John Sonmez – How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer

Your development stack is cutting edge—for 1999…

Your coworkers laughed when they
caught you learning on your lunch break…

Your boss is only “agile“ when he’s
dodging questions about that raise he promised…

And as you wedge yet another bug fix into that
monster 10,000-line class you wonder…

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Am I Trapped In This “Code Monkey” Job For The Rest Of My Life?

Or can you finally find work that energizes you…

Solving challenging, real-world problems…

With a team of professionals who take pride in their work…

And even get paid what you’re actually worth?

Dear Fellow Software Developer,

I still remember the moment when my boss pushed me over the edge.

One minute my boss, Tom Shirkey, is pulling me into the conference room for a little “sidebar” chat…

Next thing I know, something inside me snaps and I’m screaming into his face at the top of my lungs—while he yells right back.

And it took everything in me not to…

Punch That Micro-Managing Weenie Right In The Face!

Now I’m not proud of this shouting match. It was definitely a low point in my software development career.

But he really did have it coming…

Tom was easily the worst part of the worst job I ever had.

Every morning when I walked through that front door my stomach clenched into knot. I counted down every second of every day, and when 5 p.m. rolled around I hit that door running…

Hi, I’m John Sonmez.

And back when Tom was making every day a living hell, I had no idea what the future had in store for me.

I didn’t know that I’d one day become a leader in the developer community thanks to Simple Programmer, my blog that reaches more than 1 million devs a year.

I didn’t know that I’d go on to create 55 PluralSight training courses on topics ranging from Java to iOS to GoLang, or write the best-selling book, Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual.

I didn’t know that I’d someday headline at international developer conferences like Ordev and Xamarin Evolve, or have major corporations like Verizon knocking on my door to consult with me at $500 an hour.

And I really had no idea that I’d achieve my lifelong dream of early retirement—and that I’d reach that goal before my 33rd birthday.

Back then, all I knew is that…

Today my book Soft Skills is one of the best-selling software developer books of all time.

“Office Space” Wasn’t Just A Funny Movie Anymore— It Was A Documentary Of My Life

To be honest, I only took that job out of desperation.

I’d been out of work for 3 months.

My wife and I were living with my parents near Orlando, crashing on their sofa bed in the living room while I job hunted.

And after a few months of shotgunning out resumes and hearing nothing but deafening silence, you start to believe that…

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The Deck Is Stacked Against You

Because of my role as a mentor to software developers all over the world, I hear from a lot of developers who are in the same boat I was.

Here’s the real problem:

Programming has become a commodity.

As in, a product that’s bought by the pound, usually from the lowest bidder.

The word got out years ago about all the opportunities available in software development.

It really is a great career choice…

Where else do you get the chance to spend your working hours pursuing a challenging craft, solving meaty and important real-world problems, building products that change the world, working with some of the best and brightest minds out there…

Learning and stretching every day…

Enjoying trendy office space, free snacks and break room ping-pong matches…

And making serious bank in the process?

No wonder a “gold rush” of eager young programmers flooded into the job market. And that trend continues—40,000 new computer science students enter the U.S. job market every year, and that’s not counting self-taught developers and bootcamp graduates.

Now the really great jobs are still out there.

But once you’ve been around the block a few times, you start to realize that the opportunities, salaries and perks in software development are “asymmetrical.”

What I mean by that is that…

The Top 3% of Developers Snap Up All The Best  Opportunities Before You Even Hear About Them

Which leaves you to slug it out with increasing numbers of recent graduates who happily work for peanuts to get a foot in the door.

And what makes all this even tougher is that the hiring process for software developers is completely broken.

Let me lift the curtain for you and show you just how bad it is…

When a company posts a job on a site like Monster or Dice, it’s like tossing chunks of bloody fish into water that’s teeming with Great Whites—a vicious feeding frenzy erupts.

The first application arrives within seconds. And they continue to pour in for days until the posting expires.

Companies get 250 applications for every job they post, and that’s just an industry average.

Good developer jobs can attract far more than that, as desperate job seekers (like I was!) spam their resume to every company that comes up when they search the term “developer” on Monster…

75% of the time they’re not even qualified.

Think about all that NOISE.

Now do you suppose that companies have their best developers carefully weigh every application?

Of course not. Your resume gets “screened” by low-level HR lackeys who think “for loop” is a golf term…

Yet they get final say over whether your resume makes it into a hiring managers hands… Or gets tossed on the “unqualified” slag heap.

And since the HR screeners can’t tell the programmers from the posers, they just scan for buzzwords—an average of just 6 seconds per resume.

