Career path and Craigslist crawlers
Greetings fellow warriors. I'm new here and I have some questions. I'm going to get my computer science masters degree in a couple of weeks. I have a decision to make. Almost all of my friends are working in local software companies. The thing is, I was always been more of a lone wolf type. I don't think I would flourish in corporate environment. Here in Serbia, freshly graduated c# software developer can expect salary between 600 and 700 euros for 160 working hours a month.
Is it realistic to expect that I can make that amount of money by developing software, mostly web scrapers and crawlers, for people from this, and similar forums? I could also try out Freelancer. I researched my options last week and I stumbled upon your forum community. There is so much useful information around here.
Few days ago I started working on a Craigslist arbitrage software. It's pretty similar to Arbitrage Underdog, but there are only so many ways to implement UI for this kind of software. I also saw eBay/Amazon arbitrage software with very similar design. I don't want to make a cheap knockoff. I want to make a quality software with a bunch of functionalities that don't exist in other products, this is just a start. So, is there a market for this kind of products, not necessarily this app(I could easily build a bunch of custom crawlers for specific niches)? Also, yesterday I needed a list of proxy addresses for this project, so I tried to crawl Hidemyass proxy list. The thing is that html on their webpage is changing every minute thus rendering conventional crawling methods unusable. So, I developed a simple ocr crawler that supplies me with fresh proxies whenever HMA refreshes the list. Could this kind of software be useful for someone?
To sum it all up, I'm interested in your opinion. Should I become a full time programmer in one of the local Serbian software companies, or should I try my luck with freelancing and IM? I'm asking for advice, ideas and potential business partners.
Also, I could send you craigslist crawler that I'm working on(it also works for fiver, odesk, elance and seoclerk). Keep in mind that application is in alpha, there is much to be done. Craigslist crawling is slow and there is also a some UI latency. I'm currently fixing all the problems. I'm interested in you opinions and advice. What functionalities should I add. Just PM me and I will send you a copy.
This is the app screenshot:
Is it realistic to expect that I can make that amount of money by developing software, mostly web scrapers and crawlers, for people from this, and similar forums? I could also try out Freelancer. I researched my options last week and I stumbled upon your forum community. There is so much useful information around here.
Few days ago I started working on a Craigslist arbitrage software. It's pretty similar to Arbitrage Underdog, but there are only so many ways to implement UI for this kind of software. I also saw eBay/Amazon arbitrage software with very similar design. I don't want to make a cheap knockoff. I want to make a quality software with a bunch of functionalities that don't exist in other products, this is just a start. So, is there a market for this kind of products, not necessarily this app(I could easily build a bunch of custom crawlers for specific niches)? Also, yesterday I needed a list of proxy addresses for this project, so I tried to crawl Hidemyass proxy list. The thing is that html on their webpage is changing every minute thus rendering conventional crawling methods unusable. So, I developed a simple ocr crawler that supplies me with fresh proxies whenever HMA refreshes the list. Could this kind of software be useful for someone?
To sum it all up, I'm interested in your opinion. Should I become a full time programmer in one of the local Serbian software companies, or should I try my luck with freelancing and IM? I'm asking for advice, ideas and potential business partners.
Also, I could send you craigslist crawler that I'm working on(it also works for fiver, odesk, elance and seoclerk). Keep in mind that application is in alpha, there is much to be done. Craigslist crawling is slow and there is also a some UI latency. I'm currently fixing all the problems. I'm interested in you opinions and advice. What functionalities should I add. Just PM me and I will send you a copy.
This is the app screenshot:
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