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Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

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Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#11

Post by montbonnot »

SyneRyder wrote: post #7

From 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 s…

You can certainly fail on the App store if you think like you do. Nothing is easy in life, people who succeed are people who start with a positive attitude and transform a failure into a learning experience. Anyone can make it on the app store with hard work and dedication. The more you fail the better you get. The 5th, 6th app might work out. Not the first ones for sure...

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#12

Post by keithblaha »

12 hours/week doesn't sound like enough time to make any money via appstore to me, as some are suggesting. It's just enough time to freelance a bit though! You can find part time freelance work without an established network pretty easily actually. I've done this successfully for web dev work several times:

1) search angellist jobs section for companies looking to hire their first iOS dev, or to have an MVP of their app made 2) contact all of them (this is a numbers game) by pitching yourself and how you have the exact skill set they need, include a portfolio, and mention your terms up front (hours per week/desired rate/no I don't work for sweat equity)

Even people looking to hire full timers are probably desperate enough to consider taking on a part timer, even as a temporary stop gap.

I prefer angellist jobs section to traditional freelance sites because you can avoid race to bottom bidding and avoid much of the competition. There are a lot of open minded people looking for high quality workers out there and are thus willing to pay a better hourly rate, but they avoid most freelancing sites and focus on full time because they don't think there is an alternative- be that alternative to them

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#13

Post by SyneRyder »

montbonnot wrote: post #11
SyneRyder wrote: post #7

From 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 s…

You can certainly fail on the App store if you think like you do. Nothing is easy in life, people who succeed are people who start with a positive attitude and transform a failure into a learning experience. Anyone can make it on the app store with hard work and dedication. The more you fail the better you get. The 5th, 6th app might work out. Not the first ones for sure...

Been there done that for the last 15 years, it's one of the ways I make my living :) I love product businesses, they're a great source of semi-passive income. The lifestyle of choosing your hours & where you work is bliss.

But the OP asked specifically about earning money to replace a full time income, and consulting is a faster route to money. Product businesses take time to build an audience (you do have an email list of prospective customers, right?) and you're looking for thousands of customers. Whereas with consulting, you only need to find a handful of clients. Charge your client $100/hour (really you should charge more, or charge weekly) and you'll be so far ahead of most App developers. Which is easy, since most apps earn no money and many get no traction at all.

You could always try both. Split half your time into consulting, the other half into doing an app. See which works better and gets more traction. Hopefully the consulting half becomes unnecessary as the apps take off and become a hit.

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#14

Post by montbonnot »

SyneRyder wrote: post #13
montbonnot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can certainly fail on the App store if you think like you do. Nothing is easy in life, people who succeed are people who start with a positive attitude and transform a failure into a learning experience. Anyone can make it on the app store with hard work and dedication. The more you fail the better you get. The 5th, 6th app might work out. Not the first ones for sure...

Been there done that for the last 15 years, it's one of the ways I make my living :) I love product businesses, they're a great source of semi-passive income. The lifestyle of choosing your hours & where you work is bliss. But the OP asked specifically about earning money to replace a full time income, and consulting is a faster route to money. Product businesses take time to build an audience (you do have an email l…

I agree with $100/hour for consulting, it's "easy" money. It depends on how you deal with micro-management. If you work as a consultant you'd be treated as an expensive external resource by your clients. Which is usually not the best place to be. On the other hand you have your corporate main job where your manager owns your life, which sucks. So he might end up going nuts. It all depends on how you deal with structures and bosses. If money is the main focus then yeah, Starbucks, consulting, any factory or freelancing is the right path for him. If he wants to use these 12h/week to learn something valuable and give himself the opportunity to not have to think about money anymore, then he should invest a couple of month in learning how to build an entire product from scratch, marketing, how to interact with his users, UX, business strategies, priorities, you know what I mean if you've done it already. He might not make money at all but he will acquire a lot of valuable knowledge. Knowledge = long term investment. It's like stock versus real estate.

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#15

Post by SyneRyder »

montbonnot wrote: post #14
SyneRyder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been there done that for the last 15 years, it's one of the ways I make my living :) I love product businesses, they're a great source of semi-passive income. The lifestyle of choosing your hours & where you work is bliss. But the OP asked specifically about earning money to replace a full time income, and consulting is a faster route to money. Product businesses take time to build an audience (you do have an email l…

I agree with $100/hour for consulting, it's "easy" money. It depends on how you deal with micro-management. If you work as a consultant you'd be treated as an expensive external resource by your clients. Which is usually not the best place to be. On the other hand you have your corporate main job where your manager owns your life, which sucks. So he might end up going nuts. It all depends on how you deal with structu…

That's a good point. If you've already got a full-time job with a boss, adding a micro-managing client on top is a fast road to burnout & reduced quality of life. And the best way to learn how to build a product & market it & deal with support is to jump in and give it a try.

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#16

Post by saluki »

The most immediate way would be taking on 12 hrs per week of freelance/consulting iOS work . . . network and make connections. (Try not to use upwork/online sites try to network and charge 1.5 to 2x your 9-5 hourly rate.

(Taking care to work with in the bounds of your 9-5 job/contract, I wouldn't bring it up with your boss/co-workers but make sure you're not breaking rules in case it would every come up). Get an EIN number and work as a 1099 contract dev with clients, LLC if you're bringing in lots of hours over the year.

I'll mention the app store seems like minimal return on investment if any for most iOS devs so I wouldn't expect to make money off that. If you enjoy it just want to roll the dice without any expectations more as a hobby but sounds like you want to bring in revenue.

Beyond that investing 12 hours in building an audience for a product (ebook/training/info products) might be worthwhile.

Give this podcast a listen . . . http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/

Microconf talks https://vimeo.com/user12790628/videos

Building a product or SaaS app times time/is hard but having recurring revenue down the road is a huge payoff . . .

Congrats to letting your wife pursue her dream.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#18

Post by mod »

meric wrote: post #8

If 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.

Watching a live feed of the astronauts I was sending to Mars.

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#19

Post by emmasz »

keithblaha wrote: post #12

12 hours/week doesn't sound like enough time to make any money via appstore to me, as some are suggesting. It's just enough time to freelance a bit though! You can find part time freelance work without an established network pretty easily actually. I've done this successfully for web dev work several times: 1) search angellist jobs section for companies looking to hire their first iOS dev, or to have an MVP of their…

Could you detail the hourly rate you can have there as senior/junior dev? Do you happen to know the rates for php programmers?

Re: Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

#20

Post by keithblaha »

emmasz wrote: post #19
keithblaha wrote: post #12

12 hours/week doesn't sound like enough time to make any money via appstore to me, as some are suggesting. It's just enough time to freelance a bit though! You can find part time freelance work without an established network pretty easily actually. I've done this successfully for web dev work several times: 1) search angellist jobs section for companies looking to hire their first iOS dev, or to have an MVP of their…

Could you detail the hourly rate you can have there as senior/junior dev? Do you happen to know the rates for php programmers?

It depends... if you are picky and can sell yourself well, 80+/hour as a senior. Unsure of junior rates but maybe 50+. PHP may be less in demand on angellist in particular though as compared to JavaScript/Ruby
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