Here’s a scary stat:

98% Of Candidates Are Eliminated Based On Their Resume Alone!

That means your odds of even landing an INTERVIEW are only 1 in 50.

And your odds of actually getting an offer?Just 1 in 250.

Again, that’s an AVERAGE.

Want to work at Google? Good luck—it’s 10X harder to get a job there than to get into Harvard.

Could things get worse soon?

Just about every week there’s word of another round of mass layoffs at major tech giants like Microsoft, Yahoo, and IBM.

And according to Business Insider…

Industry Leaders Expect The Recent “Tech Bubble” To Burst At Any Time

Why isn’t anyone telling developers about this new reality?

It’s the reason why I spent months sleeping on my parents’ couch, applying for job after job, never getting so much as a polite rejection notice in return…

And it’s why I agreed to interview with the consulting firm in New Jersey where I met Tom.

That dysfunctional crew seemed determined to make me miserable from the first minute. They forced me to wear a full suit and tie to the interview—which happened over lunch in a Chinese restaurant.

The whole time they’re chowing down on egg rolls, and they didn’t ask me a single technical question.

(Later I realized that they didn’t really care if I could program—they were hiring me to be a fall guy. More on that in a minute.)

And as I’m fielding their softball questions, I’m thinking, “I do not want this job, I do not want this job…”

So Of Course I Get The Job

And the hourly rate was too good for a down-and-out developer like me to pass up. After all my family was counting on me to put a roof over our heads again.

So we packed everything we owned into our Xterra and headed up the coast to New Jersey—and thus began the longest 11 months of my software development career.

Day 1: Welcome to Hell, We Have T-Shirts

My new boss Tom was an ex-high-school football coach with a bushy brown mustache—the stereotypical overbearing step-dad.

He was there to make you run your plays like a good linebacker, and if you didn’t, Tom was going to make you do wind sprints until you dropped dead of exhaustion.

Tom had juuuuuuuust enough Visual Basic under his belt to make him a certified expert on every aspect of software development.

Tom had to review all of my code before I checked it in—even though he didn’t know a vector from his… Well, anyway…

Tom had to give his blessing before I could install any new tools on my dev box—and man did he ever pitch a fit when I installed the .NET framework without running it by him first.

Later I’d discover that Tom even wanted control over what I did when I WASN’T under his paternal eye…

Anyway, my first day on the job I hadn’t quite figured all this out yet. Tom starts explaining my assignment to me, and I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

And I started to realize that…

This Whole Gig Was A Setup From The Start—They Expected Me To Fail

Their little racket went like this:

Take on a filthy lucrative consulting project with a humanly impossible set of requirements.

Then hire the first hourly consultant who wanders in off the street as your fall guy.

And when he fails, you just fire him.

You and your good ol’ boy FTEs escape scot free, and you’re laughing all the way to the bank.

Tom didn’t clue me in on that though.

Instead he gave me some files in this proprietary printer format from Xerox called Metacode.

My job was to rip apart these chunky binary files, pour through megabyte after megabyte of raw hexadecimal code, and find a way to yank out fonts and images—WITHOUT access to the source files, or any documentation on Metacode itself.

Good luck, son!

I Can Read The Matrix

The first time I cracked one of those Metacode files open in UltraEdit, I felt sick. Pure hexidecimal gibberish.

But after a few minutes of feeling sorry for myself, my QA training came back to me…

In college I’d worked for HP as a tester for their printer drivers. My job there consisted of studying reams of printouts and looking for patterns, so that’s exactly what I did.

And eventually I noticed something:

The pattern “1A 1B,” repeated over and over. A header!

I’d found a crack in the fortress wall, and 2 weeks later I had written the world’s first Metacode decompiler.

Now after this you’d think that Tom and the gang would finally start to give me some respect.

Instead, they accused me of CHEATING.

I had to walk them through full demo. “See, now I’m extracting a font file. Look ma, no hands!”

“Well Crap, If We Can’t Fire Him,
Maybe We Can Make Him Quit“

Looking back I realize that I’d put them in a tight spot, because they never planned on me sticking around.

But since I’d just pulled off this “Metacode miracle” (which was worth millions to the company) they couldn’t exactly fire me either.

So Tom took every chance he could to crank the screws tighter and tighter…

Like the tongue-lashing I took the time I finished a project early and decided to add a couple of “nice to have” features that I knew the users would really appreciate.

And the grueling all-day trips to customer sites on Long Island to babysit installers and swap out CDs.

