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Ask HN: Alternative ways to make money with coding and system skills?

• benjaminben 4y ago
  I think you'll find there is more work in freelancing than you think. The trick is to charge a market rate for your time (which is usually higher than most people think) and work a lot when there is work so when work slows down, you can survive financially. You can do very well if you build a good reputation for yourself. I'd be happy to offer more advice if you're interested. You can reach me at buink.com.
• KETpXDDzR 4y ago
  Go full remote and hire someone to attend your meetings.
• sposeray 4y ago
  [dead]
• rozenmd 4y ago
  Consider teaching on your own blog - it's not immediate money, but if you're patient, you'll start to get folks asking if you're available for consulting, or if you've considered writing a book on what you write about. Source: I wrote a book about a single function in React, it did okay.
  • tayo42 4y ago
    Ive thought about the blog thing, i just have no idea how to find readers? With the book the publisher takes care of the marketing part? I think that's a common theme Im noticing with where I seem to stop. How do i find, reader, clients, users for whatever i want to do.
    • rozenmd 4y ago
      It comes from naturally participating in the community - someone will ask a question, you'll respond "oh hey here's how you do that", and link them to your blog with additional details (or you'll write an article that solves the issue and share it if it comes up again)
      • muzani 4y ago
        Yup, nearly all the blog stuff I have is just to save time on explaining things over and over to someone on HN or FB. Look to answer questions and then blog about stuff where the answer is long. And then once you're explaining the thing over and over again and need to get into more depth, write a book or training module. For example, some things need background knowledge on how coroutines work, and then you end up explaining why we use coroutines over threading, and so on.
    • conductr 4y ago
      What’s a growing area/project that is poorly documented? Just start blogging as if you were creating documentation, add code examples, etc. Since you’re bad at marketing, make it SEO. Once you have some traffic coming in, promote a paid course/ebook where you build a full project/app or some bigger unit of work with the thing.
• Brajeshwar 4y ago
  You sound like someone who can be a technical co-founder to someone who is good with sales and the schmoozing part. A lot of Startup founders are looking for such a person, who is the "Guy in the Chair". You get paid to do what you like. And things goes well, get a big payday later on. If not, by then, you would know how to do another one but with a much better experience, connections, and still not do the "typical complaints."
  • arjvik 4y ago
    How do you find the non-technical cofounders to do this?
    • Brajeshwar 4y ago
      I seriously hope you are not kidding with me. Back-of-envelop, napkin-calculation, and my 8-ball wizardy data would say that there are 9 non-technical founders looking for every capable technical founder. Anyway, there are lots of communities, cohort-based, hybrid-style, and what-not options these days to find someone or a few. You can start with https://www.startupschool.org https://www.startupschool.org and/or https://www.beondeck.com https://www.beondeck.com
      • afroisalreadyin 4y ago
        Thanks for those two links. I'm in the exact same place as the OP, and would love to start something of my own, but I have only technical skills, meaning all my startup ideas are for devs, a domain that's absolutely saturated. In the best case, I would pair with someone who is a "nerd" of a different domain, but somehow I find it rather difficult to meet such people. In case you (or anyone else) know of similar programs for Europe (esp. Berlin), I would be grateful for pointers.
        • SuoDuanDao 4y ago
          Meetup is still a good source for making lots of surface-level connections, here's a quick search I did: https://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=startup&source=EVENTS&location=de--Berlin https://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=startup&source=EVENTS&... edit: You'll probably have more success, as I don't know the German terminology for things like 'startup' - Geschaeftsaufstellung?
• ktpsns 4y ago
  Depending on your country, freelancing next to the day-job may be an option to testing "the new job" without giving up the security/benefits of an employment (for instance an affordable employer's contributed health care if you are in western europe). Hourly rates for IT freelancing professionals are only increasing, there is a long standing and ongoing shortage for skilled people. It is not uncommon to earn a yearly sallary of an employee within a few month as a freelancer. This means: Even more time to checkout what you really want to do. Edit, disclaimer: I co-founded a cooperative to help skilled IT people to work independently as freelancers, giving legal advices and a network.
  • impressthenet 4y ago
    Would be great if you shared details. Thanks.
  • bjornsing 4y ago
    > Edit, disclaimer: I co-founded a cooperative to help skilled IT people to work independently as freelancers, giving legal advices and a network. Interesting. Where can I learn more? I think it would be great for Europe (or at least for Sweden) if bright and productive software engineers stopped working for peanuts and went freelance instead. Would love to help push the needle in that direction.
    • dt3ft 4y ago
      Swedish .net dev here, would love to try freelancing without giving up my current job. Hit me up :)
• joshxyz 4y ago
  learn sales, it fixes everything.
  • baxtr 4y ago
    I agree. But then still the question remains: sell what?
    • simne 4y ago
      I have made lot mistakes and learn lot. From my exp/knowledge, most important to start doing business. - 99% of ideas end just ideas, nothing done, just from some foundations mistakenly considered, doing will be too boring, or not worth time/money/etc. Unfortunately, books and academia, not too helpful, because, usually, books written and academia running, by people, who are not successful in business, but good in write books or in teaching. Next important thing, don't screw up. Meaning, even experienced people make epic mistakes, which are really easy to avoid. But for this need to be experienced and open minded, this is not easy. When you do sales, your skin becomes thick and solid, because you lot of time hear refusing, but in product dev (on service even more!) you need to have powerful closed loop with client. So, in conclusion, two main business principles: 1. hear your clients, who pay money. 2. start/stop easy.
