I am an experienced developer (11y) trying to earn some money on the side.
I am looking for some tips what could I do.
The reason I said "easy" in the title is because I have a full time job, so I can't commit to multi-month projects full time.
I earned some good money on Topcoder before, but currently there are only a very few projects listed.
I am not a good speaker, so things like Youtube channel, or streaming is out of the picture, I am not comfortable uploading videos of myself.
I checked freelancer websites, but competition is crazy there (developing a full-fledged ecommerce web application for $100, and such)
Are there any other good websites like Topcoder?
What do YOU do to earn money on the side?
Edit: For suggestions about the US: I am actually living in Canada. If you have any Canada specific, please suggest :)
Not sure what your skill set is exactly and what your interests are but there are lots of hackathons in crypto/AI that have good prizes. You can also apply for grants for certain organisations if you build something that ecosystem can use. Good luck!
I mean, it was a joke, but also that only works if someone wants to buy them. I've bought options (not on $SPY) where I made a quite a bit of money on paper but couldn't sell them and didn't have the cash to exercise so they ended up expiring. Especially on low-volume securities a big part of the risk is that you simply won't be able to unload them if you don't have the cash on hand to exercise.
When you sell to open, there is a buyer for the order to get filled. At this point, you become the buyer to close the option if you thus desire. If you're selling puts, yes ensure they're cash secured. This avoids anything like the scenario you described.
The difference here is you're not betting with leverage. Modest, high probability returns.
If this didn't make sense and to be super clear. You described buying an option and attempting to sell it later. This is not what I'm describing. I'm describing selling and option to open
You could consider apiculture. Yes, that's right, beekeeping. You might wonder how this is relevant to your 11 years of development experience, but let me explain.
Beekeeping can offer a relaxing, nature-oriented antidote to the stresses of coding, and moreover, there is a burgeoning market for smart apiary technology. Bee mortality rates have increased over recent years for numerous reasons, and technology is beginning to find ways to address these problems.
As a developer, you could design systems to monitor hive health, honey production levels or even bee activity. This data can be used to predict illnesses, optimize honey production, or understand more about bee behavior, providing valuable insights to the beekeeping community as well as researchers.
This unique combination of software development and beekeeping could potentially be a lucrative side gig. Not to mention, a proportion of the honey could be sold for additional profit or used for personal consumption.
So, while it may seem far fetched, your coding skills could help save the global bee population while offering a calming, profitable new hobby.
I wouldn't get into beekeeping to make money, it does have the potential to become an expensive hobby. Also honey isn't where money is made easily, the bees are. A family of bees around here sells for around €200. Depending on your location and skills you can make maybe two addition families from each hive each year (I never manage more than one). If you can make your own calm queens even better, but now we're leaving hobby territory.
If you do go this route: Buy used equipment, advertise swarm catching and try to get to a point where you're comfortable selling a few families each year (remember to have them checked for deceases before they leave your apiary).
The bees you can breed are not the bees/pollinators that nature is losing. This is like suggesting that to counter the global collapse in birds, you should raise chickens… Worse, domestic bees are often competitors to wild bees, bumblebees, etc. The solution there lies in fighting against the use of broad-spectrum pesticides, planting hedgerows, allowing meadows to thrive, etc.
Until we planted ~native meadow in our yard (Pacific Northwest), I didn't know there were so many different bees! What I think of as bumblebees vary from almost entirely yellow to nearly all black, with mixed stripes in between, and varying in shape and size, from tip of pinkie to end of my thumb. Then there are the littler bees, often iridescent green or shiny black. I also learned how unthreatening they are; I can get within inches and all they seem to care about is the flowers. The various wasps/hornets I'm more wary of, but even they haven't stung me yet. I like them in the garden because they eat pests. I've only killed one colony, because it was a nest in the ground on the path to the garden.
Very interesting suggestion! I must however point out that near monitoring of bees should not be based on wireless tech. There are now numerous studies showing that bees exhibit avoidance reactions to active phone and WiFi signals (think: colony collapse, hive abandonment). Probably an effect mediated via their high magnetic field sensitivity. For starters, see: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13592-011-001...
