Monetizing OpenSees is a great idea that we at the OpenSees House have always encouraged. Here, we want to guide you on how to generate income with OpenSees. Doing OpenSees projects has become a major source of income for many Master’s and PhD graduates in civil engineering today. These individuals aim to create a remote job or freelance career using the experience gained during their academic studies. If you’re considering joining this group of people, we encourage you and say it’s a great idea.
What product should we sell?
OpenSees House has extensive experience in teaching OpenSees. This experience shows that sustainable income lies in learning and teaching combined with passion and sincerity. Our reasoning for you is clear: the more valuable your product is, the more benefit you’ll gain from selling it. Knowledge is undoubtedly the most valuable asset you can sell on the path to earning income with OpenSees.
In contrast, earning income from OpenSees by offering ready-made projects only has a one-time value for your audience. As a result, your audience is willing to pay less for it. On the other hand, if you are passionate about gaining and sharing knowledge, taking on other people’s projects will create problems for you. Why? Because of the special nature of research projects, which we will explain to you.
Problems with Taking on Projects
As mentioned in the section on conducting OpenSees projects, predicting the completion time for an OpenSees project is challenging. Now, if you take on the responsibility of the project honestly, what happens? You might be lucky, and the work progresses smoothly, meeting your time estimate. However, our experience suggests that the likelihood of this happening is less than 30%. So, what happens if unforeseen obstacles arise?
In the research process, success goes hand in hand with challenges and trial and error. You must enjoy wrestling with complex problems to solve them. But how can you enjoy it when someone is impatiently and anxiously waiting for the work to be finished? How can you concentrate when time passing means financial loss for you? And what about the other projects you have also committed to?
The workload pressure will often become so overwhelming that you’ll be forced to choose one of two paths. The first path is preserving your passion and peace of mind by ignoring the client’s anxiety and your financial losses. In this case, you’ll need to endure client complaints and financial setbacks to maintain your “self-satisfaction.” The second path is turning away from your “sense of self-confidence” and cutting corners instead of solving the problem. However, this choice will leave you with the unpleasant feeling of compromised professional pride. You might think the latter is easier to endure, but our experience has shown that this is not the case at all.
Selling Knowledge Instead of Projects
In general, the experience of completing approximately 70% of OpenSees student projects tends to be challenging. These difficulties will eventually discourage you from pursuing income generation through OpenSees. So, how can one succeed on this path? Our recommended solution is offering knowledge instead of executing projects—precisely what we propose to our audience in the OpenSees consultation section.
If you are also interested in joining us and earning income by sharing your expertise, please visit the Collaboration with OpenSees Home section.