Tom was trying to grind me down.

Instead he lit a fire under my ass, and…

I Was Determined To Be The Best C++ Programmer In The Country

I spent every “spare” minute studying.

I learned everything there was to know about pointers and vectors and memory management. I mastered advanced algorithms. I even built my own app—a life counter for Magic the Gathering.

When the smoke cleared, I was one of the best-ranked C++ developers in the world on Top Coder.

My confidence in my skills was soaring.

But every day at work, Tom would kick my teeth in and remind me who was boss.

Finally They Pushed Me Too Far

One day Tim announces that the entire team is taking a MANDATORY week-long trip to Manchester, England for training.

Now I’m the only contractor in the group—everyone else is on salary. I get paid by the hour. And all that time I’d be spending in jolly old England was time away from my family and my all-important side projects.

So I pull Tom aside. “Are you planning to pay me for 24 hours a day on this trip?” I ask.

Tom laughs. “No, you’re getting a free trip to London,” he says.

You’re gonna go, and you’re gonna like it, sonny.

And that’s when I snapped. Before I knew it, Tom and I were belly-to-belly like a couple of trash-talking linebackers after a nasty play.

I was out of line, and as a contractor, I had NO leverage in the situation, but I was DONE being pushed around.

There was no way I was getting on that plane.

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Oh Goodie, Now We Can Fire Him

I sat in the empty office for the next 7 days, all by myself under the under the humming florescent lights.

Everyone knew my days were numbered. They let a couple of weeks go by to save face, and then the ax fell.

And even though I had zero job prospects, I was SO relieved.

We jumped in the car and arrived at my parents’ house at 2:30 the next morning.

“Surprise, Dad! I’m Back!”

This time I KNEW things would be different.

Thanks to my daily Top Coder bench pressing, my C++ muscles were bulging. Good luck stumping me in a tech interview.

And I’d racked up a list of accomplishments that would impress the socks off any hiring manager out there.

So I jumped back into the now-familiar routine of surfing Monster and Dice for job openings, typing up cover letters, emailing out my resume, submitting online forms…

And let me tell you, I was stunned when I hit that same stony silence.

No acknowledgement of my applications.

No replies to my follow up calls and emails.

No rejection notices.

You Start to Wonder, Am I “Hell Banned”?

Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and I’m getting desperate again.

Somehow I finagled my way into interviews for 2 different positions at HP.

I packed my suit, and they flew me out, and I completely ACED both interviews.

So imagine my shock when the rejection letters arrived!

This was like a bucket of ice water in the face—a rude awakening.

That’s when I first realized that:

The Best Jobs Rarely Go to the Most Talented, Knowledgeable Developer

For the first time I saw that when it comes to landing a great job, your technical skills won’t take you all that far.

This discovery turned my world upside down.

Here I had invested months of my life studying and hustling on side projects…

And in the end it didn’t count for much.

The game really was rigged.

Even my “interviews” at HP were a complete sham.

HP is a good ol’ boy’s club, and I was just a “token” external candidate.

They were wasting my time and getting my hopes up when really I had NO chance.

The same goes at most companies.

There’s a “shadow job market” that’s invisible to outsiders.

Because according to the U.S. Department of Labor…

85% of Jobs Are Never Advertised

The best jobs are almost always snapped up by internal candidates or inside-track referrals LONG before they ever hit Indeed or Monster.

When you’re searching those sites, you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.

In fact, a pretty good rule of thumb is:

If You See a Job Advertised,
You Don’t Actually Want It

After getting my fingers slammed in the door, I decided to see if I couldn’t make this “shadow job market” work to my advantage.

So I looked up a former boss, the guy who hired me at HP the first time.

He was still there, and as it turned out, he was looking for a QA lead.

I accepted his offer—at a pride-busting rate of $35 an hour.

I finally had a job again, but I was still pretty discouraged, because…

In Just 4 Short Years, I’d Gone from Teenage “Boy Wonder” Pulling Down $75 an Hour
in California…

To Getting My Head Bashed In
For $45 An Hour…

And Even As One of the Top
C++ Developers In The Country…

I’m Forced To Take A Job In QA That Pays 1/3 What I’m “Worth” 

It made NO sense at all.

Why didn’t anyone seem to value my my coding skills?

But I was finally starting to catch on, because I understood…

You Need an “In” to Get the Job

Well, that crappy QA job was my “in,” and I swore to myself I’d be writing software again soon.

One day I overheard a developer named Brian talking about a problem he was struggling with. Brian was a new developer, and he was way in over his head.

