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Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

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Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#211

Post by tayo42 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #167

I feel like there's heaps of opportunity to make small apps to help streamline processes at boring regular mom n' pop small businesses. The trick is uh, how do you find out about their problems to even know that you have an ability to help? It's a tough problem here and I'm not sure how to solve it other than just already knowing people at those small businesses and talking with them about their problems.

Ive thought about this in the past, my idea was to go get part time jobs as research in places i wouldn't normally run into.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#212

Post by trap_goes_hot »

Reading your post, I think for you - consider working only for a paycheck, rather than wanting to work for nebulous concepts such as 'good work', 'passion', 'fun', etc. Work a 9-5, go home and enjoy your time outside of work. Just be a solid, dependable person, and give no reason to be fired. Don't try to overachieve, because that can lead to additional responsibilities/stress/etc. This type of person is very much required in every single company.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#213

Post by tayo42 »

joshxyz wrote: post #36
joshxyz wrote: post #10

learn sales, it fixes everything.

OP, sales is a skill that has the highest ROI of all. life is sales, it's how you pitch yourself to a company or a client, how you negotiate for a larger salary, how you identify the pain points of your clients, how you screen if they're the right fit for you, how you prioritize if you're focusing on the right stuff. even dating the right person is sales, also how you convince your kid to beush his/her teeth every af…

Yeah from reading the comments all around here i think im convinced picking up a book or something would be interesting and at least a long term skill to develop!

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#215

Post by dools »

moneywoes wrote: post #140
dools wrote: post #29

Being good at making other people money is actually a skill you can monetise. That’s basically what B2B software is: making money for other people. It’s the very definition of value creation. So focus on how you can make money for other people, then scale that up in a way that allows you to charge less than the value created but more than the cost to produce. Also don’t try to think of an idea, just start talking to…

Any insight on the reaching out to business owners part? Not getting anywhere with cold emails

Networking events such as BNI or meetups

Chamber of commerce events

Go door to door

LinkedIn messages and/or get introduced through shared connections

Facebook communities and/or other online forums where you can answer questions and build relationships

Phone calls

Better cold emails!

Friends and family

Also whenever you speak to someone and have a good conversation with them, ask that person for the contact details of someone else who might be interested in speaking

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#216

Post by scambier »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #205

> monetizing hobbies I find two issues with this ( disclaimer , My "hobby" is coding, so I guess I've been monetizing it, all my adult life): 1) Once someone starts paying you, they get to exert their influence on your work, and it becomes a lot less "hobbyish." One of the biggest joys in my life, these days, is not having managers destroying my work. 2) Delivering ship software requires a lot of "not fun" stuff. In…

> 1) Once someone starts paying you, they get to exert their influence on your work, and it becomes a lot less "hobbyish."

Definitely. I've been working on a free open-source project for 6 months. Last week, a user came with a feature request, and stated that they were willing to pay me. That could sound nice, but I immediately thought "nope". I told them that donations were appreciated, but I wasn't going to do commissioned work.

I don't want that kind of responsibility for my hobby projects.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#217

Post by pjlegato »

specproc wrote: post #24

Non-profits are very different to corporate environments. Not without their own issues and bullshit, and less well-paid, but considerably more easy going and potentialy a lot more fun. Some people like the idea of doing something meaningful, I've been in the sector too long to care about that. What I do find is that the sort of problems you're facing are far more interesting. For example, I spend all day trying to fi…

OP said they are disgusted with politics and bureaucracy. Non-profits are (if possible) EVEN WORSE on those axes than commercial businesses.

Since there is no profit-driven forcing function, ALL operations devolve into pure politics and bureaucracy.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#218

Post by alin23 »

tayo42 wrote: post #197
alin23 wrote: post #25

Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to bui…

This is interesting, along with the discussion it started below. Thanks! Im a windows and linux (and andorid)user so I'm not to in tune with the mac world How did you find paying users( or just users? i see you have free trials and free tiers) Does the app store offer that much discoverability?

For the first 3 years, Lunar was my only app, and it was completely free and not on the App Store. I just had a one page website with the app UI screenshot and a download link.

Since the app was free, I didn't seek out users too much. I just shared it on the usual channels of the time and forgot about it: ProductHunt, HN, Lobsters, Reddit

It became popular by itself because it solves a real need that people have and after picking up a bit of steam, it gets recommended a lot.

After launching rcmd, my first App Store app, it felt like it entered a black hole, no discoverability whatsoever. Until an App Store editor placed it in front: https://twitter.com/alinp32/status/1479462684315865099

That generated a large peak in downloads, and people started recommending it again. Blog posts on technical challenges I solved while developing the apps also help a lot but they're high effort and I need 2-3 months to accumulate enough research and knowledge for them.

Before Mac, I was both a Windows and Linux power user. I never saw someone buy a thing on Linux, not that it doesn't happen, but it's a rare occurence so I don't think there's much business there.

On Windows however, people buy software all the time.

Find the Windows inconvenience that annoys you the most, build something to fix it and share it with the world for free. If a handful of people find it useful, chances are there might be tens of thousands more like that who would even pay for you to work and fix more related annoyances that they have.

I have no idea in what state Windows UI programming is nowadays though, it wasn't pleasant last time I tried it 5 years ago. But even system tray utilities with minimal UI can be very useful.

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#219

Post by leobg »

karaterobot wrote: post #149

> freelance - compared to just working rates seem low and its hard to find work from what ive seen Freelancing money can be very, very good. It does take work to find jobs initially, but often at a certain point your referrals start kicking in, and you've got to increase your rate because you've got too much work. Not that it's easy, but it's a good racket, and during economies in which companies may not have budget…

So how do you find your first gigs? Upwork?

Re: Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

#220

Post by leobg »

unixhero wrote: post #170

I am amazing at shell scripting, in particular bash. It has generated thousands of dollars in side quest style work at large $orporations. Knowing a thing or two about Python and Pandas and Sqlite has also been very profitable.

How do you know what problems these corporations have that you can fix? Or how do these corporations find out that they have a problem, and that you are the guy who can solve it?
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