Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

151–160 of 286 posts

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

#151
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…

How do you manage the licensing? Do you use some library to enforce the trial period in your apps?

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

#153
post #29

Being good at making other people money is actually a skill you can monetise. That’s basically what B2B software is: making money for other people. It’s the very definition of value creation. So focus on how you can make money for other people, then scale that up in a way that allows you to charge less than the value created but more than the cost to produce. Also don’t try to think of an idea, just start talking to…

this is a really good advice. I've this as well.

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

#154

hmm Not good enough to teach? You are thinking about this wrong! Passion about something and communicating that to others is the invite for them to take that journey to mastery. You just need the garyVee social media money tricks on top to make it fundable. I am in the process of re-vamping that stuff to do exactly that and I am probably older than you at db of 1965...follow me to see it happen https://fredgrott.medi…

> the reels get expanded in to code and screenshot visual slides in the medium articles while at the same time making mp4 animation reels for instagram, linkedin, Fb posting.

Having trouble parsing this to understand what you mean. I have a feeling I am missing context. For example, what do you mean by "reels". Is this an analogy to film reels?

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

#155

> I can code up my dream ideas with ease, what i don't know how to do is market anything or get users If that's true, you should be doing it. Worry about marketing once you have something to market.

> Worry about marketing once you have something to market.

After years of research and experimentation, I have written a spatiotemporal comb filter for NTSC TV signals which consistently outperforms the state of the art.

It's done. I use it for digitally archiving Laserdiscs.

How can I market this?

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

#156
I have mild success at $500/month by selling my $5 Video Hub App (though I donate $3.50 of every purchase to a cost-effective charity). This is averaging 100 sales per month for several years now.

https://videohubapp.com/ - though I also have it open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App

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

#157
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…

Supporting your brother like that is very cool! For me, the calendar app is not available in Brazil though..

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

#158
Reading your post it sounds like you dont really want to learn how to do something new. You just want to use your existing skill set to make money. That is fine but to start a business, and starting a side hustle is starting a business, you need to learn new things.

If you dont want to do that then maybe finding a smaller company or a company with a better culture will help. I didnt love my first two eng jobs. I like this one a lot. No middle management bs. No politics. Get to work on interesting stuff. Just took some time to find it. Ask friends where they want to work/the best place they have worked is.

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

#159
post #115
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Congratulations! Being a (part-time) youtuber myself, can I ask what you are using for audio? It is indeed great!

You're too kind! I'm just using a Rode Procaster in an extremely cluttered room XD

However, I don't recommend the setup, I tested an SM58 and the damn thing sounds IDENTICAL, but 1/4 the price!

The trick is to speak very close to the microphone, off-center, have the microphone 2-3cm from the corner of your mouth, so breath doesn't hit it, but volume does.

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

#160
post #8

Depending on your country, freelancing next to the day-job may be an option to testing "the new job" without giving up the security/benefits of an employment (for instance an affordable employer's contributed health care if you are in western europe). Hourly rates for IT freelancing professionals are only increasing, there is a long standing and ongoing shortage for skilled people. It is not uncommon to earn a yearly…

> Edit, disclaimer: I co-founded a cooperative to help skilled IT people to work independently as freelancers, giving legal advices and a network. Interesting. Where can I learn more? I think it would be great for Europe (or at least for Sweden) if bright and productive software engineers stopped working for peanuts and went freelance instead. Would love to help push the needle in that direction.

Swedish .net dev here, would love to try freelancing without giving up my current job. Hit me up :)
Post reply on HN