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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?

#61

Post by csallen »

I've interviewed about 100 developers on https://IndieHackers.com about how they're making money online. Based on what I've seen and what I've done myself, here's what I would do if I wanted to quickly ramp up some side income:

1. Pick a topic I'm interested in, or that I would like to be interested in and follow regularly. It could be anything from sci-fi to front-end web dev. My only requirement would be that I know where to find other people who are interested in that topic, and that they're a group that's comfortable with email.

2. Start a regular newsletter where I'd aggregate content around that topic and maybe editorialize a little bit by adding my own summaries. I'd keep it short and simple and send it out 3-5x a week.

3. I'd throw up a simple landing page where people can subscribe to the newsletter, then advertise it by sharing my insights on Twitter and in various online communities every now and then. If this is your only focus, you should be able to sign up at least 250-500 ppl/mo. If you can't get that, then your content probably isn't compelling.

4. Sell ad spots in the newsletter to advertisers, specifically advertisers who are in the same niche that your newsletter is. You should be able to make at least $50-100 per 1000 subscribers for each email you send out, which is one of two reasons to send frequently. (The other is that high frequency helps people become familiar with you and turn into regular readers.)

Ideally it's a win-win-win. You get motivation to keep yourself up-to-date with a topic that you care about, and you also make money. Your advertisers make sales. (Hopefully they're good companies that you hand-picked.) And your readers get free high quality info on a topic they care about without having to do the research themselves.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#62

Post by embwbam »

loeg wrote: post #16
kejaed wrote: post #2

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.

At what point does that stop panning out, though? My pay is somewhat above average and management is unlikely to give me a big raise going forward without a promotion. (And at my work the next promotion would be a sort of 'team lead' position, which I'm uninterested in.) 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…

Absolutely true. You can learn a lot from contracting / consulting. Advancing one's career definitely doesn't mean working harder at one's current job or trying to get promoted.

I'd recommend you try side gigs. Pick the one that offers you the best learning experience. Then consider trying consulting full time. If you want to break the wage ceiling, consulting is a great low-risk business.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#63

Post by icedchai »

loeg wrote: post #18
icedchai wrote: post #8

I'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.

How do you find work? Word of mouth, or something else?

Word of mouth. If I actually cared to look for work, I could find a lot more.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#64

Post by franciscop »

csallen wrote: post #46
xeonoex wrote: post #33

On this topic, I've always wondered how profitable it is to develop a site meant to make ad money. People love to talk about their interesting, cutting edge projects on HN, but no one talks about making websites whose main purpose is ad revenue. The web is littered with clickbait sites and sites that just make money off of Amazon affiliate links. The people that create them usually don't share their revenue, although…

I make a decent amount of money from ad revenue for Indie Hackers every month. You can see a breakdown of my traffic and revenue stats for January in this blog post: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/month-in-review-2017-01 . After focusing on this type of revenue for about 3-4 months, here are my takeaways: * If you're going to use affiliate links, e.g. Amazon, then you really need the content on your site to appeal…

Congrats on your recent 100 posts

Which makes me bring the question, is it worth it?

$3.500 / 100 posts = $35 / post (per month) = $420 / post (per year)

I understand it's a marathon though and that value compounds. When you had 10 posts you were probably not making $350 and when you have 1000 posts you will probably be making a lot more than $35.000.

I'd love to see the associated human costs and how many hours/week you are spending here, doing what and how that has evolved from the beginning (more automation, new challenges, etc).

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#65

Post by csallen »

franciscop wrote: post #64
csallen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make a decent amount of money from ad revenue for Indie Hackers every month. You can see a breakdown of my traffic and revenue stats for January in this blog post: https://www.indiehackers.com/blog/month-in-review-2017-01 . After focusing on this type of revenue for about 3-4 months, here are my takeaways: * If you're going to use affiliate links, e.g. Amazon, then you really need the content on your site to appeal…

Congrats on your recent 100 posts Which makes me bring the question, is it worth it? $3.500 / 100 posts = $35 / post (per month) = $420 / post (per year) I understand it's a marathon though and that value compounds. When you had 10 posts you were probably not making $350 and when you have 1000 posts you will probably be making a lot more than $35.000. I'd love to see the associated human costs and how many hours/week…

I do some time tracking in my monthly blog post (scroll down to the chart), so you can actually see exactly how much time I'm spending.

Is the revenue so far worth the time I put into it? No, not by itself. But everything that I've done so far is really a launching pad for more, bigger, and better things, so I see it as an investment. At the very least, I've reached a point where I can survive on my own and work on my own projects indefinitely. Beyond that, I've built up an audience and community that I love, and I've got lots of plans in the works to try and deliver even more value to them + generate revenue in a more scalable way.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#66

Post by shostack »

This may sound basic, but get your finances and investments in order. There may be free cash in the couch cushions so to speak.

