9 ms·

Ask HN: How to make an extra $2000 monthly?

71 points by smithmayowa 7y ago

Hey guys how do I go about making an extra $2000 monthly, I am a software developer who has tried the saas project angle before to no success sadly.

corporate_shi11 7y ago
If you just care about hitting the $2000 mark, optimizing for time and effort, I'd say just find a product to sell on Amazon and market the hell out of it on Facebook and Instagram. Run paid ads and make up for small margins with high volume. Try to offer your product at the lowest price among your competitors.
- batt4good 7y ago
  I've always been curious what avenues you use for advertising / how much you spend on advertising to see results in sales? Most of my side-businesses have been marketed entirely on forums or by word of mouth. Overclock.net back in the early 2010's had an insanely deep customer base and industry contacts!
  - corporate_shi11 7y ago
    Paid ads on social media are interesting because sometimes you get lucky with an ad and it goes viral/attracts a lot of sales, but often it doesn't. You have to experiment and know your market.
icedchai 7y ago
Open an investment account and sell option spreads. You will need a margin account to do this. Note you can also lose money.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
  Tried this for 2 years and broke even at best. It takes a bit of effort to understand the system and as a techie I found it interesting. It's easy to get the option's premium, that you get to keep , and it even seems like you're going to make a killing but then things turn against you and you lose. The down side is fast and hard so it's easy to lose your gains in no time. Then you're just trying to get even. It not worth the time and money. I don't recommend it to any one.
- dnadler 7y ago
  > Note you can also lose money. All of your money, very quickly, if you don't know what you're doing.
  - icedchai 7y ago
    This is possible. You gotta start small and learn. Don’t get too aggressive.
- Sil_E_Goose 7y ago
  >Note you can also lose money You will most likely lose money.
- Someone1234 7y ago
  That's gambling with extra steps.
- codegeek 7y ago
  Doesn't work for the Average Joe. You casually added that you can lose money but most people lose money or break even at best especially in Option trading. For someone like OP, I wouldn't recommend this.
AwesomeFaic 7y ago
Depends how much money you can invest right now, how much time you have to spend, and how quickly you need to start hitting that $2000 mark. Need it now? Check out Craigslist gigs (help with moving, quick jobs, website help), or try flipping thrift store and eBay stuff. Pros: Quick, no skills needed. Cons: Unreliable and more time consuming. Need it reliably? Work on a business and work your ass off in your spare time. Pros: Easy to make more than $2000/mo if it goes well. Cons: Will take a lot of time and effort to maybe work out for you. Alternatively, invest in a property. Pros: Easy $2000/mo through rent. Cons: Lots of upfront investment & research needed to not screw yourself over as a property manager. Personally I'm in a similar situation and currently selling on eBay and running a side business. Been at it ~6 months and make 200-400/mo on top of my salary, but looking to ramp up the business more this year. Edit: One option I overlooked of course is investing. The safer the investment, the more up-front capital you'll need and nothing is truly 100% safe. Gamble on options but be prepared to lose everything, if you really need something immediately.
- CoffeePython 7y ago
  It might take a while to make $2k/mo in cash from rental properties. We own two rentals and don’t even clear $1k/mo with both.
  - AwesomeFaic 7y ago
    I know a couple people who have very desirable Florida condos (as well as other properties) and each condo alone is doing ~2k. Granted that's day-by-day, not a monthly rental.
  - davismwfl 7y ago
    Depends on a lot of factors, I have made that on a single property (short term vacation rentals) but more typical is like what you say where it can take 10+ properties to clear $2k/month for long term rentals. Right now my best property is clearing two hundred (or so) a month, which isn't horrid but far from great. I only have long term rentals right now though, so that's ok. IMO: Rental property is best looked at as a long game, not a short term income stream. It is a solid way to gain wealth, just won't happen overnight.
CoffeePython 7y ago
Find 20 hours of freelance work at $100/hr. Sounds reductive but I’ve had good success with this when looking for additional income. Probably the easiest and most likely to work path if you are already a developer.
- neuroticfish 7y ago
  How? In the freelance developer space you're either competing with people in developing countries who work for peanuts, or your potential clients have have the money to throw at high quality work which means you're competing with the top 1-5% of freelance developers.
  - signalremotefac 7y ago
    There is a relatively new platform for what you describe [1] [1]https://www.moonlightwork.com/ https://www.moonlightwork.com/
  - CoffeePython 7y ago
    By finding a niche and looking for work in that niche. I picked NLP in the financial space and have been able to find work within a couple weeks every time I look. If you search for freelancing threads here on HN you can find some great info on getting freelance work.
    - neuroticfish 7y ago
      >I picked NLP in the financial space This sounds like something that requires a masters degree. How did you manage to prove that you were knowledgeable/skilled in NLP when you got your first job in that space?
      - CoffeePython 7y ago
        Full time job is for a consulting company. Got brought on for some greenfield work that happened to be in the space. Got to learn on the job. Leveraged that experience to land freelancing clients.
soneca 7y ago
I think the safest way (i.e. no downside, no money spent, small time investment) is negotiating your salary. In your current or new job.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  Very location dependent.. The vast majority of the workforce couldn't negotiate a $24k a year raise from their employer.
  - soneca 7y ago
    Maybe not in one step. But starting a SaaS side project or starting to freelance (with enough reputation and client pipeline so it is reliable) also won't give extra $2k from one month to another. Advancing the career as software developer still seems the most reliable and conservative way to get am extra $2k. Disclaimer: it is not my option though. I am building a side project to earn extra revenue, but because my goal is not only the extra money. I want to work for myself with something I enjoy building. With that comes more control over my life, more freedom, and joy from building something nice.
