This came to me today as I was browsing around scriptlance. I haven’t actually tried them yet, but it makes sense.

Free Code:

This is pretty simple, if the code you are trying to get someone to make has high demand on any of the forums you read, chances are you can resell it for at least the amount you paid for it. So the next time you are worried about blowing $1200 on a script you’re not sure is going to be profitable, think about how many people you can find that would buy that script from you.

Stealing ideas:

The second thing I love about freelance sites is reading other people’s projects. Sometimes you can find people that you can tell are already successful doing what they do but they are trying to find coders to scale what they are currently doing. I’ve found many projects I was interested in, simply waited for someone to bid and accept the project with good feedback, waited a week for them to finish the project and then simply offered them a private bid at half the cost as the other person paid them. Of course they were willing to give you the code because they had already coded it out. For them it’s icing on the cake.

Getting paid for work you would do for yourself anyway:

Being that I hate wasting my time on projects I’m not sure will be successful, here is where being a LAMP developer comes in. If I find an interesting project I can actually code myself on scriptlance, I can bid on it myself on scriptlance. If my bid gets accepted I’ll code everything out for the person that hired me to do it but I’ll also keep that code for myself (a lil unethical sure). I’ll then run those scripts myself after I’ve delivered the project. If the idea fails, I still was paid by the person who hired me. It gives me a bit more motivation to know that I’m going to at least see some return from my time even if it isn’t nearly what my time is worth.