I am an experienced developer (11y) trying to earn some money on the side.
I am looking for some tips what could I do. The reason I said "easy" in the title is because I have a full time job, so I can't commit to multi-month projects full time.
I earned some good money on Topcoder before, but currently there are only a very few projects listed.
I am not a good speaker, so things like Youtube channel, or streaming is out of the picture, I am not comfortable uploading videos of myself.
I checked freelancer websites, but competition is crazy there (developing a full-fledged ecommerce web application for $100, and such)
Are there any other good websites like Topcoder? What do YOU do to earn money on the side?
Edit: For suggestions about the US: I am actually living in Canada. If you have any Canada specific, please suggest :)
Beekeeping can offer a relaxing, nature-oriented antidote to the stresses of coding, and moreover, there is a burgeoning market for smart apiary technology. Bee mortality rates have increased over recent years for numerous reasons, and technology is beginning to find ways to address these problems.
As a developer, you could design systems to monitor hive health, honey production levels or even bee activity. This data can be used to predict illnesses, optimize honey production, or understand more about bee behavior, providing valuable insights to the beekeeping community as well as researchers.
This unique combination of software development and beekeeping could potentially be a lucrative side gig. Not to mention, a proportion of the honey could be sold for additional profit or used for personal consumption.
So, while it may seem far fetched, your coding skills could help save the global bee population while offering a calming, profitable new hobby.
(:
If you do go this route: Buy used equipment, advertise swarm catching and try to get to a point where you're comfortable selling a few families each year (remember to have them checked for deceases before they leave your apiary).
I also saw nothing done in the experiment to separate whether the observed effects were caused by vibration, noise, or electromagnetic effects.
I sincerely read it with an open mind, but it doesn't look like a well-designed study.
Unfortunately I am living in a house with a very small yard, so at the moment it is impossible for me to pursue bee keeping.
But, where can I learn more about this? What are the best resources?
On the other hand, you have the two worst possible problems: staking your money daily + chasing clients for money.
My first company (Skritter.com) fits this mold. It's been growing slowly, but steadily for more than 15 years now. In the first couple of years we were able to generate low five-figures per month, now it's substantially higher.
There are other ways to earn cash outside of tech, but most of the common suggestions (drop shipping, affiliate marketing, laundromats, etc) are mostly terrible if you really do the analysis.
For better or worse, low risk generally means low upside!
My problem is I am very bad at coming up with a business idea in the first place. (or app idea, or website idea...) I am not sure why, probably my brain is wired differently.
Shameless plug, but I write semi-regular "Steal This Business Idea" posts on my blog. This is an example: https://overthinkingmoney.com/2023/04/25/steal-this-startup-... They're all examples of businesses that I think have promise, but I don't have the skills, experience, insight or all three to execute.
1. Are you doing everything you can to put yourself on an upwards trajectory towards a promotion and/or a raise? You spend most of your waking hours on your current job, and the easiest way to increase your life time earnings is bending the curve here.
2. Have you been interviewing to make sure you're getting fair market value and have? If you are not growing as well as you're capable of in your current role, a new role is a potential option. This introduces risk.
3. Have you taking a knife to your expense list and maxed out 401k and HSA contributions? Every dollar you don't contribute there is one that you're giving away to the government, so make sure you're using all the tools available to optimize.
4. Have you begun to invest in real estate? In the USA, the existence of federally backed homebuyer loans and 1031 swaps is an incredible tool to build wealth, and the leverage from the loan is even partially tax deductible on the interest side. You of course need to be careful here given the choppy state of the macro environment and real estate market so that you don't end up underwater.
5. Are you investing surplus earnings into a safe ETF? Ensuring that your earnings are working for you making passive income from the market is critical for long term earnings.
None of these approaches are quick fixes, but they're all time tested approaches than anyone can use.
People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side, like drop-shipping garbage or starting some weird self-help YouTube channel. In the world of engineering, I think it's way more useful to focus on your core skillset and learn new things around that.
That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.
Would you mind sharing more details? Story? What is the app? I am really curious :) If no, that's fine, thanks for the tip anyways. I will definitely check out the website. My biggest problem is coming up with ideas for an app/business.
I'm in the same boat. For me at least, I assume that any app that's making money must have been created by someone with much better skills than me. Someone shared that website on HN a few weeks ago and they just blog about various solo developer projects that earn 4-6 figures a month. Seeing those projects gives me ideas and confidence to try something myself.
[1] https://www.indiehackers.com/products?commitment=side-projec...
Yes. I have no promotion prospects and no new-job prospects, so I do what I have to do to survive: make my own way, with my own "side hustles".
However, you know how to hold a job. You've had one for 11+ years. So, just get a second one. You could be making double your current salary within as little as 4-6 weeks after interviews etc. That's likely the fastest path if you need money quickly.