The methodology in the study you link is suspect. Instead of changing just one variable, whether the phones had their batteries on or off, they changed other parameters. For instance, in one branch of the experiment the experimenters introduced a radio loudspeaker 60cm from the hive. This is particularly problematic when the measurement they used to determine the status of the bees was --wait for it-- sound.
I also saw nothing done in the experiment to separate whether the observed effects were caused by vibration, noise, or electromagnetic effects.
I sincerely read it with an open mind, but it doesn't look like a well-designed study.
If you're in the US, there are many resources. Many states have a beekeeper's association that offer mentoring, training, and apprenticeship programs. If you have a child, 4-H probably has a program. The US Department of Agriculture, Country Agricultural Extension, or State Universities often sponsor workshops. Try searching on "Learn Beekeeping in <CITY> <STATE>".
On one hand, being a bookie sounds like a super interesting optimization problem. How to draw the line in such a way that you are always net positive, regardless of game outcome.
On the other hand, you have the two worst possible problems: staking your money daily + chasing clients for money.
If you're already a software engineer earning a normal salary in the US (several assumptions there), it's really hard to find side hustles that pay at or above the hourly wage that your employer has already committed to. I personally think that it's a good idea to focus on building a small lifestyle software business over the course of several years. I wrote a long series of blog posts about this over here: https://overthinkingmoney.com/2023/05/02/start-a-business-no...
My first company (Skritter.com) fits this mold. It's been growing slowly, but steadily for more than 15 years now. In the first couple of years we were able to generate low five-figures per month, now it's substantially higher.
There are other ways to earn cash outside of tech, but most of the common suggestions (drop shipping, affiliate marketing, laundromats, etc) are mostly terrible if you really do the analysis.
For better or worse, low risk generally means low upside!
I would love to come up with a business idea, and slowly grow it to be profitable.
My problem is I am very bad at coming up with a business idea in the first place. (or app idea, or website idea...) I am not sure why, probably my brain is wired differently.
I struggle too. I've generated 39 ideas in the last 18 months and none have looked very appealing to work on. If it was easy, more people would do it. But, you probably have a unique perspective and set of skills that would enable you to address a problem that you experience on a regular basis. So don't discount your personal experience!
Shameless plug, but I write semi-regular "Steal This Business Idea" posts on my blog. This is an example: https://overthinkingmoney.com/2023/04/25/steal-this-startup-... They're all examples of businesses that I think have promise, but I don't have the skills, experience, insight or all three to execute.
I didn't realize the creator of Skritter was on HN! Just want to say that I've really enjoyed your app, and it's helped immensely with trying to learn Chinese
Not sure if this is the answer you want to hear but "easy" and "side money" are diametrically opposed. Before you think about that as an avenue to increase your earnings, try and optimize your current job. A couple questions:
1. Are you doing everything you can to put yourself on an upwards trajectory towards a promotion and/or a raise? You spend most of your waking hours on your current job, and the easiest way to increase your life time earnings is bending the curve here.
2. Have you been interviewing to make sure you're getting fair market value and have? If you are not growing as well as you're capable of in your current role, a new role is a potential option. This introduces risk.
3. Have you taking a knife to your expense list and maxed out 401k and HSA contributions? Every dollar you don't contribute there is one that you're giving away to the government, so make sure you're using all the tools available to optimize.
4. Have you begun to invest in real estate? In the USA, the existence of federally backed homebuyer loans and 1031 swaps is an incredible tool to build wealth, and the leverage from the loan is even partially tax deductible on the interest side. You of course need to be careful here given the choppy state of the macro environment and real estate market so that you don't end up underwater.
5. Are you investing surplus earnings into a safe ETF? Ensuring that your earnings are working for you making passive income from the market is critical for long term earnings.
None of these approaches are quick fixes, but they're all time tested approaches than anyone can use.
Kinda meta advice, but I'd be careful about converting your hobbies into paid gigs. It's a great way to make yourself hate your hobby, especially when it turns out it's not very lucrative and the customers are assholes. I learned this the hard way with photography.
People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side, like drop-shipping garbage or starting some weird self-help YouTube channel. In the world of engineering, I think it's way more useful to focus on your core skillset and learn new things around that.
That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.