    • joshxyz 4y ago
      answered in sibling comment. tldr the entirety of himself.
  • Brajeshwar 4y ago
    Extremely authentic and good advice. However, in this case, the wrong target. The OP is looking to do technical work and perhaps, if viable, avoid the "selling" part. Everyone should "sell" and learn to be good at the specific idea of "selling" suited to that person. A CTO/VP-of-Eng should sell technical proofs, ideas, to the internal team and external hiring prospect, and sometime to the CEO to push forward technical awesomeness. Having said that, "Learn to Sell" can be told blanket to all aspiring founders, and trying to take on a CEO role.
• 0atman 4y ago
  Coding pairs well and elevates many other side-hustles, I think. Nearly every job can benefits from automation, and if it can't, then the logical thinking that coding requires will improve it in some way. I paired coding with fiction writing and made a scifi podcast, which now represents 10% of my monthly income after two years! I wrote up my experience and advice here, if you're interested in the details https://www.0atman.com/articles/21/make-fiction-podcast https://www.0atman.com/articles/21/make-fiction-podcast
  • 0atman 4y ago
    More recently (March of this year) I also started to teach what I can about coding on my YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/NoBoilerplate https://www.youtube.com/c/NoBoilerplate) Which has seen enormous positive feedback - and youtube ads are very fair (50/50 split between you and Google), and you don't have to chase the money, it's all handled for you! Another 10% of my monthly income comes from YT, I'd guess. The key with a youtube channel is to differentiate yourself from the rest in some way. I'm trying to do that with careful script writing and high-quality audio. Don't just dive in and waffle for 30 minutes while screenrecording, practice!
    • domlebo70 4y ago
      Love your channel! I'd love to see less Rust focused videos however. I feel like you've exhausted that avenue, personally.
    • MattTV 4y ago
      You're the best! I was in the middle of a six-month internship that only let me use C when I found your channel. Up until that point, I was having a really hard time and thinking about dropping out of my software engineering degree because I just thought there has to be a better way to work on low level stuff. And then I found your videos about Rust and I feel so much better about the future! I feel like I know way more now about what I want to look for in a company before I apply. Thank you! (Literally made my first HN account to post this)
    • iamlolz 4y ago
• bacon_waffle 4y ago
  More of an observation than a suggestion, but literally every single organisation (businesses, educational institutions, community groups) that I've been involved with, has had technical stuff that could be improved to help with the core mission. Often, those technical issues aren't front of mind for other people in the org, but someone with your technical skills and an understanding of the organisation will see the issues and be able to improve things. A successful technical fix will quickly have people bringing you new things to work on. At this stage, I've got a full time job (and I'm pretty burned out, frankly) so don't take on those technical things as I come across them. But, it sure feels like just engaging with them (or not saying "no") could quickly turn in to a sort of technical odd-job-fixer/consultant role.
• yrgulation 4y ago
  Most web related indie dev has been killed by open source. Best alternative is to look into niche programming or pairing with a person that understands real life problems and needs. Game dev is an option along with programming plugins for various platforms. Dont be put off by nay sayers and do your own research.
  • aew4ytasghe5 4y ago
    > Most web related indie dev has been killed by open source. You throw this out there like some fact. Meanwhile, the lot of us make money on web dev that is built upon open source. The same we have been doing for a long time now.
    • simne 4y ago
      You may believe or not, but large businesses and even some medium, uses strategy of destroy low segments of market with products sell much lower than market prices or even free. Simple example, HDDs of small sizes and very large, usually sell cheaper than cost production, donated from profitable medium segment, or from other source of cheap money (like VC or stocks). Hard example, when IBM released Eclipse, killed lot of small companies, who made simple cheap IDEs (shareware). Those small companies usually are not threat, but sometimes could grow.
    • DonHopkins 4y ago
      Cygnus Support's slogan was "We Make Free Software Affordable". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_Solutions https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/open-sources/1565925823/ch07.html https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/open-sources/1565925823... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23884395 https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/2020-May/021225.html
    • bjornsing 4y ago
      Yup. If you want to do interesting work / really write software then you have to give it away for free. If you want to get paid you have to spend your days cobbling together open source to accomplish totally trivial functionality that some dimwit has “invented”. That’s the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into, unfortunately.
• jimz 4y ago
  For the most part, if you can make money for other people, you can use that skill set for yourself. Also, if you're somewhere where it's legal or at least accessible, it's not actually 100% true that at a casino the house always wins. It will take a little bit of effort to get started and you do need a small bit of infrastructure (but a cheap VPS or a SoC would actually do, depending on what you focus on), but it's not only possible, but can be fairly profitable to bet on sports. You do need some money in the bank to start, but there's a fair bit of resources on Github that can help you with data collection, analytics, etc. And places like the sportsbook subreddit or one of many forums out there where you can get a lay of the land. I have no CS degree, hell, I haven't taken math since I failed AP Stats in 11th grade (tbf my teacher had a stroke in class 3 weeks before the test and died before he got to the hospital and it screwed up everyone and nobody in the class passed since this was just before we could bring cell phones to school, but still, that year was a wash). I haven't taken a formal math class since and I went to 8 more years of school after that. 3.5 years later I'm up 161 units which is just about viable (5%+ ROI is generally considered viable). It's nice to work from home, hang out with likeminded fans in groupchats and reddit, and watch sports and make money. Now, it is still gambling. I've lost 32 straight picks in a row once - then Brentford beat City and made half of that back. It's not for the faint of heart, but it is a viable option if you are into sports, or statistics, or just hate making front ends as I do. Just don't buy anyone else's picks, they wouldn't be selling picks if they're actually making money.
