If you're reading this knowing that as soon as you get home you're going to put on your PJs and watch Breaking Bad for the 10th time, stop right now. Breaking Bad is awesome, I know, but you know what's also awesome? Having multiple income streams. Like my gal Codie Sanchez says, "The best self-care is making more money." Yes, of course, you're allowed to relax, but if you're a developer in 2024 and don’t have some sort of side hustle going on, you’re putting those skills of yours to waste! So get off the couch, find a nice clean desk, and get to work. Here are five things you should be doing to make a little (or a lot) of side money as a dev.
Sell components
You can sell your components now, what a time to be alive. Just go to Frontwork, sign up, and start uploading. I probably wouldn’t quit my job to do this full time, but it’s a nice way to make a little side money, and it doesn’t require a ton of work. Just try to sell something other than a button.
Sell APIs
Similar to above, you can create APIs, and sell them. You can create them from the ground up and offer them on places like Rakuten, ApiLayer and RapidAPI. Another thing you can do is creating APIs tailored to individual clients' needs, and charging them directly.
Sell templates on Notion
If you don’t know what Notion is, check their page here Notion. In a nutshell, it’s a collaboration platform, where you can find databases, boards, anything for note-taking and data management. And the beauty of it is, you can sell your templates there. If you want to learn how to create and sell templates on notion, watch this video. There’s this self-proclaimed “Notion Guy” called Easlo, he started making and selling Notion templates in 2021 and by 2022, he was making $20,000 of passive income per month. Not too shabby.
Sell a course
This one requires a bit more time, but the reward is also higher. You might think, “but, there’re so many courses out there already 😭”, and yes, there are, that’s why you should find a niche. Sell a course on how to build a rental site like Airbnb. Sell a course on how to create NPM packages. Most courses focus on more general stuff, “learn Python, learn JS, build an app using the MERN stack…”, do something more specific, and if you get 0 buyers, at least you learned how to make a course, you improved your teaching skills, and you have something cool to add to your CV.
For places to sell your course, you can check platforms like Udemy, Khan academy and tuto.com.
Freelance
You’ve heard this one before, but freelancing is a great way to both make money and become a better developer (in most cases), and you can do it without leaving your full time job. Here’s two ways to go about it:
- Side hustle. I spent a good amount of time freelancing on weekends, while keeping my full time job. It was a lot of work. It was also a lot of money. So, if you want to go down this route, make sure you’re up for spending a couple of weeks/months coding after work and on weekends. To find clients you can try good old Upwork and Fiverr. Bare in mind though, taxation will be a b*tch. Taxes vary depending on where you live, but in my case, whatever money I was making on the side, was getting taxed just as regular income, at the highest tax bracket. This means I was keeping half of what I was getting paid. This wouldn’t have happened if I was freelancing full time because then I can benefit from “small businesses” schemes and what not. Nevertheless, I think it’s still worth it if you want to do it for just a while, maybe you love it and you start doing it full time, which bring me to my second point.
- Full time freelance. This is where things get interesting. The downside of freelancing is always inconsistency. Will you have a job lined up once your current project is over? Maybe. Probably, if you’re organized and know how to hustle. But the stress of not knowing discourage a lot of people from going down this route. The upside? You can make good money, and on your own terms (sort of). At the end of the day, you’re still working for someone. You still have to work with deadlines, go through feedback rounds and build something for someone else. But you can dictate your rate, you can dictate how many hours a week you’re going to dedicate to it, and you can do it when and wherever you want, as long as you deliver. You can try the platforms mentioned before to find work, but I had better luck finding gigs through my network. Ask friends, make a post on Linkedin, put it in the slack group from your coworking space. The good thing is that once you get a client, if you do a good job, that client will recommend you, and you’ll eventually get to a place where clients approach you, not the other way around.