Get a second remote job. You could effectively double your salary for a few months or as long as you can handle it. Personally, this is much better than the race of the bottom of all these piece meal contracting gig sites. Youtube is likely a major waste of time in that you'd need to compete and build a profile, etc. This takes time. If you want to spend years then you might make it work. I've done this and know from experience. It's well worth it if you have years to put into it. It'll open tons of doors too.
However, you know how to hold a job. You've had one for 11+ years. So, just get a second one. You could be making double your current salary within as little as 4-6 weeks after interviews etc. That's likely the fastest path if you need money quickly.
Seek out local folks who wants to go online selling their tupperware, tobaco, small services, books, photos, small mom-n-pop coffee/fastfood shops etc and offer to build them a site they can maintain.
Then buy them a subscription on no-code sites(wix, weebly, squarespace etc) and get a commission for the initial setup. Worked for my nephew who just wanted something he could do on the nights to save up some money for his summer vacation. He still gets referral offers from folks who are happy with their sites and their friends also want similar sites.
You could try writing blog posts for a company[1]. I haven't done this but I know people who have. It's crazy what some companies pay for such low-quality content sometimes.
I don't think I'm a good writer. But this is actually something that can be easily improved over time, I guess.
Thanks for the tip. I might give this a shot. This is something that fits my needs, you can do it in your own pace, remotely, gig work. would be perfect if I was a good writer (and native English speaker haha)
Interesting that for over a decade these threads were filled with hundreds of optimistic posts, but now it's almost pure pessimism and warnings.
Maybe earning money on the internet, even with advanced skills and experience has just been met with so much global competition that it's just not that valuable a skill anymore, maybe the monopolies took over e-trade and maybe most users became trapped in silos or on giga-services so the money is really in influencing, not curating, building or creating from scratch?
I'm not sure I understand this comment. Could you elaborate?
If you look at Show HN posts, it's clear that people do build a lot of stuff.
I also want to build stuff, I just miss the good idea of what to build
If you have your masters, you could try teaching as an adjunct at a local university at night. Pay isn't bad (relative to the amount of work) and you can stay in the field. Rewarding work, and in some state/provincial systems you can even earn a pension. I get speaking isn't your thing, so that might be an impediment, but maybe it's less of an issue in a more intimate setting
To be honest you don't even have to go to universities or schools. Just offer tutoring from the field or around the field you're in. There's a lot of money to be made like this, especially since math in school is fairly easy to teach for someone with comp-sci degree.
Not side work exactly, but see if there's any bonus programs lurking somewhere in your job. My company recently started a bonus program for industry certifications, each certification nets you some points and the more points you get the more bonus you qualify for up to a limit. The bonus is based on % of base pay.
So, I looked at all the certifications available and plotted a path through them that gets me the minimum amount of points required to reach the highest bonus tier each fiscal year. It's been, by _far_, the most lucrative "side hustle" i've ever had. I study for, and take, about 4-5 cert tests per year and am on year #2 of the program. If they run the program for 5 years and I keep dropping the whole bonus into my investment account I'll have enough to pay for college for both of my boys (currently in middle school).
/I'm 47 and still paying my student loan, i don't want that hell for my kids.
If you're good at 3d graphics or game programming I have a lead on a contract that could work (it's too much work to do by myself, client wants people in Canada, my network won't do it for less than 5 figures). If not your skill set, my point is reach out to other contractors, they may have overflow work or e.g. design/front-end contractors might need someone to refer for backend/devops work.
I’ve been trying to do this as someone who doesn’t have a CS career. I have a good full time job but wanted to learn something different and keep my brain engaged. So I learned iOS development, again no CS degree, made an app and got it into the App Store. The goal is to get going on a second app and get that in the store as well.
The issue for me is that, since I’m not in the development world, I don’t have any mentors or people to talk to and bounce ideas off of. I’ve been looking into getting an internship at a software company but those are rare for evening time remote work since that’s all I would be able to lend my self to because of my full time job.
I think I’m heading the right way but there’s just hurdles that need to be jumped over.
All that to say, try a different field than software development? A reverse of what I’m doing?
Funny you say that, I actually started learning iOS/MacOS development recently, my goal was to release some apps on the App Store.
I don't have problems with learning and building the apps, my problem is how to come up with an app idea that people would actually use, and I could monetize it somehow.