  • bitcoinmoney 4y ago
    I know Kelly criterion and some bankroll management. Where do I start? Wouldn’t you be banned from bookies if you’re a winning bettor? Or at least get limited? And which bookies to use?
    • anony23 4y ago
      You will get limited and bankroll management is a nightmare.
    • xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
      This is my experience. They restrict or ban your account if you win too much in a short amount of time. A retired friend does sports betting as a hobby and is quite good at it, but has been banned from two big name bookies for nothing more than a brief winning streak. No software or analysis, just a sports enthusiast. I totally understand the mentality of folks who sell picks. Especially with all the KYC regulations these days it can be a real slog to keep an account live.
• deviance 4y ago
  I'm also very much interested in finding solutions to the stated problem, but have not had much luck so far
• specproc 4y ago
  Non-profits are very different to corporate environments. Not without their own issues and bullshit, and less well-paid, but considerably more easy going and potentialy a lot more fun. Some people like the idea of doing something meaningful, I've been in the sector too long to care about that. What I do find is that the sort of problems you're facing are far more interesting. For example, I spend all day trying to figure out how best to track how [ISSUE] is presented in the media. Worth having a poke around non-profit job boards for interesting-looking problems. The good gigs are often solving very specific, weird and interesting challenges.
  • luckylion 4y ago
    I've never worked in the corporate world as an employee, but I've worked long-term contracts as a freelancer with both Corporations large and small, and also large-ish non-profits. My take-way: I'd take the corporate world over the non-profits any day of the week. The office politics level was so high that you'd quickly see it and its effects even when you only had like five in-person meetings and a few phone calls. It seeped into everything and it was just annoying. They were very laid back and the pace was a joke in comparison, but they all seemed to attract a type of personality that I don't want to work with (or maybe those are who remain and they run off all the nice people). Plus endless committees. Granted, non of them were technical non-profits, they were just non-profits that also needed tech stuff done, and as mentioned, they were not small, so things might be very different in a small organization that doesn't yet have local, regional, state and federal levels.
    • specproc 4y ago
      Yeah, I guess with any sort of organisation, corporate, academic, non-profit or otherwise, there's a tonne of variety. I've mainly been a non-profit boy, some have been great, others a completely shit-show. I'm European, and the scene here's very different to the US. YMMV. I guess my thought here in my original reply was that one thing they can offer over corporates are cool problems to work on. I've got a lot of friends who do OSINT stuff, for example. A good non-profit gig is a thing of beauty, I'm very happy with what I'm up to now, but that's me. Bad ones, sure, you'd probably be better off at a shitty corporate. Same with any work, homework on your prospective employer is essential.
• alin23 4y ago
  Building and selling macOS apps is a pretty good niche to be in right now. I escaped my stressful corporate job 1 year ago and I’ve been living comfortably since then from app revenue only. I’m making between $3.5k and $9k per month with https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/ and the smaller apps I create at https://lowtechguys.com/ https://lowtechguys.com/ It’s not much for some parts of the world. But I’m well enough from this that I even took the time to build a small calendar app (https://lowtechguys.com/grila https://lowtechguys.com/grila) from which all the funds will go to my brother’s college costs so he can stop working 12h/day jobs. Before this I tried creating paid web services but none took off. I realized I actually don’t use any indie web product after 8 years of professional coding. I’m only using web products from big companies like Google, fly.io, Amazon etc. Desktop apps on the other hand, most that I use and love are made by single developers. With the ascent of Apple Silicon, and the ease of SwiftUI, this has the potential of bringing a modest revenue while also being more fulfilling than a corporate job. In case you’re curious how the code looks for something like that, here’s a small open-source app that I built in a single (long) day, which has proven to be useful enough that people want to pay for it: https://github.com/alin23/Clop https://github.com/alin23/Clop
  • spinlock_ 4y ago
    Pretty cool, congrats! Can you recommend learning material about developing macOS apps with SwiftUI?
    • alin23 4y ago
      Thanks! I only learn by building small ideas and looking into the Apple documentation through Dash (https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash) and searching "how to do X" on Google. So I can't recommend material from first-hand experience. But I've heard good things about this university video course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VJ9OpT-IPSM6dFSwQCIl409gNBsqKTe https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9VJ9OpT-IPSM6dFSwQCI... On a first glance it seems to cover a lot of stuff I use regularly in SwiftUI, but also some videos are quite long. It depends if you like learning by watching, or by doing.
• dools 4y ago
  Being good at making other people money is actually a skill you can monetise. That’s basically what B2B software is: making money for other people. It’s the very definition of value creation. So focus on how you can make money for other people, then scale that up in a way that allows you to charge less than the value created but more than the cost to produce. Also don’t try to think of an idea, just start talking to business owners about problems that cost them money or constrain growth (opportunity cost) and fix those problems.
