I used to compete on Topcoder.com while I was in college. This site is what I would consider a 2 way asset for its owners. Topcoder turns a profit by matching top developers with companies that are looking for the best of the best. Topcoder.com recently caught my eye with this news release.
MSN is thrilled to sponsor 8 SRMs and dish out $40,000 in cash prizes to the TopCoder Community. Compete in an MSN-sponsored SRM and you could win big. MSN is looking for top talent, like you, to help them with the challenges they face every day. So don’t forget to enter the arena an hour before each match to hear what they have to say about their job opportunities.
***TopCoder will be giving away $5,000 per match sponsored by MSN***
So how can you profit from this?
First, you can compete in these upcoming SRM’s (Single Round Matches). Just realize the competition is fierce and you are going up against the Waterloo spoon benders (Matrix joke). Its fun, but this method is not an online asset. In the end it is still one unit of work, one unit of pay… maybe.
Another route is to compete in the Component development projects. I think the royalties incentive makes it worth taking a risk and competing. Its rare for a professional software developer to make royalities, you never get repaid for the work you do at your day job. Here a single investment of time could create a new income stream for a talented developer. This is a high-risk attempt to acquire an asset and yet again I’m sure there is some stiff competition here.
I think its best to learn from the overall idea of this website, this is yet another system that brings two groups of people together and turns a profit from their interactions.
