How To Make More Money As Software Developer

x Side Hustles to Make Extra Money Every bit a Software Engineer

How to make money exterior of your day job

Photo past Chronis Yan on Unsplash

Over the concluding 10 years of my life, I've delved into a huge diversity of ventures. Some have been a success, others not and then much — only the event is I've learned a lot. Below, I'll go over my experience and analyse how you can employ your skills as an engineer to create extra income for yourself.

1. Build an Educational Course

How we larn is changing, and the educational landscape looks far dissimilar today than information technology did x years ago. University education is condign questionable due to the vast amount of online content that in a lot of cases provides more value than a very expensive caste that has no guarantee of a job in one case completed.

Photograph by One zone Studio on Unsplash

Information technology's far cheaper for a person to spend $500 on several courses that are taught by people who are an adept in that expanse, who work in it every twenty-four hour period, than a lecturer, who quite often, has no industry experience.

The result is that there are huge opportunities out there to create paid educational content in the form of courses and subscription-based businesses. Fifty-fifty more than impressive is that this is an area that'due south non impossible to become into because you have one thing that separates you from everybody else: your personality and potential instruction style.

People similar different styles and personalities and learn better from different pedagogy styles. All you lot have to exercise is be you lot, teach, and provide value, and you lot will brand money from this.

Although it's more than work, I'd recommend edifice your ain platform to sell your courses as you have more than control over pricing, branding, etc., and this is going to be what actually makes yous successful.

Examples

Yaroslav Shmarov created a class and launched on Udemy, generating 420 sales in 100 days. He made some really good points and more than reasons to avert using platforms such every bit Udemy.

• Hosting courses on Udemy is complimentary, but be ready to sell at $10 and get $ii-7
• On Udemy, you don't get admission to student emails/phones (so you can't create your own customs, and y'all can't cross-sell well)
• Hosting on Udemy is good if your potential audition niche is very big
• The only engagement a instructor can have with active students is the Q&A section of a course
• Overall, selling courses on Udemy tin be considered passive income with minimum date required later on publishing a class

Challenges

Grade creation can be a huge earner — demand is high and only growing. The major issues with grade cosmos are as follows:

• Audience: Building an initial audience can be a challenge, only information technology's not impossible. It can exist done, hands actually, merely it requires a lot of work and consistency in creating free content to provide traffic for your landing page
• Course quality is important: It comes as no surprise really, but the quality of your class will affect the success of it. Y'all have to exist prepared to fail with the beginning few courses yous create; however, if you take your fourth dimension, are patient, and are prepared to learn, then yous can overcome this and drastically increase your chances of success.

2. Create a Content Platform/Blog

Creating some kind of content-based website is another opportunity you lot can exploit as a developer to make extra income. In that location are and so many areas of reckoner scientific discipline and development that can provide you lot with a dandy topic on which to base your content.

By Dominic Walliman on Flickr

A great example of a self-fabricated content/a blog platform is No CS Degree. It was created by @petecodes and is hitting monthly recurring revenue of $ii,500/month.

The product itself is interviews with people who've fabricated it as a developer without a degree, and that's it — nothing complicated. It's also free to sign up to the No CS Degree e-mail listing.

"Where's coin made on these platforms?" I hear you ask. Well information technology'south made by either ad acquirement from ads placed on the site or from sponsorship deals for advert spots on an email.

Challenges

• Writing content takes up a huge amount of fourth dimension, equally you need to practice your research in social club to provide the well-nigh value for your readers
• Finding a niche — a good niche — will go a long mode in helping you. Try to specialise where you lot can.
• Find sponsors — this can often be solved by reaching out to potential suitors for your advertising spots or past using something like Google AdSense to add ads to your page
• Driving traffic is a common problem when creating anything. Once more, it tin can be overcome by putting time into edifice followings on platforms such as Twitter or past improving your site'south SEO ranking.

3. Create a Forum/Community

Paid forums and communities are an emerging opportunity thanks to the rise of platforms such as Discord, Patreon, and Discourse. These platforms make it very like shooting fish in a barrel to gear up communities and integrate payments, making it a golden mine of opportunity.

Image by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Why does this work? Well, people want to communicate and associate with others who take like interests, wants, and needs. Essentially, by edifice a community, you lot're providing a platform for this to happen.

Some examples

• Peter Levels congenital Nomad List, providing a community for digital nomads. The business at present generates $24,000/month.
• Anne-Laure Le Cunff congenital Ness Labs, a community for healthy entrepreneurs that generates $9,600/calendar month.

Why not utilise the free, open up-source tools mentioned above and begin creating your own community? You lot can even code additional functionality that can enable to you to create some crawly features for potential users and really help as many people as possible.