So I popped over to his cube and we thrashed out a solution.

Before long I was a “stealth member” of the dev team, and a trusted mentor and adviser.

Finally they went to their boss and said, “You have to hire John. We can’t hit our deadlines without him.”

I had discovered the principle that would come to define my career:

The Way to Create Real, Life-Changing Opportunities For Yourself Is To First Give Value to OTHERS

The most successful people in any walk of life are successful because they’ve created massive value for others.

Take a “famous” software developer like Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin, for example.

Uncle Bob built his reputation by sharing his wisdom on UseNet, and now he’s one of the most trusted and talked-about experts in the field.

What kind of consulting fees do you think Uncle Bob can command these days?

Or look at Scott Hanselman, who has built a massive following by teaching everything he learns on his blog, podcast and conference presentations.

If Scott decided tomorrow that he was done at Microsoft, how long do you think it would take him to find a new job?

In every job I’ve made it my aim to add more and more value above and beyond “just” code.

When I took a contract with the Idaho state government, I made it my mission to help every member of my team become a more productive, more fulfilled developer, and started Simple Programmer as a way to share what I was learning with my team.

Word spread about my blog, and soon thousands of people were reading every month.

These developers started to look to me as a leader, someone whose voice and opinion deserved RESPECT.

As a result, I got promoted to project lead—at the highest hourly rate of any contractor in Idaho state history.

Then one day I got another lesson:

When You Become A Recognized Authority, Opportunities Chase YOU

I was sitting at my desk when my phone rang. It was a hiring manager from a multimedia software company.”

Hey John, we all read your blog and love it. We have a position opening up, and we’d like to hire you for it.”

I wasn’t really looking for a job, but cool. What’s a good time for me to interview?

“Interview? No, you don’t understand. We don’t want you to apply—we just want to hire you. The job is yours if you want it.”

That floored me. What a turnaround!

Just a few years ago I couldn’t get employers to so much as look at my resume if I begged them to…

And I’d get edged out even when I ACED the technical interview…

And now I was getting “walk on” job offers!

When you focus on always giving value, you’re making “deposits in the emotional bank account,” as Dale Carnegie wrote.

When you do this, before long people look to you as an expert, authority and even a leader…

And you start attracting opportunities without even trying.

Unexpected job offers.

Lucrative freelancing and consulting gigs.

Speaking invitations.

Book deals.

Business partnerships.

This is the real secret to landing the BEST software development jobs and opportunities—you know, the “mythical unicorn” jobs you sometimes hear about…

Where you’re working with a team that’s as passionate about learning as you are…

Building software that solves REAL and interesting problems…

Where you’re challenged to grow and develop your technical skills…

And where the pay and job perks are TOP TIER.

When You’re A Known And Respected Authority, The Old “Rule Book” Goes Out The Window

After that surprising job offer, the opportunities started coming fast and furious.

And when you have more opportunities than you can say yes to, that means you have OPTIONS.

You’re in the drivers seat, and that gives you a tremendous feeling of security and confidence.

Do you know how great it is to know that you can stroll into your boss’s office and say, “I quit!”

Because you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could send a couple of emails and walk into a new job tomorrow morning?

When you have options like this, interviews aren’t scary anymore. You radiate confidence, because you don’t need them, they need YOU.

In short…

Instead Of Chasing “The Prize,” You ARE The Prize

Here are just a few things that happened to me over the next several years:

• A startup contacted me about building a testing framework for them. I didn’t really want the work, so I quoted what I thought was a crazy high hourly rate of $300 an hour. Their reply: “When can you start?” I’ve since raised my consulting rate to $500 an hour, and I turn away requests regularly.

• I got invited to speak at conferences like Ordev, Xamarin Evolve and TiD China.

• One of the top publishers in software development, O’Reilly Media, contacted me and offered to publish a book on ANY topic I wanted to write about. A year later they released Soft Skills: A Software Developer’s Life Manual, which has become one of the best-selling software development books of all time.

• I got invited to audition as an online trainer with a little startup called PluralSight. They liked my audition, and I spent two years cranking out 55 courses. The royalties on these courses enabled me to “retire” as a millionaire at 32.

• Simple Programmer grew into a full-fledged business that generates 6 figures of income a year and employs 3 other people.

Get John Sonmez – How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer at the Course Farm

All This, And I’m Still Pretty Much the Same Guy Who Couldn’t Get Companies to Even LOOK at My Resume

Don’t get me wrong, I kept studying and learning new programming languages and platforms and architecture patterns.

