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Mariusz Malek
Mariusz Malek

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How did I sell my first Python project for over $9,000?

I'm still not a Python specialist, yet I sold my first project for over $9,000. I think I'm closer to a junior.

How did I manage to do it and what was the project? Maybe I'll start by saying that there are seemingly a lot of videos and articles on the Internet on how to start programming, and what kind of project to do at the beginning of your career, so that it's not too difficult and can help you grow.

I am not a fan of this approach. I definitely prefer to look from the perspective of the need and try to find a solution.

As a PHP specialist, I wanted to give Python a try, but I didn't have an idea for a project, so I kept putting off learning Python until the need arose. While building a modeling startup. We had to obtain data on all casting agencies in the United States. I learned that python is best for such scraping, so I decided to write a small program that would allow me to obtain data of all agencies.

A program is not enough. How would such a program work, after all, just using Python would not solve the problem that this data had to be found somewhere. That's why I relied on google maps.

After running the program for the first time, I was surprised that everything went so smoothly. I wrote the program itself for a couple of days in coffee breaks. I fell in love.

We managed to collect contact information for all the companies, but unfortunately our startup itself failed. Nothing else was left for me but to go back to my regular job and work on my psyche, which was in decline. I thought that the program itself could also help someone, so I wrote on one startup-related group describing my little data acquisition program.

After a few minutes I fell flat. It turned out that I have customers who already want to buy my program for quite a lot of money (and just hours ago I wanted to make it open-source).

In the end, I sold the tool to as many as four companies and managed to make over $9,000.

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