Challenges

• Community building is extremely challenging but highly rewarding due to the physiological impacts of something called social proof . In essence, it's hard to become the first 100 users into your community, just equally the number grows, information technology go easier to attract more than — as the value is in the community. The trick is to stick with information technology.
• High engagement levels will exist needed from you, using upward a lot of your fourth dimension
• Managing the community to avoid spam and to maintain skillful content within the community volition also be a challenge

Notation: Edifice a community is past far i of the hardest things to do; nevertheless, information technology can be hugely rewarding. Non only tin can y'all make a substantial amount of money (due to word of mouth), but you can actually help a lot of people.

4. Create an E-book

Every bit software engineers, we posses vast amounts of noesis around tech that a lot of people want to learn. A groovy way to pass this information downwards is in the form of an e-book.

The proficient thing almost e-books is they can exist written reasonably apace, and if you pick a topic you're passionate nigh, then they can be quite fun to make.

You can apply a platform such equally Gumroad to host your e-volume and handle selling it.

Note: Eastward-books can be a great cash cow you tin can use to generate money that can be invested in other ventures/hustles. They're also a great projection that can exist worked on over a couple of months, writing a bit every twenty-four hours.

Examples

• "The Good Parts of AWS": An e-book by Daniel Vassallo and Josh Pschorr, generated $31,000 in sales, selling over 1,000 copies in the first calendar week alone.
• "Maker Minions: 101 Automations for Makers, Side Hustlers, and Entrepreneurs": An e-book by Michael Gill made $5,000 and is still growing.

Image by Daniel Vassallo

Challenges

• Research and planning volition take up most of your time
• Building an audition (you can become about doing this when you launch — there's more than flexibility with building e-books, as yous can publish on platforms such every bit Amazon)
• Creating a structure for your book can also be a challenge, but putting some time into figuring this out is the unproblematic solution

v. Freelancing

Ah, freelancing — possibly one of the most obvious forms of making extra money as a software engineer. The model is simple: Sell your time for some extra cash.

Image past Nathan da Silva on Unsplash

The skilful news with freelancing is you lot can go paid very generously for your time, especially if yous tin hook yourself up with a well-funded startup.

The bad news is, unlike most of the other side hustles in this article, it leaves you without a product at the stop. This means you're limited when it comes to scaling, every bit you lot have a direct relationship with fourth dimension and money.

However, it gives you a nifty pick to transition into full-time work should you determine to, and so you lot tin go well-nigh turning into an agency if that appeals to you.

Note: I've washed freelancing myself and constitute it to be a really awesome manner to make coin that can be invested into other things or used to create more freedom with my time. The trick to it is to notice expert clients.

Examples

• Susanne Peng is a developer and designer who built her dream life through freelancing — her story makes for a really proficient read
• Glenn Stovall is an app developer who as well congenital his life by using freelancing equally a means to create more freedom.

Challenges

• Building customer relationships iskey and can be challenging to manage every bit you accept to maintain good relationships with multiple clients
• Creating effective ways to manage your time tin can exist a challenging at first merely becomes much easier after you've been doing information technology for a while
• Finding clients is also a major claiming. Places such as Upwork aren't what they used to exist, and you'll struggle to become decent clients on there. I would recommend using LinkedIn as a lead-generation tool (search for tech startups, and merely reach out to people on there).

Ghost Web log Themes

Ghost is a powerful blogging CMS for content creators, entrepreneurs, and developers. To give some perspective on how much information technology'due south growing, v,933 writers, podcasters, and video creators gear up up sites with Ghost to publish online and deliver newsletters to their audience during this week alone.

Photo past NeONBRAND on Unsplash

I use Ghost myself, every bit information technology'south such a powerful platform, and there are some cute themes for it. The great news for you, though, is that there'southward a huge shortage of supply for themes as well — recent posts in the Ghost forum simply confirm this.

This provides a golden opportunity to build themes for Ghost, where the boilerplate theme retails for $59 on Ghost'due south official website. Ghost themes are congenital using the following stack:

• Node.js
• SQL
• Handlebars.js

This article on Geekinsta is a great guide that'll get you on your way.

Examples

• fueko: A small company that sells various themes. They have a Ghost theme that launched on July 6. The theme they've launched retails at $59, and they've sold 94 copies in the concluding three months, netting $five,546.

Challenges

• In that location's a lot of support on the Ghost forums, but finding useful tutorial videos and third-party documentation may be a challenge. The good news is if you understand Handlebars and Node, and so you should be set up for success.
• Picking a niche for your theme can help y'all create a theme a particular audition will love and volition potentially increase your sales. Information technology can be a challenge, but this is a relatively uncrowded marketplace.
• Themes retail, on average, between $29-$99. This means there's an expectation on price, resulting in a potential price cap. However, if you create an exceptional theme, in that location's plenty of scope to accuse a higher fee for it.

7. The Shopify App

With recent trends in drop shipping, lifestyle businesses, and a button for independent retail-based outlets to move online, Shopify has opened up another wonderful opportunity for u.s.a. developers.

Photograph past Roberto Cortese on Unsplash

The Shopify App Store is widely popular among Shopify store owners, as it provides a place for users to improve their customers feel and helps to increase the revenue of their business.