  • moneywoes 4y ago
    Any insight on the reaching out to business owners part? Not getting anywhere with cold emails
    • dools 4y ago
      Networking events such as BNI or meetups Chamber of commerce events Go door to door LinkedIn messages and/or get introduced through shared connections Facebook communities and/or other online forums where you can answer questions and build relationships Phone calls Better cold emails! Friends and family Also whenever you speak to someone and have a good conversation with them, ask that person for the contact details of someone else who might be interested in speaking
  • norin 4y ago
    this is a really good advice. I've this as well.
• JEDI-HACKER 4y ago
  Who feels bots are the best way to make money by gathering unless information and sell it to companies with way too much money...
  • waltbosz 4y ago
    Can you tell us more about this business model?
• nicbou 4y ago
  Programming can support almost any other domain. A programmer paired with another expert can create a lot of value. These days I'm a webmaster. I don't get paid to write software, but writing software helps me get paid. I help people with German bureaucracy, and occasionally, being able to create software helps me do my job better. I can build little calculators and widgets that support my content, for example. If I didn't do that, I'd probably pair with other people to solve small problems that big tech doesn't cover. It's fun, it's effective, and it's often lucrative.
  • simplecto 4y ago
    "A programmer paired with another expert" This is the key phrase here. I might tweak it to say "subject matter expert", but that is just semantics. I help my friend customize and automate his trading research and strategies with my python and automation skills. We are experimenting with openBB, and I'm learning about trading, finance, and other industries. He gets to do things that a Bloomberg cant or wont do. This is a win-win.
• jerrygoyal 4y ago
  i use Toptal to find projects i want to work upon with my preferred tech stack, timezone, working hrs (I prefer 20 hrs) and hourly rate. There's so much freedom for me that I could never get from a corporate . Toptal clients are nice too!
  • bilsbie 4y ago
    How brutal are the interviews? Isn’t the pay really low? Can you negotiate?
    • simne 4y ago
      I've contacted with toptal, just for curiosity, to ask questions, because on their site I have not seen clear instructions. First words they said me, even don't asking what I'm looking for, that I should book interview to next week, if fail, next time not earlier than in 6 months, and after 3 fails ban forever. I don't think, this is normal talk.
    • XajniN 4y ago
      The interviews are not as brutal as in FAANG, but you have to do a test project which takes a lot of time. You set your hourly rate yourself, but you have to consider the competition. So, it’s usually good enough for Europe, but not for the US.
• yotamoron 4y ago
  Find a partner that can do all the things you can't (marketing etc). Make sure you trust each other.
  • sebastianconcpt 4y ago
    How do you find such partner?
• fredgrott 4y ago
  hmm Not good enough to teach? You are thinking about this wrong! Passion about something and communicating that to others is the invite for them to take that journey to mastery. You just need the garyVee social media money tricks on top to make it fundable. I am in the process of re-vamping that stuff to do exactly that and I am probably older than you at db of 1965...follow me to see it happen https://fredgrott.medium.coom https://fredgrott.medium.coom Side note garyvee content stack for devs is the reels get expanded in to code and screenshot visual slides in the medium articles while at the same time making mp4 animation reels for instagram, linkedin, Fb posting. On top of that you break the programming into smaller foundation units that get the same expanded reels treatment. In my case I finalizing 8 months of sm postings in a few weekends at over 2,000 artifacts for 20k in social media postings. Yes! Really that much damn efficiency! Come on take the damn plunge! the hard swim will do you some good to chase away all those wrong assumptions and mind fog! BT FB, Linked, Instagram , Youtube all have 1 billion users to make this strategy work.
  • peterkelly 4y ago
    Agreed. Also btw there's a typo in your link. It should be https://fredgrott.medium.com/ https://fredgrott.medium.com/ (there was an extra o in com)
  • robomartin 4y ago
    > the reels get expanded in to code and screenshot visual slides in the medium articles while at the same time making mp4 animation reels for instagram, linkedin, Fb posting. Having trouble parsing this to understand what you mean. I have a feeling I am missing context. For example, what do you mean by "reels". Is this an analogy to film reels?
    • tzekid 4y ago
      I think it's reels as "Youtube Reels" as in short (15-60 second) videos.
