I'd like to hear people's opinions or experiences on what I could be doing in my spare dev time to earn money outside of my fulltime work. I'm a senior iOS developer with a well paying 9-5 job, however my wife has decided to leave her full-time job to pursue her career as an artist, and so I'd like to be able to makeup somewhat our drop in income.
Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#2Kind of the obvious suggestion here, since you're a mobile developer, make an awesome app. I know, it's not that simple. I'm not a mobile developer, so I honestly don't know how not simple it is. Just a thought though.
As a senior developer, you could try consulting on the side. Do you network? If you're good at what you do, there's probably someone you know or someone you know who knows someone who might be able to use your expertise. It never hurts to ask around.
That's all I can think of. They're probably not new ideas for you though. Hey, you can always contribute to open source software. It won't make you any money, but you might get your name out there and help a cool project out in the process. You might even learn some new things to put to good use in your career.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#3Freelance on the side seems like the obvious answer.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#4I hope it is just loose language, but it should be both of you who decided to support your wife's dream to be an artist. I can't imagine making such a decision on my own and expecting my wife to work extra to make up for our loss of income.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#5Probably freelancing via something like Upwork. I work an additional 15 hours a week on top of my current job, and the pay seems quite competitive (I mainly take Laravel jobs). The service seems way less 'Wild West' than Freelancer does (which I've had bad experiences with in the past).
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#6Use dev time to dev something that makes money ;)
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#7From experience, I'd opt for freelancing / consulting over "make an app" or "contribute to open source".
Making an app is great when it works, but it's not guaranteed to earn anything. It can take a while to find the right product. Even then, you're better off having a diversified portfolio of products, it's unlikely that one product alone will replace a full-time income, and they'll have individual dips & peaks in sales / subscriptions (several products helps make your income more steady).
Contributing to open source guarantees you won't earn anything upfront. Freelancing / consulting is far more immediate income, you either have a paying client or you don't. It's possible that some of your prospective clients won't even know what open source is, let alone be able to judge the quality of your code.
Of course, there are lots of ways to earn income that don't involve code. Getting casual work at Starbucks is an option. Being a day trader on stock markets might be another. Not everything has to be solved with code.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#8If you had all the money you could ever want, what would you be doing?
Then, if you could do that in your 12 hours of free time, you'd have turned 12 hours of your time into all the money you could ever want, and used it to do whatever it is you want to do.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#9Probably freelancing via something like Upwork. I work an additional 15 hours a week on top of my current job, and the pay seems quite competitive (I mainly take Laravel jobs). The service seems way less 'Wild West' than Freelancer does (which I've had bad experiences with in the past).
Which websites do you use to do freelancing? I had a very brief attempt at it, but it seems there's so many other people bidding that the chance of you getting chosen is ridiculously tiny.
Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?
#10app store... write your own app, submit it, do some marketing by putting up a website (wordpress template = 10 min kick ass website), run some FB/youtube marketing for like $100 and you're set. If you end up having a great idea it'll pay off and you could make 10 times what you're making as a slave.. I mean, as an employee. It's like 1-2 month of development and the rest is passive income. You'll have 12h of free time looking at when you could quite your 9 to 5 to go full time on the app store. If you don't make a dollar with your app you'll get to learn all the process from A to Z which is gold. So you'll never lose your time.