But my career stayed stuck in neutral until I made a shift from always trying to be the “rockstar” coder with the hottest technical skills…

And focused my attention on giving value in ways that really matched what employers wanted and needed.

As I shared that value with as many people as I could, they came to respect me as an authority…

And they’d seek me out so that I could help them even more.

There’s A Term For This—And It’s A “Dirty Word” To A Lot Of Developers

But we’re all adults here, and I know you can handle it.

Ready?

It’s called:

“Marketing.”

Ahhhh! Marketing?!?

I get that reaction every time I bring this up.

Let’s be perfectly clear about something here:

There is a LOT of nasty stuff that goes on under the banner of “marketing.”

You don’t want to be associated with any of that, and neither do I.

But don’t let those scammy tactics blind you to the underlying truth that…

“Marketing” Just Means Connecting A Person With A Problem To A Person With A Solution

Marketing is fundamentally about helping people solve problems.

And isn’t that what we excel at as software developers?

When you “market yourself” the way I’ll show you, by always looking to give deliver overwhelming value, it feels completely natural.

In fact it’s even satisfying.

And let me tell you, it’s so much better than putting yourself through the degrading meat grinder of the job hunt process.

Now I fell into all of this entirely by accident.

Each of the principles I’ve shared with you here… these ideas that have propelled me to successes I never thought possible…

Took me YEARS of trial and error to uncover.

If someone had taken me aside when I was a brand new developer at 19, and walked me step by step through what I know today…

It would easily have saved me a decade of struggle, frustration and rejection…

And instead of feeling trapped and stuck, and wondering why no one seemed to recognize what a talented and hard-working developer I was…

I’d have had a clear plan for building exactly the kind of career I most wanted.

Well, it’s a little late for that now—for me, at least.

But not for you…

Because I’ve taken all the road-tested knowledge and hard-won experience I’ve accumulated over the last 17+ years…

And put it all together into the kind of all-in-one training program I wish I’d had 20 years ago…

Introducing:
How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer

How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer is a systematic way to build up your reputation, authority and goodwill…

By always looking to give enormous value before you ask for anything in return.

When you do this consistently, you’ll find that you’re no longer struggling to chase opportunities.

Instead, you’re attracting the very best opportunities to come to YOU.

And as your career grows YOU grow, becoming a better and more fulfilled software developer.

This course contains my entire system for:

• Landing the job you’ve always wanted—solving challenging problems, pushing yourself to develop your technical skills, and working with people who share your passion for the craft of software development

• Earning a raise of 20%, 50% or even as much as 300% over the coming months and years

• Creating your own “safety net” of career opportunities so you never have to worry about where your next paycheck will come from—this is TRUE security

• Building a reliable feeder system for 4- and 5-figure freelancing and consulting work

• Creating a platform for launching your own profitable business as an entrepreneur, either by selling your knowledge or by creating a software product

• Enjoying more satisfaction in your day to day work

• Mastering your craft and continuing to improve your skills and productivity

• Building relationships that can lead to profitable business opportunities down the road

• Earning more respect from your team and manager and a voice in making critical decisions

• Developing the confidence to stand up for yourself—and even walk away from a toxic job

Here’s How It All Works…

The course is presented in 6 modules, each building on the ideas in the previous modules, brick by brick, until you’ve assembled your new career-enhancing platform.

In each module, I’ll personally walk you through a handful of key concepts.

Then I’ll show you the practical, step-by-step actions to take that will quickly begin to build your reputation and authority in your chosen niche—and start earning the respect your knowledge and accomplishments deserve.

Here’s just a glimpse of what you’ll discover:

Module #1 — Why Marketing Yourself Is Important (And How to Get Started)

This module lays the foundation for everything else in the course.

To start, we’re going to bulldoze away a whole pile of lies that have roadblocked your success in your career up until now.

Lies about what it means to be a professional. Lies about your skills and your true value. Lies about what companies really want and need in the developers they hire.

The mindset shift you’ll make here is critical. Without it, any marketing techniques you try will likely backfire and leave you feeling cheap and unprofessional.

Then I’ll show you the crucial building blocks in your new “authority-building” plan.

You’ll see how all the pieces fit together at both a “strategic” level (the “what” and “why”) as well as a “tactical” level (the “how”).