  • lakomen 4y ago
    You sound like a marketing person trying to sell me something. Your medium blog posts also sound like internet background noise. Those are the kinds of posts that come up when you Google a problem and the results include spam like this
• peterkelly 4y ago
  Academia is an option. I was in a similar situation to you early on in my career and decided I wasn't happy in industry, and decided to enroll in grad school. I ended up teaching for a couple of years and found that I really enjoyed it. And the kind of work you do on research projects is very different from that of the corporate world - you can focus on longer-term things with less immediate results, the work itself can be super interesting, and there are always lots of interesting people around in a university environment. Academia has its downsides however - the job market is brutally competitive, it can be very hard to get research funding, and you can spend a lot of your time writing grant applications. There's also admin duties to take on which can eat up more time. It also has bureaucracy and since it's an institution comprised of people, is not immune from many of the interpersonal conflicts that occur in the corporate world. I'm speaking from the Australian perspective here, but in my country the universities also decided to sell out and take in lots of international students who have $$$ but lack sufficient background knowledge and motivation, and lecturers are forced by the universities to let students pass who haven't demonstrated sufficient competency. I was asked to change marks on a course to reflect the number of students who the university wanted to pass, not how many were actually worthy of it, which I felt was unethical. Because of all these issues I decided academia wasn't for me so as soon as I had my PhD I got out. I still miss the actual core teaching part though, as it's one of the most enjoyable things I've done. So I ended back in industry where I'm back to building software, but in a role that lets me use what I learnt in grad school and is thus more interesting than just building basic web/CRUD apps. Not all companies are bad, and I've been lucky enough to find an employer where the bureaucracy is minimal and my manager makes sure I'm pretty well isolated from the things which get in the way of actual work. There are good companies out there, but it takes a certain amount of luck to end up in one with a healthy culture. One other piece of advice I have is that if you're from a rich western country, move to somewhere with a lower cost of living and work remotely. I relocated from Australia to Thailand and it approximately quadrupled my spending power. This gave me the freedom to be able to take time off from my job more often to do other things like work on hobby projects, and while I don't currently take advantage of this freedom much it's nice to know its there. Depending on who you're working for, you might be able to negotiate a part time gig, or if contracting do six months on, six months off or something like that. Oh, and on going it alone and trying to be an indie dev: this can be super tough if you don't have good business and marketing skills. I tried this and failed. Others have made it work, but it's definitely not easy.
• strzibny 4y ago
  You can always do your own course or book and put it on Gumroad. Here's my story: https://nts.strzibny.name/one-year-of-sales/ https://nts.strzibny.name/one-year-of-sales/
  • pacomerh 4y ago
    How do you promote this kind of content
• rahul_nyc 4y ago
  AI space is heating up with the release of Stable Diffusion models and OpenAI. If you are interested you can start playing with these tech and make things useful for people. I'm just getting started on this and released the MVP version of Picasa AI[1] and I'm excited about it. I wanted to build something for a long time and I always postponed it for better time. With the AI trends I feel now is the correct time to jump in. [1] - https://PicasaAI.com https://PicasaAI.com
  • sebastianconcpt 4y ago
    Smartly marketed on vanity ;)
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • jpolitzki 4y ago
    This is the truth, about to raise and am looking for someone to help out. Let me know if interested!
    • rahul_nyc 4y ago
      Hey, Sorry I missed your msg. Yes, I'm interested. Please ping me on Twitter or let me know how can I reach out?
• jcpst 4y ago
  > I can code up my dream ideas with ease, what i don't know how to do is market anything or get users. That is the key. If you learn marketing strategies, you will be able validate ideas, grow a customer base, test what works and doesn’t.
  • lumenwrites 4y ago
    What's the best way to learn marketing?
    • jcpst 4y ago
      Not sure what the best way is. Here's the very basics of digital marketing: * build something great * build a list of people interested in that thing * Keep them engaged by giving them value * occasionally ask them to buy stuff And the rest is implementation details.
• danielheath 4y ago
  > The thought of returning to corporate working kind of disgusts me. daily meetings, middle management bs, politics, bureaucracy... im sure your familiar with the typical complaints. Have you considered working in a company that isn't like that? Things to look for: * Ownership: The owner should be the person running the business. * Size: Fewer than 20 employees. Ideally two or three; consider being the first. * Revenue: A reasonably stable revenue stream lets you take on mid-long term projects. Ad revenue from a niche content business is quite good here.
  • uhtred 4y ago
    I've worked in small (less than 20 employees) companies and although there were no grooming / standup / retro meetings (i.e. all the bullshit agile stuff I can't stand), it was replaced with other bullshit like having to answer the phone and deal with passive aggressive customers, zero benefits other than salary (no 401k etc), an owner who said things like "microsoft can build excel, why can't we build <insert feature here>", no project/product managers to manage the todo list, so everything was urgent and must be done imediately!
    • uhtred 4y ago
      Who downvoted this? Reveal yourself! A small business owner no doubt who the truth hurt.
    • dhimes 4y ago
      Yeah it helps if the owner codes- so they know what they are talking about at least in principle when it comes to building stuff.
      • ryandrake 4y ago
        Sometimes that makes it worse. You'll get founders who say "Well, when I originally wrote [our product], it was 1,500 lines of code, and I did it myself in a weekend. Why are you telling me a team of five needs a month to add a single feature???" Except, things are different now that the code base has increased 100X and the number of users has increased 10,000X.
• pythonbase 4y ago
  I have been doing consulting on the side, around 15-20 hours per day. Also into niche website development; building search engine optimized websites that are monetized through display and affiliate ads. Both side gigs usually generate more than the full time job.
  • rmorey 4y ago
    surely you must mean 15-20 hours per week?
  • steve1977 4y ago
    I assume you mean 15-20 hours per week on the side? ;)
    • pythonbase 4y ago
      My bad. That's what I meant. :)
  • Mikepicker 4y ago
    Could you elaborate more on your niche websites? Are those blogs or web-scraped content?
