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Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year?

#32

Post by heliodor »

Teach courses. Udemy, Skillshare, etc. If you're in a big city, see if the co-working spaces also offer classes, then you can go teach there.

You may not realize it, but relative to ten years ago, you know a lot more, so put that knowledge in an ebook or course and sell it to people ten years younger than you.

Build mobile or web apps.

Re: Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year?

#35

Post by amalag »

jontas wrote: post #4

I used to do freelance web development on the side in addition to a full time job, and I pulled in the income numbers you're aiming for, but I must admit it was hell. There's little worse than coming home from a stressful 9 hour day at the office and realizing you need to work another 5 hours for a bitchy freelance client. Or telling your friends, no, once again, I can't come this weekend because I have to work. If y…

Probably the most common question. Where do you get clients?

I have two clients for some freelance and I do web application for them, earning me $19k over last 2 years ( plus $8k finishing in another month). They run their own businesses and they are very happy with them, but I am not sure how to expand past them. I don't think I will ever do it full time, but if I can choose the right gigs, could definitely be worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year?

#36

Post by paulrademacher »

drakaal wrote: post #20

You didn't state your current salary. If you are making $40k and want to make an extra $30-50k the answer will be very different than if you make $250k and want to make an extra $30k. My suggestion. Hire a maid. That will save you 8 hours a week. She (yes I'm sexist it will be a she) will make $15 an hour and work 4 hours saving you 8-12 hours. You can work at Radio Shack and earn $22 an hour. Working 12 hours a week…

Weird, I did this exact thing, down to the numbers, but I was young and irresponsible with my money and just wound up buying $15K worth of Radio Shack batteries that I haven't been able to unload.

Re: Ask HN: How can I make an extra 30-50k a year?

#40

Post by patio11 »

If you can design, code, and talk business goals with non-technical people, it is highly unlikely that the W-2 rate paid by your current day job is in the near ballpark of what you'd reasonably expect to achieve by going into consulting at an appreciable fraction of full-time. Quitting your job and hanging your shingle as a consultant-who-solves-business-problems-with-technology will trade a lot of the certainty of your biweekly paychecks for more occasional payments on invoices which would blow your mind.

If you add the constraint "I want to keep my day job", then I'd suggest negotiating with them (and, er, not mentioning that you're unwilling to leave them prior to having that conversation).

There are many people who have, in recent memory, made appreciable fractions of your goal numbers by taking one service offering which they'd be really good at as a technologist -- say, designing iPhone apps or what have you -- and wrapping that service into a teaching product. There are a variety of form factors: book, video course, in-person training event, online webinar, yadda yadda. This does not get less viable if you mix substantial business expertise into the offering or your promotion of it.

If you want to execute on that, I'd start building up a mailing list of people who have given you permission to talk to them about $BROAD_OUTLINE_OF_YOUR_TOPIC post-haste. Virtually no plan for building products gets worse if you have 100, 300, 500, etc people who are willing to hear from you about it.

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