I tried this, maybe I just suck. But my experience was pretty bad. It seems swarmed by people in 3rd world countries running scripts endlessly already. If you do find something there is still the chance the company will find a way out of it. The whole thing felt like a scam in a way, people show off their massive payment bug find, but in reality its hours of work for almost no payout
My experience tallies with this, used to work for a hosting company and we got plenty of emails from guys in India, Pakistan etc who had 'run burp suite against X and found Y'. We had no bounty program as we were fairly small fry so we said thanks and fixed the bug. You can't compete against the volume. And the big payouts take a lot of time and skill to find and exploit.
Wait tables. A lot of service based businesses are struggling to find good staff. Go for a higher end high average ticket place, and or places that close relatively early so you're not stuck there too late.
Usually at first there's not a lot of quality shifts open but also, frequently, you can pick up shifts from other people and a lot of restaurants are okay with having a few staff who have few regular shifts but whom they can rely on in a pinch. You can make decent cash. The work can be pretty "fun" and the time tends to go pretty quick.
I've been selling some old game boxes and old controllers on Ebay, and learning a lot about the experience (and selling stuff in general!). Made around $400 so far with some ChatGPT generated descriptions!
Did this in college for some side money. It was definitely "easy" money as well as a view to some interesting characters and business, but now I have some scars in that area that once made a cop suspicious that I was a junky lol. YMMV.
I made https://extensionpay.com to monetize my own browser extensions and between that and free distribution on the extension stores it’s really easy to try making extensions that make money. So far devs have made over $300k with ExtensionPay. That said, it still take some skill to find a niche that works.
Without changing career path, no I don't think so.
I'm mostly in web development. I can't think of any skill that would significantly up my salary.
Now learning stuff like AI, or Cyber Security could, but that's a very long process, and basically a change of careers. (I'm not against that, but wouldn't call that "easy")
I am also interested in answers, so let's assume the answer to this question is "no". In my case, in order to boost my pay, I need to move >=2 hours away, pretty much.
If your company has a referral bonus, it might be worth your while to do some networking. Some companies have really generous bonuses. A simple conversation can earn you thousands of dollars. It's hard to imagine that any web app I'm going to build is going to have as good an ROI.
Yes forget the freelancer sites. As a new user you'll spend hours, and all your limited 'connect points', or even actual money, submitting applications that mostly won't even be read.
> That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.
Would you mind sharing more details? Story? What is the app? I am really curious :) If no, that's fine, thanks for the tip anyways. I will definitely check out the website. My biggest problem is coming up with ideas for an app/business.
> My biggest problem is coming up with ideas for an app/business.
I'm in the same boat. For me at least, I assume that any app that's making money must have been created by someone with much better skills than me. Someone shared that website on HN a few weeks ago and they just blog about various solo developer projects that earn 4-6 figures a month. Seeing those projects gives me ideas and confidence to try something myself.
Not the GP, but you might get a lot from checking out IndieHackers. It has tons of case studies by folks who have put together side projects many of which have become quite valuable [1]. Another valuable approach might be to check out Acquire.com [2] and Centurica MarketWatch [3] from the buyers side to see what kinds of projects become very valuable base hits, even if they're not venture scale. Not affiliated with any of these, I just found them valuable sources of information when I was thinking about creating economically valuable side projects years ago.
>People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side
Yes. I have no promotion prospects and no new-job prospects, so I do what I have to do to survive: make my own way, with my own "side hustles".
NB: certain aspects of holding 2+ FT jobs are harder to parse out before being hired - particularly meeting times. It's not typical to ask what time morning standups are in an interview, but juggling overlapping meetings is one of the main difficulties of holding down multiple roles, so just be aware of what you're getting into.
This would require that at least one of the jobs basically have no meetings, and also that you can automate the sht out of one of them (and not to tell it to your boss).
I can't see it working in any other way. I've heard about this before, but I think you need a huge amount of luck to make this work.
Edit: I mean yeah, if you are willing to work 14-16 hours you can make it work, by landing the jobs in different time zones.