These apps tin be an excellent source of passive income, as they tend to take care of themselves — of grade, that's not e'er the case, simply it tin can notwithstanding be a great income builder all the same.

Examples

• Filippo Mursia has built Tailry, a Shopify app that helps users manage their stores and inventory. It's currently generating $2,800/month in revenue and is a great instance of how you can build an app on Shopify'southward platfrom and turn it into a profitable side hustle.

Challenges

• Handling ongoing updates once you lot've built the app tin can be a possible challenge that'll need to exist managed. There are ways to make this a svelte process, but it's definitely worth investigating before diving into Shopify app building.

8. Build an API every bit a Service

We alive in a information-driven historic period where information, attending, and content are rex — to give y'all some perspective, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created each mean solar day.

Prototype by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

Taking some of this information and turning it into some form of valuable drove can be a great style to make money. Businesses brand data-driven decisions about every day and will happily pay for anything that provides value/ increases potential profits.

APIs provide a dandy platform to let access to data for various businesses, and so why not create one and charge for the privilege to access it?

Yous could create a web scraper that gathers useful data and then a Rest/GraphQL-based API to sit over the top of the data, providing access to information technology.

If you lot need inspiration, any kind of marketing-, social-, or product-related data tin can be of huge value to a lot of people. Amazon, eBay, and other e-commerce platforms can also exist a great place to get together insights from. These are useful data sets for e-commerce entrepreneurs to analyse.

Examples

• Gareth Fuller congenital a really simple oil-price API that generates $370/month in revenue. Not bad considering how young a visitor it is and the room for growth.
• Sébastien Dumont congenital a WordPress-related API that handles forepart-end WooComerce. It currently makes $900/calendar month and is growing, with 20,000 downloads.

Challenges

• Building a data ready tin can take a lot of research before implementing any solution. This is considering you first need to notice how it can provide value and what the best shape to provide the data in is. There's a really good commodity by Coding VC that provides great insights into how to overcome this challenge, though, and gives some not bad tips, besides.

ix. Become an Online Instructor

In that location's no shortage of supply when it comes to people trying to arrive as a software engineer in 2020, and so why not leap on the trend and help them by becoming an online instructor?

I've done this myself in the past, and it does provide a decent corporeality of coin. You can generally charge between $50-$130/hour, depending on what you lot're pedagogy, and it can be a great way to make some extra income while providing a lot of value to somebody who may need it.

Image by George Field. Worldwide Google tendency for "become a developer."

Platforms like Codementor are providing a great service for matching mentors with students, and it's condign increasingly easier to find people on social media who are looking for tutors.

Examples

• Suresh Atta is a software engineer who'south racked up a total of i,781 sessions at $60/hour on Codementor
• Yuriy Linnyk has a huge 3,079 jobs at $80/hour

Challenges

• Information technology tin be slightly harder to gather momentum considering y'all'll need to exercise effectually x sessions to provide social proof to others (I found offer a lot of value and providing a free fifteen-minute session managed to assistance me get some traction with it).
• Contest is high, and this can exist a stumbling block, especially when people tin afford to lower their asking price per hour. Personally, I'd employ these platforms equally a means to build an audition off of — the platforms will try to preclude you, but at that place are often ways effectually it.

10. Build a Boilerplate Lawmaking Base

Think about the amount of times that you've gone to start a project, forgetting the amount of time it takes to set everything up. This is a problem that tons of engineers have, and we all like quick solutions — and so much so that sometimes we're fifty-fifty prepared to pay for a uncomplicated solution that's already gear up up.

Prototype past Luke Chesser on Unsplash

Building a average that covers all of the nuts of a particular setup can provide immense value for us software developers, and using a paid-for average, allows u.s. to work on the important parts rather than focusing on the setup.

A really proficient identify to build a average right now is in the world of web apps. Building a React/Vue UI and coupling it with a Node back finish that takes intendance of authentication, databases, configuration, and common API services such every bit Firebase, SendGrid, Twilio can exist a great style to get your human foot in the door and enter the realm of passive income.

Examples

• Kyle Gawley congenital Gravity, a React and Node SAAS boilerplate that generates $3,700/month in MRR. Kyle has built a really simple, clean UI that's coupled with an elegantly designed back cease, ready for you to configure it with what ever database you adopt.

Challenges

• Creating a clean UI will be a time-consuming process, but anything worth doing takes fourth dimension and requires patience
• Creating trust with other developers is hard— although this tin can be worked around if you market it from the bending of being a developer yourself
• Creating good documentation is another big piece of work that you may want to go along in listen

Determination

There are then many ways you can make money online nowadays, especially being a developer — it's basically a superpower and a gateway to fiscal freedom if leveraged correctly. I hope you have a wonderful day, and cheers for taking the fourth dimension to read this.

Source: https://betterprogramming.pub/10-side-hustles-to-make-extra-money-as-a-software-engineer-a290e66c7ce9

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