In this no fluff, 13-chapter PDF you’ll discover:

• The devastating consequences of trying to “opt out” of marketing yourself. Choosing this path means surrendering your future to the corporations you work for
• The secret criteria that interviewers use to pass judgment on you (they all do this, ESPECIALLY the ones who swear they don’t)
• Why the conventional wisdom about marketing is completely backwards—and how reversing the broken “marketing equation” is the key to building your reputation as a professional
• How to ensure that your ideal employers keep bumping into you everywhere they turn, until you become the “obvious expert” that everyone turns to
• Should you market yourself under your own name, or create a standalone company? The pros and cons of both, plus the “Goldilocks Strategy” that just could be the best of both worlds

And a LOT more.This cornerstone module has been offered elsewhere for a suggested price of $29.

Value: $29

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Module #2 — Building A Brand

Now that you understand what marketing IS (and just as importantly, what it ISN’T), you’re ready to begin building your own marketing plan.

And it all starts with establishing your brand.In this 8-chapter “crash course,” I’ll walk you step by step through the process of developing your brand—which is the image you project in the software community.

You’ll finally get clear about where your career is headed, and how you can reach your goals while staying true to your core identity.

I’ll also show you:

• How “Casual Friday” can torpedo your career, and how to know what you should wear in any job situation
• Why building a brand is NOT about “all sizzle and no steak,” and how you as a developer MUST create a brand based on substance, skill and expertise
• How Apple established itself as a premium brand, and how you can follow in Steve Jobs’ footsteps to melt away resistance the next time you’re negotiating your salary or pay bump
• The “Plumber Principle” that ensures they call YOU first the next time a great job opens up
• A subtle branding pitfall that makes you look like an amateur to your friends and colleagues (and leaves you feeling like a phony), plus the way to stay professional and authentic in your marketing
• How to harness your “weaknesses” and play off your personal flaws and failings to attract new and exciting opportunities
• The real reason most developers never reach their potential, and how you can be an outlier whose success is all but guaranteed

The 8 chapters in this module span 106 minutes of HD-quality video. All videos are DRM free and downloadable in .mp4 format for playback on the device of your choosing.

This module contains as much meaty content as courses I’ve sold for $147, but I’ve decided to include it here as part of the low package price.

Value: $147

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Module #3 — Creating A Blog

If your brand is the dent you plan to leave in the world, a blog is the sledgehammer you’ll use to make that impression.

Your blog is your “home base,” a digital avatar that shows the software development community what you stand for.

Creating a successful blog is like a Jedi building their lightsaber. It’s a rite that marks your passage into maturity as a programmer.

When you have a well-maintained blog, your peers sit up and take notice of what you have to say. And potential employers and clients know that you are a serious practitioner of your craft.

In this 154-minute, 7-chapter video series, you’ll watch over my shoulder as I show you how to “build your lightsaber.” You’ll see behind the scenes of how I work at Simple Programmer, including the tools and workflow I’ve used to build a blog that receives more than 1.5 million page views a year.

You’ll also discover:

• Why following the lead of popular bloggers like Seth Godin could set you up to have your ideas censored, and what you can to do protect your ideas and your voice

• The 3 common “blockers” that kill most software development blogs—and the steps you can take to ensure yours doesn’t become a casualty

• A critical lesson you can learn from the top 20 websites in the world to get your blog up quickly. (Many developers turn their nose up at this, only to find that maintaining their site becomes a huge burden…)

• The single most important step to take with your blog even BEFORE you buy a domain name or draft that first “hello world” post. Skip this and you may end up starting over from scratch. Get it right, and creating your site becomes much, much easier

• Why the common approach of using a blog as a place to “park” code samples and snippets from your latest projects doesn’t cut it, and the 5 ways that your blog can propel you forward in your career

By the time we’re done, you’ll have a blog you’ll be proud to show to your peers and colleagues.

This module could easily sell for as much as $147 by itself, but it’s include in the low package price.

Value: $147

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Module #4 — The Complete Guide to Getting Your Name Out There

You’ve defined your brand, and you’ve built your “home base.”

The next task is capturing the attention of your fellow developers—and the team leads and hiring managers at companies you might want to work for.

Many developers jump straight to this step without laying the groundwork that we covered in the first 3 modules. As a result they wind up running in circles—and decide that “marketing yourself doesn’t work.”

But you won’t have that problem, thanks to the firm foundation you established in modules 1-3. Now you’re in a great position, where every little bit of legwork goes a long way, and each tiny win moves you further down your chosen path.

This module is a whirlwind tour through all of the different tools you can deploy to start to build your reputation and audience. And there have never been so many ways to get your message in front of the right people.

In this 9-chapter, full color PDF I’ll show you more than 2 dozen techniques for getting people to sit up, take notice, and even start to look to you as an authoritative voice in your field.