I can't see it working in any other way. I've heard about this before, but I think you need a huge amount of luck to make this work.
Edit: I mean yeah, if you are willing to work 14-16 hours you can make it work, by landing the jobs in different time zones.
Which is not to say that it’s a bad idea necessarily for the stated goal.
Seek out local folks who wants to go online selling their tupperware, tobaco, small services, books, photos, small mom-n-pop coffee/fastfood shops etc and offer to build them a site they can maintain.
Then buy them a subscription on no-code sites(wix, weebly, squarespace etc) and get a commission for the initial setup. Worked for my nephew who just wanted something he could do on the nights to save up some money for his summer vacation. He still gets referral offers from folks who are happy with their sites and their friends also want similar sites.
I tried this before, but the problem is, the reason many people/businesses have shitty websites is that they are not willing to spend money on it. I approached a few local shops (e.g. a comic book store) to create a cool website for them for a few hundred bucks, but they wanted it for free. If I would be a junior developer looking for stuff to my portfolio, sure. But I'm not, and not willing to work for free for anybody.
However, I might have given up too easily. I think I'll give this another shot
I think this price range will push away serious businesses. I knew a consulting company that had hard time getting customers when they were charging under $1000 for simple WordPress sites. They had better luck when they raised their prices to $5000. It was 10 years ago for simple WordPress sites.
A much better return is expected by building a web site to sell the product or service yourself. Wether it's tobacco, tupperware, books etc.
The reason these shops couldn’t do it themselves is not in software expertise. They just couldn’t work properly. Not all people are successful merchants. When I learned how they did accounting, it made me laugh: they simply called the guy and asked for money. They didn’t know how much money there is, most of them simply relied on the guy’s accounting, trusting him absolutely. He took not only web expertise from them, he took everything except producing or importing goods, including pricing. This worked because of his religion, he was very serious about no mistake in accounting, cause they are basically his brothers under god. Both sides were happy about that.
Thanks for the tip. I might give this a shot. This is something that fits my needs, you can do it in your own pace, remotely, gig work. would be perfect if I was a good writer (and native English speaker haha)
Maybe earning money on the internet, even with advanced skills and experience has just been met with so much global competition that it's just not that valuable a skill anymore, maybe the monopolies took over e-trade and maybe most users became trapped in silos or on giga-services so the money is really in influencing, not curating, building or creating from scratch?
Rather depressing.
So, I looked at all the certifications available and plotted a path through them that gets me the minimum amount of points required to reach the highest bonus tier each fiscal year. It's been, by _far_, the most lucrative "side hustle" i've ever had. I study for, and take, about 4-5 cert tests per year and am on year #2 of the program. If they run the program for 5 years and I keep dropping the whole bonus into my investment account I'll have enough to pay for college for both of my boys (currently in middle school).
/I'm 47 and still paying my student loan, i don't want that hell for my kids.
I primarily provide services related to 3D ,unreal engine and unity
Feel free to send me an email contact[at]rukhtech.com
The issue for me is that, since I’m not in the development world, I don’t have any mentors or people to talk to and bounce ideas off of. I’ve been looking into getting an internship at a software company but those are rare for evening time remote work since that’s all I would be able to lend my self to because of my full time job.
I think I’m heading the right way but there’s just hurdles that need to be jumped over.
All that to say, try a different field than software development? A reverse of what I’m doing?
I don't have problems with learning and building the apps, my problem is how to come up with an app idea that people would actually use, and I could monetize it somehow.
But coming up with that idea, executing it correctly and having a whole lot of luck is out of reach for the majority.
For the same surface-level stuff, yeah. Other, in-depth issues, not so much.
> people show off their massive payment bug find, but in reality its hours of work for almost no payout
They don't advertise it as some "get money quick" thing just because they show off their payouts.
I occasionally find issues which make me $100, $200, $300 for a few minutes of work, it's not much but it's something.
Wait tables. A lot of service based businesses are struggling to find good staff. Go for a higher end high average ticket place, and or places that close relatively early so you're not stuck there too late.
Usually at first there's not a lot of quality shifts open but also, frequently, you can pick up shifts from other people and a lot of restaurants are okay with having a few staff who have few regular shifts but whom they can rely on in a pinch. You can make decent cash. The work can be pretty "fun" and the time tends to go pretty quick.
Now learning stuff like AI, or Cyber Security could, but that's a very long process, and basically a change of careers. (I'm not against that, but wouldn't call that "easy")
Mentoring is easy, vs. say starting Dropbox
AI would interest me, but it would take many years of learning I guess. I am not very good at math, so I would have to re-learn that.
Take hourly projects instead of fixed price.