    - throwaway743 7y ago
      I hear you on the last paragraph
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    A lot of us can't negotiate a salary period, people outside of tech don't seem to realize this Major corporations have very concrete pay scales, you start at the bottom of that scale and you climb your way up it year after year with very rigid and defined maximum pay increases based on arbitrary factors in an annual merit increase and not by going "gee boss, I think I deserve a raise!".
    - soneca 7y ago
      You can change jobs with a raise though. This in software development of course, as there is a lot of demand almost everywhere and it is easier to change employers than other companies
kasi 7y ago
leetcode
ryanmercer 7y ago
Ha, that's effectively my take-home from 40 hours a week. Sure wish doing that was easy.
theFeller00 7y ago
Too overworked at my day job to do much side programming work. I decided to mainly focus on generating passive income through investing. I don't see many things that I think scream out "cheap" but the MLP sector has still not seen much of a recovery from the very steep declines from several years ago. You could look into $EPD, $ET, $MMP. Distributions given off of the units are tax-deferred, so it shouldn't cause much of a tax issue until you would unload the shares. These companies also try and raise distributions quarterly (yes, $ET has not raised in a while, but they took a worse beating than any of the others. When they do raise them, and they will, share price should recover nicely). You could also look at some CEFs. PIMCO would be the main one I'd consider for bonds. $PDI / $PCI / $PTY. If you would want to get into some equity CEFS you could look at $UTG. Obviously you can consider a lot of other options if you don't mind them tossing off less income, but your post was bout generating monthly income :)
bberenberg 7y ago
Build (or buy) a product for a niche. I sell plugins for Jira / Confluence and whatnot. Makes a lot more than 2k a month.
- pawelduda 7y ago
  How do you determine what kind of plugins are in demand?
  - bberenberg 7y ago
    I would recommend you pick a niche where you are knowledgeable. Atlassian software happens to be mine.
ducttape12 7y ago
Not sure why you're looking for that value exactly or what your current situation is, but in addition to increasing your income, you can also look at decreasing your expenses. It may be easier to shave off $500 in monthly expenses and only need an extra $1500.
RenRav 7y ago
Not software related, but my sister makes and sells simple candlesticks online for that much each month. I also resold earbuds/earplugs online for a years to get $1000-1500/mo. Seemed like a viable side project only taking up an hour or so every night to prepare packages, and then an extra 20 minutes to swing by the post office each morning. Like others said, it's always a good idea to reduce your spending and try to save. You can even use that savings to occasionally fund projects without feeling too bad if something fails.
- jetti 7y ago
  That is interesting about your sister. I've been thinking of doing something similar, do you know if she uses a platform like Etsy to sell her stuff?
  - RenRav 7y ago
    Yes, she sells via Etsy. I would link her store page for the curious, but sellers on Etsy are really homogenous and so you can glean the same info from any of them probably.
bdcravens 7y ago
I've had good results doing mentoring calls on Codementor.
Rerarom 7y ago
I have a question to everyone in this thread: how do you deal with the bureaucracy (taxes and stuff) that comes with a side business? (I'm curious also about how it varies between countries)
- ab_testing 7y ago
  If you are in the US, it is a straightforward form Schedule C. Depending on how your business is setup, Quickbooks or any other software will easily generate a form Schedule C for you.
  - Rerarom 7y ago
    But how does one register the business before it begins activity?
- trcollinson 7y ago
  I hire a good tax professional. That's it, as simple as that. I have a gentleman that I have used since 2014 who I pay about $350 to make sure everything is filed correctly. He helps me with tax planning. He helps me with the forms. The IRS is happy with me. I spend maybe a total of 2 hours a year thinking about it (I am fairly organized with my receipts though, which helps). I also have a good attorney and a good insurance broker. All in all, very simple. If I spend half of a day per year on any of this stuff, I would be surprised.
matt_the_bass 7y ago
One option is to try and monetize a hobby you want to do anyway. I’ve just started to do this with my woodworking/cnc/making hobby. I make art piece wordclocks[0]. I’ve Sold a few with almost no marketing effort. My goal is to sell two per month. Part of my marketing effort is improving visibility on Etsy and so I’ve started selling much less expensive items on Etsy too[1]. They are not so much for the revenue as for the traffic, ratings, and learning how to best use Etsy. These secondary products are all based on things I’ve designed and made for/with my young kids. Two observations: - I’ve really enjoyed the path of developing better processes of how to fabricate things more efficiently - I’ve really enjoyed getting my kids involved with making. It’s fun to observe them thinking about how to make stuff and working with them to figure things out (they are 3 and 6). By monetizing my hobby I can also write off tools I’d like to have. Note that I started pretty low cost using tools at my local makerspace[2]. [0] http://www.finewordclocks.com http://www.finewordclocks.com [1] http://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks http://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks [2] http://www.as220.org http://www.as220.org
Pvapoint 7y ago
You need to make a website about your niche and share your personal strategies on YouTube channel and post it on your blog, slowly you will start earning https://pvapoint.com/ https://pvapoint.com/
zapperdapper 7y ago
I have a friend that turns time allocated for other things into paid time. For example, she got certified as a Spin coach, so takes classes a couple of times a week and gets paid to work out. She also does yoga classes and gets paid for that too. Sure, you might not hit $2K/month but it'll get you part way there... You can probably get about £200/day painting and decorating for people you know. If you're prepared to work weekends it'll get you nearly there after word gets around that you're trustworthy and polite...