My suggestion: Pick 2-3 methods that play to your natural strengths and interests and focus on those.

With so many options to choose from, you DON’T have to do anything that’s too far outside your comfort zone. This way you can “get your name out there” without feeling inauthentic, phony or pushy.

In this module, I’ll show you:

• A way to “cascade” wins into bigger wins, triggering a virtuous cycle where your successes quickly compound

• 2 sources for traffic that can send a flood of new readers to your blog. (Caution: this can bring your website to its knees)

• How to use multi-channel leverage to dramatically increase the impact of your online authority-building efforts

• The #1 biggest frustration of first-time bloggers, and 3 ways to zip past the “lost in the wilderness” phase that sucks the life out of most new blogs

• How to tap into “instant audiences” and get your name in front of influential developers who aren’t yet reading your blog

This book is NOT available for sale anywhere else.

Value: $29

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Get John Sonmez – How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer at the Course Farm

Module #5 — The Ultimate Developer’s Guide to Social Networks

Social media just might be the single best way to “get your name out there”—it’s so important I’ve devoted an entire module to it.

To make social media work for you (and not against you) requires a solid strategy. This module kicks off with a look at what social media can and (just as important) CAN’T do to help you build an audience and advance your career.

Then we’ll see how each social “channel” can fit into your overall plan.

You’ll also learn:

• A common social media blunder that diminishes your standing, robs you of the respect you’ve earned, and even cause your followers to feel embarrassed for you (the “kiss of death” for your career)

• What branding “puzzle pieces” you MUST have in place before you start firing off tweets

• The “thermostat principle” for turning casual acquaintances into loyal fans

• 3 often overlooked ways to build your social media following

• How to use social media to “be everywhere” without looking like an obnoxious self-promoter

This 9-chapter module is presented in a downloadable 58-page, full-color PDF.

Value: $29

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Module #6 — Resume Advice that will Make or Break You

Ever find a job that looked perfect, send in your resume, and then… Crickets?

More developers lose out on potential job opportunities due to resume mistakes than for any other reason.

Whether you’re applying for a job yourself or responding to an invitation from a company that’s eager to recruit you, there’s a lot hinging on your resume.

In module 6, I’ll show you how to steer clear of the resume mistakes that can torpedo your chance to land your dream job.

This quick-reading 14-page PDF will point out:

• The #1 resume flaw that gets your resume sent straight to the “round file” (aka the trash), never to be seen again. Avoid this and you’ll immediately eliminate half your competitors for a given position

• A resume prep protip that will save you time—while also guaranteeing you’ll be taken seriously as a candidate. (Even if you take nothing else away from this entire course, following this one pointer could be worth thousands of dollars if you put it into action)

• The job seeker blunder many developers make when scrambling for work. What seems “efficient” to you can actually make your application stink of desperation, causing an otherwise interested employer to say “Thanks, but I’ll pass”

• How applying a technique from Agile methodology to your job hunt can get you MORE interviews and offers with far LESS time and effort

• A way to shift the focus off your “thin” work experience and impress hiring managers with your skills, knowledge and work ethic (especially important for new graduates and mid-career “job switchers” looking to break into programming)

Value: $19

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With These 6 Modules You’ll Create
A Rock-Solid Foundation
For Your Career…

But I wanted to load up your “tool kit” with even more career-building tools, so here’s what I came up with:

Get John Sonmez – How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer at the Course Farm

Bonus #1 — 11 Successful Software Developers Spill Their Career Secrets

This course is like a set of Lego bricks. You can mix and match them many different ways to build the future YOU want.

That’s why I decided to sit down 1-on-1 with 11 software developers to find out how they have applied these principles in their own careers.

The programmers you’ll meet in these interviews run the gamut from “celebrity developers” like Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin and Jeff Atwood to workaday programmers who’ve more recently discovered the power of building a brand.

In these conversations you’ll learn:

• How Uncle Bob spent 25 years as an obscure developer before stumbling into his brand, and how he “accidentally” found himself writing a book (plus some insider tips on the publishing industry)

• The savvy career move that Microsoft MVP and PluralSight author Dan Wahlin made that boosted his credibility and started his rise to prominence

• How JavaScript and Node.js maestro Derick Bailey‘s blog earned him the respect of one of his programming idols

• A powerful way to destroy writer’s block and never run out of blogging ideas from Stack Overflow founder Jeff Atwood

• How ASP.NET developer Josh Earl built an audience around a text editor that earned him more than $50,000 in side income

