cash (and getting some good reviews to post on your website or Twitter feed). I think this is a smart advice to find a lot of quick online jobs. Simultaneously he recommends having an experience of Wordpress, Bootstrap, and PHP/MySQL. This will help you to start earning real money as a web developer.

The author correctly mentions that in recent years a number of gorgeous and hugely flexible themes have sprung up, which can be customized as required to make a website which is clean, professional and looks great. He adds that most likely freelance websites want the following:

• A clean, professional, custom design
• 5-10 pages of content, including an ‘about us’ page and a contact form
• Possibly a blog, portfolio or shop
• The ability to update the website themselves

The book provides some very good examples of themes sites:

• Free Wordpress themes
• The biggest collection of premium themes
• The X theme
• The Avada theme

The book also provides information regarding marketplaces (to sell your scripts) like http://codecanyon.com, http://phpmarket.com and several other sites. There are many more earning potential ideas and tips given in this book. Overall, I believe, if those suggestions are tried diligently, you can experience the noticeable change towards earning money online.

So all the best and have a great successful life!