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Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

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111–115 of 115 posts

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#111
post #33

On this topic, I've always wondered how profitable it is to develop a site meant to make ad money. People love to talk about their interesting, cutting edge projects on HN, but no one talks about making websites whose main purpose is ad revenue. The web is littered with clickbait sites and sites that just make money off of Amazon affiliate links. The people that create them usually don't share their revenue, although…

People have been doing this for years and years. It's a grind and it's very boring and usually done by people that don't have that much technical skill. Go check out the Wicked Fire forums if you're interested.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#112

If it would be easy to make $100 per month, then it would be easy to repeat the process 1000 times and become rich. There's no such things as easy when it comes to making money. You'd have to put time and energy into it.

1000 months = "Get rich in only 83 years!" Also, making an extra $100/month is pretty trivial.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#113
post #23

Donate plasma. While donating read (instead of during your "work" time). EDIT: This assumes the time and distance to travel to and from the center is short.

It would be cool to know how to regenerate one's plasma very fast in order to be able to donate plasma more often. But even if those methods exist, they probably cost money too thus decreasing overall profit.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#114
So this was one of my last year's goal. Here is how I achieved that $XXX/week extra in saving.

1. Switch to debit card and pre-assign how much you want to spend/month: A translation I made on Credit card was paid automatically in full by the end of the next month (due date), that made me not think about what I am spending on at all. Using debit card (simple.com) made me think after every transaction.

2. Set goals if you want to buy something non essential: I use simple.com for this. If I wanted to buy something, I would first set a goal that I want to save up $300 in N days. This reduced by impulsive buying habit. I still buy few books randomly but you can cheat at times (try BookBub.com, really saves money on ebooks).

3. Map out your cashflow: Just create a note of your incoming cash (after tax). Now send x% of high yield saving account (I use barclays bank), x% of monthly expenses (rent/mortgage/food etc), keep a little in your checking account. This helps you understand where your money is going. Its ok if you are not able to save much, the key is first tracking it manually (mint.com etc is great but start with a simple note).

4. Invest a part of your cashflow: I am not a huge fan of investing all my savings (after 401k): So I invest about 10% of my cash after tax to an index fund on Vanguard (you can use betterment/wealthfront too).

These 4 things gave a much better overview of my finances and where my money is going. This doesn't mean stop spending less (difference b/w being frugal vs being cheap) but at-least start understanding how to deal with money.

Hope it helps.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#115
post #109

One thing I wished I had done earlier is study money enough to have figured out my favored investment vehicle and how to best utilize it, preferably before my first dollar earned at any job/trade. That and the tax code (incentives) of my country/state (US). Of the main three (building businesses, real estate, and paper assets/commodities/derivatives) I figured out that I personally favor real estate. So that is where…

You need a lot of capital to get involved in the above, no?

We purchased a single family home in Florida for $11K down, so not necessarily. It currently cash flows for around $200 a month (all expenses paid, including property management - we live in California).

There are also ways to partner with others to combine a down payment, as well as putting together a deal with no money down (funded by others). It is incredibly important to study/investigate ahead of time before creating a deal with more than one partner, as there are financing rules that may apply (for example, the SEC can be involved with syndication, if it gets to that).

There is quite a bit of money in the world looking for good investments, so if you can become someone who puts together good investment deals, attracting capital will not be an issue. Some have started by creating a deal where they had no money down but instead received 10% or 20% for putting the deal together and making it happen. The next deal can be a higher percentage (success builds trust), until eventually you have built up enough capital to be doing your own deals, if that is your preference.

The team you build is more important - Attorneys, CPAs, Property Managers, Insurance Brokers, etc.

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