    • pythonbase 4y ago
      Both actually. A niche site is usually centered around a specific topic. Content can be created manually or scraped and repurposed. The idea is to provide relevant transactional information and lead the user towards the conversion funnel which could be display ad, affiliate offer or any other sales pitch. For instance, currently I am working on a website related to a coffee machine brand. I did the keyword and competition research, layout the site structure and monetization funnel. Now my team of writers is busy in creating content with the goal to turn out 30-40 highly quality content pieces in a month - enough to test the potential of the niche. Another project I did previously was to set up mini sites for lawyers in a US state. I scraped existing lawyer directories to provide a lead management system to the client who then pitched development services to those without websites.
• slothtrop 4y ago
  > I can code up my dream ideas with ease, what i don't know how to do is market anything or get users If that's true, you should be doing it. Worry about marketing once you have something to market.
  • acuozzo 4y ago
    > Worry about marketing once you have something to market. After years of research and experimentation, I have written a spatiotemporal comb filter for NTSC TV signals which consistently outperforms the state of the art. It's done. I use it for digitally archiving Laserdiscs. How can I market this?
    • simne 4y ago
      > How can I market this? I think you slightly late, at least for Laserdiscs - they are gone to history, now all new video already digital from beginning. Few years ago in 3rd world, was popular to make business for digitally archiving old analog home archives. Scheme was simple - just rent cup of square meters in some crowded place and gather clients. If it could fit other cases, business schemes could be very different, depend on case.
    • slothtrop 4y ago
      Does it solve a problem / meet a demand in a significant fashion? If so, ask the right people and ye shall receive. I don't know anything about marketing. For context, the other user alludes that building their dream project is trivial. I take this to mean it should be pursued regardless of how well the marketing outcome would be. If it's paramount that something sell well (because of upfront cost, time, preference, etc) then it's worth scrutinizing whether it can sell. HN seems to like the Mom Test book, summary: https://sandro.volpee.de/the-mom-test-summary-validate-ideas https://sandro.volpee.de/the-mom-test-summary-validate-ideas
      • simne 4y ago
        Mom test is really great book!
• mmmpop 4y ago
  I've been a successful dev for a decade now but I was a mech E / CS dropout. I loathe CS for many reasons and saw the writing on the wall for my degree-less ass, so I went back for industrial engineering. 3 semesters to go and loving every second of it!!! Well, maybe not the materials science and beam analysis but the rest is great.
• lavventura 4y ago
  In trading, I realize I always made loses when my emotions get involved. So I decided to implement a trading-bot in Python for fun. It took 1.5 years of development. The bot can open ~100 positions each day and closing all with 1 cent gain (in total ~1$ profit per day). At least its nice to see something I made can make some money even its amount pretty small.
  • max_hammer 4y ago
    How much did you paid for the broker fee ?
    • volkk 4y ago
      trading is free these days for stocks
    • lavventura 4y ago
      The bot trades on the Binance spot, fee is 0.10%.
  • Temporary_31337 4y ago
    Is it outperforming the market though?
    • lavventura 4y ago
      I was experimenting in Binance Spot.I don't believe it out-performs the market, but it can survive when market crashes since the bot is not greedy. The bot opens up to 20 positions in parallel each starts with 2$ and always limit order with 0.5% profit. Some positions close itself in few seconds some remain for a day. If there is -5% loss on a position, I added up the amount of the position and re-order limit order with 0.5% gain. Let's say for 2$ position if there is 5% loss, I add 2$ more, than 4$ ... The position size grows as 2 => 4 => 8 => 16 ... with updated limit order for each. I observe that eventually position close it self with profit.
      • 4y ago
• OliverJones 4y ago
  It's not quick money, but writing books can generate an ongoing royalty stream. And, they're good resume builders if you want to do freelance work. It worked for me. You can do worse than O'Reilly Media. https://www.oreilly.com/work-with-us.html https://www.oreilly.com/work-with-us.html And there are other publishers.
• davemartens 4y ago
  If this thread has life after 5 days, I'll offer some general perspective and my individual angle on the subjects discussed here. People's tech experience has earning potential but untold thousands of people have similar experience and are trying to get a footing working for themselves using that experience. Absent some remarkable idea, the world probably isn't willing to pay (much) for yet-another person doing the same thing. Money should not be the only determining factor for the path we take, of course, but meeting our basic needs is pretty important, especially if you have kids like I do. Thus, identifying an un(der)served niche can be a key differentiator. I took an unconventional approach, after being (directly) in tech for 14 years, and started my own consulting business. This business works with law firms to analyze and describe software (and some hardware) to give them insights on intellectual property litigations. Most of my day is spent learning how other people implemented specific solutions and advising clients on what those solutions mean for their IP cases. I love helping smart, grateful clients through learning and then explaining their tech stack. I have a handful of people on my team that are former developers that wanted to use their experience in a different way. We enjoy working together and like the work we do. People are key. We make reasonable incomes but not outlandish $. This business is a relationship business, as any professional services business is, so we focus on meeting client goals and anticipating their needs. This approach does not need to be grueling (I've experienced a grueling form of this before going on my own) but this approach, and the business generally, requires some effort. Those that have gone out on their own will usually find that they put more effort into the business, than they did working on their own, but that the new approach is more gratifying and is thus an overall win for them. This post is about sharing my experience and a different take the topic discussed in this thread, rather than looking for new colleagues, but I would be open to hearing from people who find what I say intriguing. DM me if so.