71 points by smithmayowa 7y ago

Hey guys how do I go about making an extra $2000 monthly, I am a software developer who has tried the saas project angle before to no success sadly.

corporate_shi11 7y ago

If you just care about hitting the $2000 mark, optimizing for time and effort, I'd say just find a product to sell on Amazon and market the hell out of it on Facebook and Instagram. Run paid ads and make up for small margins with high volume. Try to offer your product at the lowest price among your competitors.

batt4good 7y ago
I've always been curious what avenues you use for advertising / how much you spend on advertising to see results in sales? Most of my side-businesses have been marketed entirely on forums or by word of mouth. Overclock.net back in the early 2010's had an insanely deep customer base and industry contacts!
- corporate_shi11 7y ago
  Paid ads on social media are interesting because sometimes you get lucky with an ad and it goes viral/attracts a lot of sales, but often it doesn't. You have to experiment and know your market.

icedchai 7y ago

Open an investment account and sell option spreads. You will need a margin account to do this. Note you can also lose money.

WheelsAtLarge 7y ago
Tried this for 2 years and broke even at best. It takes a bit of effort to understand the system and as a techie I found it interesting. It's easy to get the option's premium, that you get to keep , and it even seems like you're going to make a killing but then things turn against you and you lose. The down side is fast and hard so it's easy to lose your gains in no time. Then you're just trying to get even. It not worth the time and money. I don't recommend it to any one.
dnadler 7y ago
> Note you can also lose money. All of your money, very quickly, if you don't know what you're doing.
- icedchai 7y ago
  This is possible. You gotta start small and learn. Don’t get too aggressive.
Sil_E_Goose 7y ago
>Note you can also lose money You will most likely lose money.
Someone1234 7y ago
That's gambling with extra steps.
codegeek 7y ago
Doesn't work for the Average Joe. You casually added that you can lose money but most people lose money or break even at best especially in Option trading. For someone like OP, I wouldn't recommend this.

