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Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
51–60 of 115 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#52Off the top of my head: 1. Consulting 2. Small SaaS (few hours per week for maintenance, bug fixes & new features) - more challenging than (1) 3. Teaching - only if you're naturally inclined/extrovert (this is a big space and I'm starting to believe that even a medium resume is enough to teach to people who never saw a command prompt before) 4. Blog in a semi-professional way (requires passion/research) 5. Write a bo…
>Blog in a semi-professional way (requires passion/research) What are some examples of this?
>What are some examples of this?
A friend of mine makes a pretty decent living wage in CA (not bay area however) running a relatively small blog https://opentrackers.org/
It's pretty easy to make decent amount of money running blogs if you're willing to do a bit of research first.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#53Focus on cutting unnecessary expenses... As that serves double duty: saves that $100 and simultaneously reduces the savings burden to retire. As for "dumb" things you can do: cook more at home, pregame before going out, do activities that are cheap or free (eg bike rides instead of theaters), bike more instead of driving everywhere, read library books, etc (The benefit of these over "do consulting" answers also lies…
The OP is trying to save for retirement, when I think he's assuming he will have zero income. Slashing expenses and living frugally is always a good idea. But if you're trying to save up a nest egg, you can't cut your way to savings.
I think the idea is to save the money that you cut? If your income stays the same but your monthly expenses drop $x per month, that would be the same savingswise as earning x dollars more per month and keeping your expenses the same.
Ain't no law that says you have to spend everything you earn.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The OP is trying to save for retirement, when I think he's assuming he will have zero income. Slashing expenses and living frugally is always a good idea. But if you're trying to save up a nest egg, you can't cut your way to savings.
I think the idea is to save the money that you cut? If your income stays the same but your monthly expenses drop $x per month, that would be the same savingswise as earning x dollars more per month and keeping your expenses the same. Ain't no law that says you have to spend everything you earn.
I'm with you on that. But if your goal is to have savings set aside so that one day you can afford to live on those savings (in "retirement"), then savings alone won't get you there. you need to have actual savings.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#55Make a website that focuses on making a certain part of an upcoming videogame easier. Add ads. Make a Reddit post. $$$.
Personal example:
http://cases.goaggro.com/ (CS:GO case opening simulator)
Other examples:
http://www.survive-ark.com/taming-calculator/ (ARK taming calculator)
http://www.wowhead.com/ (World of Warcraft loot database)
Any of the wikias that popup for a game are also good examples. I feel someone could make a targeted wiki for a game, add their own ads, and become #1 community resource for a game by doing it early enough. Who doesn't want to be #1 on Google for " Guide" with an ad per page?
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#56I think the simplest is doing small consulting projects. There are often people looking to launch an app or build a prototype or whatever it is where you can work a couple hours a week on it and make a pretty good rate. In my experience if you are a pretty good developer and good at communicating, you can find small bits of work without much effort. Now I'm doing a lot of consulting so charge more, but previously I w…
How did you get these connections? Where do you get to know so many people who would pay to get software prototypes done?
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#57One classic example would be to spend time teaching others. Whether this is generating an online course or tutoring/teaching in person, $100 a week is a pretty realistic goal if you're willing to spend the time. Still, it's probably a more efficient use of time to either work towards a better paying career move for long term income, or just cut expenses.
> Whether this is generating an online course Seems like an incredible amount of work for not a lot of payoff. I attempted to create an online course before and stopped around 3 months in because I couldn't see an end in sight. The amount of research and planning that goes into a quality online course is massive. This is why most online courses are through larger organizations where professors are teaching an already…
It really depends on what type of online course you're talking about. A MOOC-style course is certainly all the rage these days, but a good old fashioned text course is still marketable, whether you promote it as a book or a blog-style site.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#58Well, I made dumb website just for fun. I thought it will be fun only to me and few other people. Then after one year I decided to put ads there, just to cover hosting.
Now it is making 35$ monthly, completely passive and growing. Not much, but it's paying Linode server and domain cost for all other websites I have. http://random.country/
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the idea is to save the money that you cut? If your income stays the same but your monthly expenses drop $x per month, that would be the same savingswise as earning x dollars more per month and keeping your expenses the same. Ain't no law that says you have to spend everything you earn.
I'm with you on that. But if your goal is to have savings set aside so that one day you can afford to live on those savings (in "retirement"), then savings alone won't get you there. you need to have actual savings.
That last sentence seems a bit tautological. Can we settle on "your income has to exceed your expenses" as the best way to build up savings?
EDIT: spelling
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm with you on that. But if your goal is to have savings set aside so that one day you can afford to live on those savings (in "retirement"), then savings alone won't get you there. you need to have actual savings.
That last sentence seems a bit tautological. Can we settle on "your income has to exceed your expenses" as the best way to build up savings? EDIT: spelling
Ok, yes I get what you're saying now. Trim expenses and pocket the incremental short-term savings into longer-term savings. Sure that can work every bit as much as finding additional income assuming expenses don't change. My tautology referred to different usages of the word "savings". In one case it referred to saving money on something, vs. storing money in a long-term savings account. The problem with English is that savings is used in different contexts here. But yes you're right!