• newbieuser 4y ago
  I wish there was a platform where I can earn money by doing code reviews. Many people may want to earn money this way. but I don't know who would want to pay for it
  • abrichr 4y ago
    https://app.pullrequest.com/signups/reviewer https://app.pullrequest.com/signups/reviewer
    • sebastianconcpt 4y ago
      Interesting! Thanks for sharing
• awb 4y ago
  Here are some ideas: * Code quality audits / security audits * Due diligence for code-related lawsuits
• EMM_386 4y ago
  I have come up with 3 ideas in the past that worked out well for me. I wrote a popular MP3 search engine pre-Napster, a site dedicated to price tracking in the game EverQuest, and even a technical analysis website for predicting price movement in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). Each one of these worked out well enough to live off at the time. The first two of those projects worked just because the underlying "thing" was huge at the time (MP3s, EverQuest). That last one required actual marketing, buying ads in magazines related to the field ("Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities", etc). But I knew the audience for the ETF idea likely had a lot more disposable income, so the monthly charge was high. Unfortunately, as I've gotten older and have a "real" job, I no longer have that desire to write more code after work, so these sorts of ideas and projects have stalled out. The point being if you can find a niche that's popular, or even something you are just very interested in (in my case, at the time, technical analysis), you can likely make money off of it as a software engineer.
• karaterobot 4y ago
  > freelance - compared to just working rates seem low and its hard to find work from what ive seen Freelancing money can be very, very good. It does take work to find jobs initially, but often at a certain point your referrals start kicking in, and you've got to increase your rate because you've got too much work. Not that it's easy, but it's a good racket, and during economies in which companies may not have budget approval to hire salaried employees, it's probably not a bad option to consider.
  • leobg 4y ago
    So how do you find your first gigs? Upwork?
    • karaterobot 4y ago
      Well for me, I had friends with companies who needed some help. I ended up taking over a project that was on a stupidly short timeline, and the other guy had flaked out. I did a good job, and that led to introductions to a much bigger company who provided work for several years. Basically networking. This was in like 2007, so I don't really know what the landscape is like now, or how you find jobs. I would assume it's easier if anything, because it's just a larger space with more resources, but what do I know. I stopped being a sole proprietor in 2010, and joined a consulting company for the next 10 years, and am now elsewhere, as a salaryman. If I were starting today, I'd probably look at job postings anywhere (LinkedIn, Indeed, whatever) and even if the job posting was for a salaried position, I would contact them and say "I am a freelancer, and if you can't find somebody qualified, or if it doesn't make sense for you to hire someone on a permanent basis, please consider me." /shrug
• HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Reading through this list, your main problem seems to be a lack of motivation to do anything. Perhaps addressing that would be helpful.
• yboris 4y ago
  I have mild success at $500/month by selling my $5 Video Hub App (though I donate $3.50 of every purchase to a cost-effective charity). This is averaging 100 sales per month for several years now. https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ - though I also have it open source: https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
  • jollyllama 4y ago
    How do you promote it?
    • yboris 4y ago
      Initially on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587992 After that shared it a bit on Reddit and some forums. Haven't promoted it for several years (other than occasional comments on Reddit and HN, where fitting). I got lucky that several individuals reviewed my app on their blogs. Some traffic also comes from this amazing website: https://alternativeto.net/software/video-hub-app/ https://alternativeto.net/software/video-hub-app/
• AlwaysRock 4y ago
  Reading your post it sounds like you dont really want to learn how to do something new. You just want to use your existing skill set to make money. That is fine but to start a business, and starting a side hustle is starting a business, you need to learn new things. If you dont want to do that then maybe finding a smaller company or a company with a better culture will help. I didnt love my first two eng jobs. I like this one a lot. No middle management bs. No politics. Get to work on interesting stuff. Just took some time to find it. Ask friends where they want to work/the best place they have worked is.
  • tayo42 4y ago
    > you dont really want to learn how to do something new. You just want to use your existing skill set to make money Yeah for the short term, i have been thinking of ways to leverage the person I am now. Developing new skills and talents is a long term investment, which is useful just not my immediate goal. hope that makes sense
• PigiVinci83 4y ago
  Since I’m quite experienced in the field, I opened a substack called The Web Scraping Club as a side gig. It is mostly free but has some paid articles and have already hundreds of $ in MRR after 2 months. It is a niche where tutorials and info are pretty sparse around the web and having a centralized blog is useful for operators. Hope this helps find your way
• Tiktaalik 4y ago
  I feel like there's heaps of opportunity to make small apps to help streamline processes at boring regular mom n' pop small businesses. The trick is uh, how do you find out about their problems to even know that you have an ability to help? It's a tough problem here and I'm not sure how to solve it other than just already knowing people at those small businesses and talking with them about their problems.
  • tayo42 4y ago
    Ive thought about this in the past, my idea was to go get part time jobs as research in places i wouldn't normally run into.