AwesomeFaic 7y ago

Depends how much money you can invest right now, how much time you have to spend, and how quickly you need to start hitting that $2000 mark. Need it now? Check out Craigslist gigs (help with moving, quick jobs, website help), or try flipping thrift store and eBay stuff. Pros: Quick, no skills needed. Cons: Unreliable and more time consuming. Need it reliably? Work on a business and work your ass off in your spare time. Pros: Easy to make more than $2000/mo if it goes well. Cons: Will take a lot of time and effort to maybe work out for you. Alternatively, invest in a property. Pros: Easy $2000/mo through rent. Cons: Lots of upfront investment & research needed to not screw yourself over as a property manager. Personally I'm in a similar situation and currently selling on eBay and running a side business. Been at it ~6 months and make 200-400/mo on top of my salary, but looking to ramp up the business more this year. Edit: One option I overlooked of course is investing. The safer the investment, the more up-front capital you'll need and nothing is truly 100% safe. Gamble on options but be prepared to lose everything, if you really need something immediately.

CoffeePython 7y ago
It might take a while to make $2k/mo in cash from rental properties. We own two rentals and don’t even clear $1k/mo with both.
- AwesomeFaic 7y ago
  I know a couple people who have very desirable Florida condos (as well as other properties) and each condo alone is doing ~2k. Granted that's day-by-day, not a monthly rental.
- davismwfl 7y ago
  Depends on a lot of factors, I have made that on a single property (short term vacation rentals) but more typical is like what you say where it can take 10+ properties to clear $2k/month for long term rentals. Right now my best property is clearing two hundred (or so) a month, which isn't horrid but far from great. I only have long term rentals right now though, so that's ok. IMO: Rental property is best looked at as a long game, not a short term income stream. It is a solid way to gain wealth, just won't happen overnight.

CoffeePython 7y ago

Find 20 hours of freelance work at $100/hr. Sounds reductive but I’ve had good success with this when looking for additional income. Probably the easiest and most likely to work path if you are already a developer.

neuroticfish 7y ago
How? In the freelance developer space you're either competing with people in developing countries who work for peanuts, or your potential clients have have the money to throw at high quality work which means you're competing with the top 1-5% of freelance developers.
- signalremotefac 7y ago
  There is a relatively new platform for what you describe [1] [1]https://www.moonlightwork.com/ https://www.moonlightwork.com/
- CoffeePython 7y ago
  By finding a niche and looking for work in that niche. I picked NLP in the financial space and have been able to find work within a couple weeks every time I look. If you search for freelancing threads here on HN you can find some great info on getting freelance work.
  - neuroticfish 7y ago
    >I picked NLP in the financial space This sounds like something that requires a masters degree. How did you manage to prove that you were knowledgeable/skilled in NLP when you got your first job in that space?
    - CoffeePython 7y ago
      Full time job is for a consulting company. Got brought on for some greenfield work that happened to be in the space. Got to learn on the job. Leveraged that experience to land freelancing clients.

soneca 7y ago

I think the safest way (i.e. no downside, no money spent, small time investment) is negotiating your salary. In your current or new job.

rwmurrayVT 7y ago
Very location dependent.. The vast majority of the workforce couldn't negotiate a $24k a year raise from their employer.
- soneca 7y ago
  Maybe not in one step. But starting a SaaS side project or starting to freelance (with enough reputation and client pipeline so it is reliable) also won't give extra $2k from one month to another. Advancing the career as software developer still seems the most reliable and conservative way to get am extra $2k. Disclaimer: it is not my option though. I am building a side project to earn extra revenue, but because my goal is not only the extra money. I want to work for myself with something I enjoy building. With that comes more control over my life, more freedom, and joy from building something nice.
  - throwaway743 7y ago
    I hear you on the last paragraph
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  A lot of us can't negotiate a salary period, people outside of tech don't seem to realize this Major corporations have very concrete pay scales, you start at the bottom of that scale and you climb your way up it year after year with very rigid and defined maximum pay increases based on arbitrary factors in an annual merit increase and not by going "gee boss, I think I deserve a raise!".
  - soneca 7y ago
    You can change jobs with a raise though. This in software development of course, as there is a lot of demand almost everywhere and it is easier to change employers than other companies

kasi 7y ago

leetcode

ryanmercer 7y ago

Ha, that's effectively my take-home from 40 hours a week. Sure wish doing that was easy.