Due to various life events I got behind on that this past year. As a result, a decent sum (for me at least) piled up in my checking account earning a lovely .05% interest rate. My savings account earns 1%. Needless to say, a few mouse clicks later and I earn much more interest every month. Enough where I want to punch myself for not making it a priority earlier in the year for something so stupidly simple.

The next step is to complete my final 401k rollover (god do they make that tedious) before rebalancing my investment allocations and opening a Roth. Those tasks will earn me considerably more than $100/mo on average, particularly with the magic of compound interest over a span of decades.

My whole point is, don't just focus on jobs/SaaS/whatever while ignoring basic management and optimization of your personal finances. For many who do not actively manage their finances, pulling a few of those levers can add up to significant amounts and the actual work involved outside of research is (typically) less painful than doing something like starting a SaaS business.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#67

Post by bsvalley »

sametmax wrote: post #49
bsvalley wrote: post #35

If it would be easy to make $100 per month, then it would be easy to repeat the process 1000 times and become rich. There's no such things as easy when it comes to making money. You'd have to put time and energy into it.

Generalization doesn't help. Define "easy". For me it's relative. Some stuff are easier than others. There is not an "absolute" easy. My job is 100x easier than most jobs I know. But I know many people making more money with less effort doing other tasks that are not necessarily jobs. Then of course morality and legality enter in the equation. Very often, making something illegal or immoral increase the ratio pay/eff…

He used the word "dumb", which make me think he's talking about something anyone can do. If anyone can generate $100/month then we should all be rich by now.

Dumb = "simplifying or reducing the intellectual content of something to make it accessible to a larger number of people."

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#68

Post by manarth »

kogepathic wrote: post #34
manarth wrote: post #10

I know a dev who moonlights as a cycle courier. Aside from the extra cash, it's a good way to mentally decompress away from tech, and to get the sort of exercise you tend not to get in an IT job.

> I know a dev who moonlights as a cycle courier. Like, on weekends? I can't imagine the demand for bicycle couriers after 5PM is really that large. I've often seen bicycle couriers in my city and wondered what it would be like to do that part time to get away from the stress of work. Then I see them from the tram on days when it's raining, snowing, windy...

  Like, on weekends? I can't imagine the demand for bicycle couriers after 5PM is really that large.
I guess maybe "courier" wasn't quite the right word - I think he does more along the lines of food delivery - Deliveroo, Uber Eats, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#69

Post by raphaelb »

maworo80 wrote: post #56
raphaelb wrote: post #6

I think the simplest is doing small consulting projects. There are often people looking to launch an app or build a prototype or whatever it is where you can work a couple hours a week on it and make a pretty good rate. In my experience if you are a pretty good developer and good at communicating, you can find small bits of work without much effort. Now I'm doing a lot of consulting so charge more, but previously I w…

How did you get these connections? Where do you get to know so many people who would pay to get software prototypes done?

It's not always prototypes necessarily but mostly it's about reaching out to people you already know and letting them know you are helping people on the side with software work.

I was very lucky in that I happened to be good friends with a super-connector type person who always has people asking him for help. If you know other people who are doing consulting work, you can talk to them, if they are good they won't be particularly protective because good people always have more work than they can do.

In general, it can take time to build this up but in my experience it's valuable to see how you can help / give to others around you, and it will come back to you at some point. You have to learn to avoid the time wasting clients and people who look for you to do spec work, but after you've learned to spot them it's not so hard.

Re: Ask HN: Are there 'dumb' ways to make money as a developer in your spare time?

#70

Post by alashley »

bsvalley wrote: post #67
sametmax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generalization doesn't help. Define "easy". For me it's relative. Some stuff are easier than others. There is not an "absolute" easy. My job is 100x easier than most jobs I know. But I know many people making more money with less effort doing other tasks that are not necessarily jobs. Then of course morality and legality enter in the equation. Very often, making something illegal or immoral increase the ratio pay/eff…

He used the word "dumb", which make me think he's talking about something anyone can do. If anyone can generate $100/month then we should all be rich by now. Dumb = "simplifying or reducing the intellectual content of something to make it accessible to a larger number of people."

Or "dumb" in developer terms? There are things that are easier for developers than the general population and there are also things that are easier for developers with experience in a particular niche.

Also, not everyone has the capacity, time or even desire to pick low hanging fruit. For some the extra additional effort, even if small, is just not worth it outside of a full-time job and other commitments.

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