Source: https://www.techwizzdom.com/post/15-ways-to-make-side-money-as-a-developer
15 ways to make side money as a developer
The market state is pretty rough now, and with all the layoffs, side hustles are not just a nice bonus – rather a necessity.
But an awesome thing is that you can leverage your developer skills, do something unique, and make extra money! If you’re really good, a side hustle can evolve into your main hustle (like it happened for me). There are so many ways to make money as a developer, besides just coding 9-5 for other people.
I truly hope that some of these ways will feel good for you and that you’ll start. There are so many ways, don’t focus on what you think might pay the best, but what you’ll enjoy the most – as a consequence, you will earn the most.
Let’s go 🚀
1. Trace bugs in well-established apps
This is a cool one – you can actually try to catch bugs in massive platforms – and if you notice it, you get paid.
It’s pretty crazy because you have some massive companies like Coinbase or Shopify there, paying up to $1M for the most critical things (yup, 1 million USD, you read it right).
The platform is called Hacker One.
I mean, if you’re a QA or that strict senior, you have to do it…
2. Doing paid open-source feature requests
On a site like boss.dev, you can find many in-demand requests for open-source projects.
Pick something you like, implement it, and get paid. Nice!
3. Monetize your APIs
You can build an API and charge for usage – and one of the platforms that help is RapidAPI.
They have a pretty good guide on how to do it. But remember, the API must be useful, otherwise no one will pay 😉
4. Your open-source projects
There are 2 main ways how you can make money here:
- If your project is big enough, you can reach out to companies to sponsor you. Then, you’ll get $X/month just for having their logo on your project.
- Having paid features inside your open-source project.
5. Ads
For this, you either need to have something like a website, blog, GitHub project, etc. that gets at least few thousands of visitors per month.
If you have it, you can use Carbon Ads which are made for developers. Even their headline is “For open-source developers who just want to code.”
6. Build a side project and sell it
On Indiemaker, you can get cash for your side projects, SaaSes (did I say it right 🫣), or even unused domains!
7. Create tech content
Loads of tech companies need tech content for their social media. The great thing is that only developers can do it. You know how bad it sounds when non-devs speak about things like programming languages – it’s immediately visible (and it’s bad)!
This is something that I’m good at, and you can see how to do it here.
8. Social media
Isn’t this the same as a content creator? Well, not exactly.
As a content creator, you can just create content and sell it to other – you don’t even need to have your socials.
Having your own socials is more powerful because you build your audience and that opens millions of doors: anything you build, you can put it immediately in front of your audience.
And when you grow to a few thousand followers, you start doing promo deals.
Opportunities are massive because there are not too many devs who do it. If this interests you, click here for more info.
9. Paid newsletter
Do you love writing and sharing your thoughts?
Perfect, because on a platform like Substack, you can earn monthly income if people subscribe to you.
10. Building a SaaS
Do you have a real problem that can be solved (and you know how to solve it with code)?
If so, build it. There are so many ways to monetize, and the most common ones are monthly subscriptions and in-app purchases.
You can utilize Stripe to handle all the finance. I use it for my SaaS and it works like a clock.
11. Building an app
In a similar way, you can build an iOS/Android app and publish it to stores.
12. Teaching online
I’ve worked with some fantastic engineers who were explaining the most complex topics in simple terms. When they were reviewing my pull requests, I learned tons of stuff through their comments.
Their teaching skills were absolutely impressive.
If you’re someone who’s good at that (or similar teaching-related stuff), you can build a course/guide etc. and sell it on platforms like Gumroad or Udemy. Gumroad is cool because you can sell any digital product.
Pro tip: make sure that what you’re doing is really needed and unique. You might know JavaScript well, but it’s highly unlikely that you’ll sell well another “JavaScript Crash Course”.
13. Mentoring
Do you want to mentor 1-on-1, instead of building courses?
Then, codementor is for you. You can also find some freelance work there.
14. Website development
So many businesses today need a website. You can do custom solutions for them from scratch, or use some of no-code tools.
With the rise of AI, many platforms appeared where you can build websites from templates pretty fast.
Often, those no-code tools are also limiting, but you can use things like Wix Studio which combines code and no-code. If you can do it with no-code, you do it instantly. But it also offers possibilities to extend everything with code.
15. Freelancing
Fiverr, Upwork, Contra – just some of the websites where you can find loads of freelance work.
Final words – will you be able to do it?
Although these pieces of advice sound so simple (“hey, just build a SaaS”) – obviously, they require work. Depending on the thing and yourself, some can take weeks to make the first $$$, some months, some even years…
But that shouldn’t stop you from trying, especially is you really enjoy doing some of those things showed above.
What you also need to be aware of – you only need one good hit. Yup, you hit the spot only once, and your life will completely change.
It’s exactly what happened to me – I was a developer in a London tech startup, and started to do some content & social media on the side.
1 year and 2 months later, I started earning more from content than from my 9-5 salary (and by the time, I was a Senior developer in London).
I quit my job to invest all my time and energy in content creation – and it was one of the best decisions in my life. On some months, my monthly income is 9x higher than as a Senior dev. Because of it, I managed to launch my tech startup (and so many other things on the side).
It can happen to you too. You only need to make it work once.
And you always have the opportunity to make it, except in one case: if you don’t even try. If you don’t even try, you can be sure that it won’t work.
Repeat after me: “I just need to hit the spot one time”.