I knew a Sales guy who made the dual-job arrangement work. One job was high commission, low salary; the other job was low commission, high salary. He busted his ass at the high-commission job and earned his high commission, and just did nothing at the high-salary job and got fired after ~6 weeks, then just picked up another one, got fired in ~6 weeks, etc.
This is purely anecdotal, but I had to complete Conflict of Interest administration for concurrent outside employment while serving as an officer in the military full-time. Basically-- follow internal policy governing this, to cover your backside.
Not sure why would this be an unpopular advice. I think it's a good advice.
I tried this before, but the problem is, the reason many people/businesses have shitty websites is that they are not willing to spend money on it. I approached a few local shops (e.g. a comic book store) to create a cool website for them for a few hundred bucks, but they wanted it for free. If I would be a junior developer looking for stuff to my portfolio, sure. But I'm not, and not willing to work for free for anybody.
However, I might have given up too easily. I think I'll give this another shot
> to create a cool website for them for a few hundred bucks
I think this price range will push away serious businesses. I knew a consulting company that had hard time getting customers when they were charging under $1000 for simple WordPress sites. They had better luck when they raised their prices to $5000. It was 10 years ago for simple WordPress sites.
Each of these businesses get tons of serious and not serious offers to build them a website. The reason they don't have a website or have a crap website is because they don't want to spend or are in other ways impossible to work with. It is possible, but usually if you're related to these people or already an established big actor.
A much better return is expected by building a web site to sell the product or service yourself. Wether it's tobacco, tupperware, books etc.
I know a guy who has done this and this model turned out to work much better, because the competence stays in right hands. He simply walked around muslim/halal-oriented shops in the city and said: I’ll take your hassle with online orders for some margin. That resulted in a relatively successful webstore.
The reason these shops couldn’t do it themselves is not in software expertise. They just couldn’t work properly. Not all people are successful merchants. When I learned how they did accounting, it made me laugh: they simply called the guy and asked for money. They didn’t know how much money there is, most of them simply relied on the guy’s accounting, trusting him absolutely. He took not only web expertise from them, he took everything except producing or importing goods, including pricing. This worked because of his religion, he was very serious about no mistake in accounting, cause they are basically his brothers under god. Both sides were happy about that.
1. it is not positive expectancy (because naive strategies like this never are)
2. it involves trading in less liquid instruments, which means you lose more money to transaction fees
3. you're _selling_ options. Even if these are covered in theory, there's so much scope to screw this up implementation-wise, that it's just not worth it.
I see no redeeming features for this particular "strategy".
Another one here - was the only app/tech I needed for practicing other than kindle and a dictionary app. Replaced Sudoku and other puzzle games as my train time-killer when I still commuted perfectly when I didn't feel like reading.
The million dollar question, I'll let you know if I find the answer!
I wouldn't underestimate the luck part though even if you do come up with a brilliant well executed idea.
I've acquaintances who spent years trying to commercialise side projects that have eventually come to nothing. A lot of disappointment but I guess you've got to put the hours in and try something to even have a chance.
Personally always thought the idea of something low key with a continuous income stream sounded the most realistic, as others in this thread allude to. But you still need the idea, the execution and the luck.
There is no quick fix besides working in an industry that's valuable and has lots of broken problems to solve. As I alluded to in a comment I made elsewhere on this thread, it might be valuable to use this to think about your next role. Is your current role in an industry that doesn't expose you to these problems, and would you rather get more exposure?
For me, I got a lot of exposure to these problems in the time I spent working at startups using technology to solve big problems in large industries that aren't conventionally "tech" but this is a long term play; it took me a decade of doing this to start to develop a perspective on where my previous companies, as great of a job as they did, still left certain problems unsolved, problems I would go on to solve at my own company. This isn't a quick solution to your problem but it does work.
Oh, they -know- you produce low quality. Either you are spending no time on it, or you value your time very little (and if -you- value the time so little, imagine how weak your skills must be.)
Providing a cheap service yo a business -requires- that you deliver a cheap product.
A much better approach us to do the website for free, but get paid commission on its value. Take a tiny piece of online sales, run specials on the site and measure foot-traffic in the store and so on.
People get paid to -add value-. To get easy money you need to figure out what the customer values (for a shop it's usually sales) then figure out how to increase those sales, then take the risk, and actions, to accomplish that.