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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?

#231

Post by domlebo70 »

0atman wrote: post #12
0atman wrote: post #11

Coding pairs well and elevates many other side-hustles, I think. Nearly every job can benefits from automation, and if it can't, then the logical thinking that coding requires will improve it in some way. I paired coding with fiction writing and made a scifi podcast, which now represents 10% of my monthly income after two years! I wrote up my experience and advice here, if you're interested in the details https://www…

More recently (March of this year) I also started to teach what I can about coding on my YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/c/NoBoilerplate ) Which has seen enormous positive feedback - and youtube ads are very fair (50/50 split between you and Google), and you don't have to chase the money, it's all handled for you! Another 10% of my monthly income comes from YT, I'd guess. The key with a youtube channel is t…

Love your channel! I'd love to see less Rust focused videos however. I feel like you've exhausted that avenue, personally.

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

#232

Post by unixhero »

leobg wrote: post #220
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?

Short answer, find something to automate and get permission to work on it. Even better if you are already a consultant at the company. Typically at a large project where there are gaps and developers are miles away. Will the client pay for your time, while you work out the code to get the functionality you want to run? The answer has 100% been yes, they WANT code and business logic implemented.

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

#233

Post by mr_gibbins »

I have tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, to maintain interest in full time office-based positions. I just can't. I've never held a FTE position longer than 3 years. I'm nearing 40, by the way.

I use my skills, such as they are, in contract positions. I've been working continuously since 15 or so and aside from a brief spell of 4 months, never been out of work. When I became experienced/qualified enough to use my programming/engineering skills, after another failed FTE position I went contracting and never looked back.

Once again, recently, I have failed to engage with my latest run at an FTE role. I can't be doing with the monumentally slow pace of my employer, the power structures, the bureaucracy, the 45-minute daily standups (yes, I know), the broken business processes. So I'm back to contracting.

Some people aren't cut out for office life. Contracting is office life, sure, but you dictate the terms, you (generally) dictate the pay, you stay when you find a good team and walk when you want to. The problems are harder, you're generally solving issues the client can't solve themselves and bureaucratic blockers magically disappear when the client remembers you're costing them three figures a day.

LinkedIn jobs (HEAVILY filtered) tends to be my go-to when I go shopping for a new client, but there's plenty of contract-specific talent networks and bodyshop consultancies who you can find work from.

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

#234

Post by stack_framer »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #233

I have tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, to maintain interest in full time office-based positions. I just can't. I've never held a FTE position longer than 3 years. I'm nearing 40, by the way. I use my skills, such as they are, in contract positions. I've been working continuously since 15 or so and aside from a brief spell of 4 months, never been out of work. When I became experienced/qualified enough to use…

I've never contracted, but I'm in the exact same boat with regards to being someone else's full-time employee. Lately I've been struggling to stay even one year—I've been with 4 companies over the past 4 years! I'm a "flight risk". :)

And it's not that I don't want to work. I put 3-4 hours per weeknight into side projects, and another 8-12 hours on weekends. I have yet to make money on the side, but I keep hoping that something will succeed and I can run my own ship.

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

#235

Post by ensemblehq »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #73
alin23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also made tens of dollars a month with https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd for the first few months ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The good thing is that usually you just keep growing from this. Now it’s making $1k per month, mostly because of sharing it with the world and implementing recurrent annoyances shared by users. It’s important to have a way for users to contact you. I love Formspark.io for that, just slap a contact form on the app…

Thanks for following up. One q: I suck at building landing pages. Do you have any tips here? I have some ok-ish copy already distinct from the App Store page, but I hate finagling HTML.

You can also explore buying pre-made themes from ThemeForest. I’ve bought a few to various landing pages in the past.

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

#236

Post by marvindanig »

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…

building for app-stores is also kinda niche sorta these days. most businesses want to be on the web mainly with a presence the app stores. i make about $10k each month with Red Goose [1] with focus on the app stores.

[1] https://goose.red

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

#237

Post by andelink »

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…

Your lunar app looks awesome, excited to try it out!

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

#238

Post by xwowsersx »

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…

Love lunar! I have my shortcuts/hotkeys configured and it's a breeze to switch between super dim, medium brightness, and full-on-hyper-bright-it's-time-to-crank-some-work-out brightness. Thanks for this great app.

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

#239

Post by danielheath »

uhtred wrote: post #128
danielheath wrote: post #93

> The thought of returning to corporate working kind of disgusts me. daily meetings, middle management bs, politics, bureaucracy... im sure your familiar with the typical complaints. Have you considered working in a company that isn't like that? Things to look for: * Ownership: The owner should be the person running the business. * Size: Fewer than 20 employees. Ideally two or three; consider being the first. * Reven…

I've worked in small (less than 20 employees) companies and although there were no grooming / standup / retro meetings (i.e. all the bullshit agile stuff I can't stand), it was replaced with other bullshit like having to answer the phone and deal with passive aggressive customers, zero benefits other than salary (no 401k etc), an owner who said things like "microsoft can build excel, why can't we build ", no project/…

As someone else said upthread, the character of the owner matters a great deal.
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