• Mozilla developer evangelist Christian Heilman‘s #1 recommendation for what to put on your blog that will make you stand out to potential employers

• How popular conference speaker John Papa went from unknown to in-demand, packing out rooms at major development conferences

• How Google engineer Jon Skeet became the “Chuck Norris of Programming” by helping other developers solve their toughest problems

• The techniques that .NET developer Miguel Castro used to build a high-paying business as a software consultant

• A “gross” hack that SQL DBA Pinal Dave used to grow his blog from 180 visitors in month 1 to 1.8 million users over 7 years

• How web developer and PluralSight author Rob Conery rode an open source project to prominence—and a sweet job at Microsoft

These video interviews span more than 4 hours. And each of these 11 developers value their time at a MINIMUM of $150 per hour. (Several of them bill at $250 an hour or more.)

That means this collection is easily worth $600 based on sheer “time on the clock.” (But the insights you’ll glean are worth far more that that.)

Value: $600

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Bonus #2 — Career Tools Quick Reference Guide

This 2-page PDF gives you one-click access to the 30 career-building tools and resources mentioned in the course (plus an exclusive discount to have your resume polished by a professional CV writer).

Value: $5

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Bonus #3 — 29-Step Software Developer Marketing Checklist

This checklist walks through all of the steps in the How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer system on one page.

You can print it off and hang it next to your monitor—it’s your roadmap from unknown developer starting at square one to respected expert, standing side-by-side with the top developers you admire from afar.

Value: $7

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Bonus #4 — Full Word-for-Word Video Transcripts for “Building A Brand” and “Creating A Blog” Courses

These uncut transcripts are perfect to keep handy as a quick reference when you want to refresh your memory without scrobbling through the videos.

I’d highly recommend printing these PDFs out and keeping them with you while you watch the videos. You can underline key points and make notes in the margins.

The transcription alone would normally set you back $260, but you get both transcripts as part of this package at no additional cost.

Value: $260

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Bonus #5 — Networking Do’s and Don’ts Poster

Your personal network is your #1 career asset—and an insurance policy against tough times.

This poster-sized infographic gives you 20 tips to build a far-reaching network that will bulletproof and enrich your career.

You’ll discover… The BEST time to add people to your network… A way to ask for a favor without feeling like a mooch… How to make more friends in two months than most people make in two years… And more!

Value: $7

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So Now You May Be Wondering,
How Much Will All This Cost?

All together, this package is valued at $1,279.

And to be honest, it’s worth even more than that.

This course is the sum total of the wisdom I gained over more than a decade of struggle, failure, experimentation—and eventual success.

If someone had given me this course at the start of my career, it could easily have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income, not to mention a more satisfying and fulfilling career.

For example, let’s go back to that miserable job I took in New Jersey. Knowing what I know now, I’d never have accepted $45 an hour. I was worth more than that.

Even if I’d only managed to bump my rate up a measly $5 an hour, I’d have earned an extra $8,800 over 11 months I spent there.

And if I could have negotiated my rate up to $60 an hour, that would have amounted to almost $25,000.

Are you beginning to get the picture?

Look, I’ve met and talked with thousands of developers in the Simple Programmer community, and I am continually amazed at how much untapped potential many developers have.

In fact, the biggest reason many developers are stuck in their careers is the same intelligence and love for their craft that makes them excellent programmers in the first place.

When you’re doing something you love, you don’t realize how rare and valuable your skills and knowledge truly are, and it’s easy to let yourself settle for less than you deserve.

That’s the real value of this course.I’ll show you how to raise your worth in your own eyes and in the eyes of your colleagues and future employers.

Let me put it this way:If you apply what I show you in this course, you could easily earn yourself an additional 2% raise on your next performance review.

And if you’re earning $85,000 (a mid-level developer salary in the U.S.) that means an extra $1,700 in your pocket next year.

Say the year after that you change jobs, and use your new knowledge to secure a 10% raise. That’s another $8,670, and now you’re earning $95,370.

Think that sounds far fetched?

Recently I got an email from a Simple Programmer fan who used what I’d taught him to change jobs twice in less than 1 month—and increase his income by 300%! (More on this in a bit…)

So given all that…

How much would YOU invest to secure returns like this?

I know I’d happily have paid $1,000 to have someone show me the ropes early in my career, and I would have earned that back dozens of times over.

Now when considering how to price this course, I realized that charging $1,000 would put this knowledge out of reach for most developers—the very people I wanted to help.

And even $500 can be a stretch if you’re not being paid what you’re really worth at your current job.

So after a lot of thought, I decided to set the price at an affordable