Another side of the coin is at $100/week that's $5k a year. What if you 'worked on your career' and got a $5k raise? Do that once and that $5k will be there every year from that point on.
On the other hand $100/wk now + interest is worth more than a $5k bump some months from now distributed over the following 12 months.
Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
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Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#12Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#13Make some extra change, develop your social skills.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#14Off 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…
What are some examples of this?
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand $100/wk now + interest is worth more than a $5k bump some months from now distributed over the following 12 months.
This isn't true on the span of a single year due to market volatility.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#16Another side of the coin is at $100/week that's $5k a year. What if you 'worked on your career' and got a $5k raise? Do that once and that $5k will be there every year from that point on.
I guess that was just a long winded way of saying: I understand where this is coming from, but in some situations the logical next step may actually be a side gig :-).
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#17a slightly less dumb idea is to write a book. it's more upfront/unpaid work than when doing gigs, and more risk because it's up to you to create a good story, but significantly less risk than building a SaaS system. I've self-published five books so far, and books have three benefits over the gig economy idea:
1) you get to learn a ton of new stuff while researching for the book. writing a book is effectively forcing yourself to learn
2) even if books do moderately well, when you self-publish you retain most of the profit. my passive income from previously published books is roughly 3-4K USD per month now
3) books have an extra effect that they tend to bring name recognition and incoming work for consulting, and that can last a few years even if you don't plan to freelance and work as a consultant at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#18I've been doing small consulting projects off and on for the past 20 years. It brings in between $10k to $50k/year in additional income. Average is probably closer to $20k.
Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#19Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?
#20One 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.
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 existing curriculum.
I got the sense that the OP was looking for "dumb" easy ways to generate $100/week.