theFeller00 7y ago

Too overworked at my day job to do much side programming work. I decided to mainly focus on generating passive income through investing. I don't see many things that I think scream out "cheap" but the MLP sector has still not seen much of a recovery from the very steep declines from several years ago. You could look into $EPD, $ET, $MMP. Distributions given off of the units are tax-deferred, so it shouldn't cause much of a tax issue until you would unload the shares. These companies also try and raise distributions quarterly (yes, $ET has not raised in a while, but they took a worse beating than any of the others. When they do raise them, and they will, share price should recover nicely). You could also look at some CEFs. PIMCO would be the main one I'd consider for bonds. $PDI / $PCI / $PTY. If you would want to get into some equity CEFS you could look at $UTG. Obviously you can consider a lot of other options if you don't mind them tossing off less income, but your post was bout generating monthly income :)

bberenberg 7y ago

Build (or buy) a product for a niche. I sell plugins for Jira / Confluence and whatnot. Makes a lot more than 2k a month.

pawelduda 7y ago
How do you determine what kind of plugins are in demand?
- bberenberg 7y ago
  I would recommend you pick a niche where you are knowledgeable. Atlassian software happens to be mine.

ducttape12 7y ago

Not sure why you're looking for that value exactly or what your current situation is, but in addition to increasing your income, you can also look at decreasing your expenses. It may be easier to shave off $500 in monthly expenses and only need an extra $1500.

RenRav 7y ago

Not software related, but my sister makes and sells simple candlesticks online for that much each month. I also resold earbuds/earplugs online for a years to get $1000-1500/mo. Seemed like a viable side project only taking up an hour or so every night to prepare packages, and then an extra 20 minutes to swing by the post office each morning. Like others said, it's always a good idea to reduce your spending and try to save. You can even use that savings to occasionally fund projects without feeling too bad if something fails.

jetti 7y ago
That is interesting about your sister. I've been thinking of doing something similar, do you know if she uses a platform like Etsy to sell her stuff?
- RenRav 7y ago
  Yes, she sells via Etsy. I would link her store page for the curious, but sellers on Etsy are really homogenous and so you can glean the same info from any of them probably.

bdcravens 7y ago

I've had good results doing mentoring calls on Codementor.

Rerarom 7y ago

I have a question to everyone in this thread: how do you deal with the bureaucracy (taxes and stuff) that comes with a side business? (I'm curious also about how it varies between countries)

ab_testing 7y ago
If you are in the US, it is a straightforward form Schedule C. Depending on how your business is setup, Quickbooks or any other software will easily generate a form Schedule C for you.
- Rerarom 7y ago
  But how does one register the business before it begins activity?
trcollinson 7y ago
I hire a good tax professional. That's it, as simple as that. I have a gentleman that I have used since 2014 who I pay about $350 to make sure everything is filed correctly. He helps me with tax planning. He helps me with the forms. The IRS is happy with me. I spend maybe a total of 2 hours a year thinking about it (I am fairly organized with my receipts though, which helps). I also have a good attorney and a good insurance broker. All in all, very simple. If I spend half of a day per year on any of this stuff, I would be surprised.

matt_the_bass 7y ago

One option is to try and monetize a hobby you want to do anyway. I’ve just started to do this with my woodworking/cnc/making hobby. I make art piece wordclocks[0]. I’ve Sold a few with almost no marketing effort. My goal is to sell two per month. Part of my marketing effort is improving visibility on Etsy and so I’ve started selling much less expensive items on Etsy too[1]. They are not so much for the revenue as for the traffic, ratings, and learning how to best use Etsy. These secondary products are all based on things I’ve designed and made for/with my young kids. Two observations: - I’ve really enjoyed the path of developing better processes of how to fabricate things more efficiently - I’ve really enjoyed getting my kids involved with making. It’s fun to observe them thinking about how to make stuff and working with them to figure things out (they are 3 and 6). By monetizing my hobby I can also write off tools I’d like to have. Note that I started pretty low cost using tools at my local makerspace[2]. [0] http://www.finewordclocks.com http://www.finewordclocks.com [1] http://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks http://www.etsy.com/shop/FineWordclocks [2] http://www.as220.org http://www.as220.org

Pvapoint 7y ago

You need to make a website about your niche and share your personal strategies on YouTube channel and post it on your blog, slowly you will start earning https://pvapoint.com/ https://pvapoint.com/

zapperdapper 7y ago

I have a friend that turns time allocated for other things into paid time. For example, she got certified as a Spin coach, so takes classes a couple of times a week and gets paid to work out. She also does yoga classes and gets paid for that too. Sure, you might not hit $2K/month but it'll get you part way there... You can probably get about £200/day painting and decorating for people you know. If you're prepared to work weekends it'll get you nearly there after word gets around that you're trustworthy and polite...