• LouisSayers 4y ago
  I've been working on Entrepreneurship for quite a while now and still feel like a noob! I created an ebook a while back on how to make money with Airbnb (based on my experience as a superhost), but I did zero marketing and ended up making about 3 sales total... A few years back I made a course on Udemy. I figured this would solve my marketing issue. It took me 6 months and was a real slog but managed to create a course about Neo4j. I don't make a tonne of money from that, but managed to make a best selling course, and on a good month it might bring in $1k USD. A couple years ago I did Sam Ovens consulting accelerator which basically teaches you to reach out to ppl with problems and get them on a sales call then sell them a $2k solution to said problem. I followed this and managed to sell a handful of people on helping them land their first dev job. People's problems were varied, I realise in hindsight that I could have been more educated around coaching but I did help all those people land their first job. I played with pricing a bit, selling at various prices ($2.5k, $750, $1.5k). I feel like if you pushed long and hard enough on this niche perhaps it could be successful, but to me it always felt a bit off for various reasons. Now, I'm creating a website builder. I'd say it's not a project for the light hearted - it pains me a bit to say that it's been a year so far. I actually have something that can build a website and did have it up online, but took it down to avoid server costs while building it out. I've learnt a lot on my journey and I find it fun (in a massochistic sort of way), but still very much a work in progress. Happy to share if anyone has questions :)
  • overrun11 4y ago
    > I followed this and managed to sell a handful of people on helping them land their first dev job I've always wanted to do something like this. Could you share more about it? I think I could provide a lot of value to a new dev but haven't identified a business model that would work.
    • LouisSayers 4y ago
      I basically helped in whatever I could to give them a better shot at landing their first job. Company selection, CV review, coding exercises and question prep. With one guy he actually recorded an interview without my asking him to do it, but it turned out to be really helpful as I discovered he needed help with basic small talk type skills as well. The main challenges are: 1) Finding people that are at that point in their career 2) Most people actually are lacking in technical skills and need to up their skillset 3) The obvious challenge that people without jobs don't always have a heap of spare money floating about 4) Tech stacks are often quite different (although not really a problem for me personally). It's not too hard to sell people (still a numbers game though), but the price point was Def a sticking point.
• unixhero 4y ago
  I am amazing at shell scripting, in particular bash. It has generated thousands of dollars in side quest style work at large $orporations. Knowing a thing or two about Python and Pandas and Sqlite has also been very profitable.
  • DisruptionAce 4y ago
    I'm super good at shell scripting. I didn't realize I could monetize this. How do you find "side quest style work" and what does that even mean?
  • leobg 4y ago
    How do you know what problems these corporations have that you can fix? Or how do these corporations find out that they have a problem, and that you are the guy who can solve it?
    • simne 4y ago
      This is business model of closed marketplace. Closed mean, client need something fast, but for him accessible only employers. For example, my friend, have lot of side requests, working as engineer in isp with few thousands clients. Clients just say him, they want to pay for example to install them wifi at cafe (for which they already bought internet from isp).
    • unixhero 4y ago
      Short answer, find something to automate and get permission to work on it. Even better if you are already a consultant at the company. Typically at a large project where there are gaps and developers are miles away. Will the client pay for your time, while you work out the code to get the functionality you want to run? The answer has 100% been yes, they WANT code and business logic implemented.
      • simne 4y ago
        Good thing, if you like to work in such corporations. This scheme is not working well if you are just have friends there.
• thedangler 4y ago
  Find a coding partner to share everything 50/50. Keep one another accountable to get MVPs out. Gage feedback, if you don't think it will work sell it on a saas reseller service and move on to the next idea. Having a solid partner is key, I've struggled find solid coding partners because they lose interest. They like their 9 - 5 programming job and don't care about coding after work. Easy way to get started is to look at products and find complaints, major issues, or ideas they haven't implemented and build it. All you have to do is market to the users of the other app directly on the forums or help chats. Please contact me as I have lots of SaaS products built for my company and fun ideas.
  • impressthenet 4y ago
    Looking for a coding partner. ;)
    • thedangler 4y ago
      contact me
• bilsbie 4y ago
  From other threads like this I’ve heard “sales engineer” might be a good option. Less BS because sales comes down to the money you bring in. You still get to code and your peers will be impressed with anything you do. And you could earn a lot with commissions.
• crro 4y ago
  I'm a YC founder working on tools that make it easier to create and sell programming classes. Would love to chat more if you're interested - david [at] mirio.org
  • simne 4y ago
    Could I contact you? Very similar history, just other country.
• noloblo 4y ago
  email me
• ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  > monetizing hobbies I find two issues with this (disclaimer, My "hobby" is coding, so I guess I've been monetizing it, all my adult life): 1) Once someone starts paying you, they get to exert their influence on your work, and it becomes a lot less "hobbyish." One of the biggest joys in my life, these days, is not having managers destroying my work. 2) Delivering ship software requires a lot of "not fun" stuff. In some cases, the majority of the project could be wrapped up in "unfun," like needing to use particular coding practices, languages, dependencies, techniques, etc. Also, there's all the "polishing the fenders" kind of thing, like documentation, UX finish, maintenance, fixing all those bugs that you don't think are "actually bugs," establishing CI/D, configuration management, presentations to the Board, etc. These days, I write software for myself. I eat my own dog food. Every one of my projects is a complete ship product, with all the aforementioned stuff (without the CI/D, as I don't really need it, for my one-man shop).
  • scambier 4y ago
    > 1) Once someone starts paying you, they get to exert their influence on your work, and it becomes a lot less "hobbyish." Definitely. I've been working on a free open-source project for 6 months. Last week, a user came with a feature request, and stated that they were willing to pay me. That could sound nice, but I immediately thought "nope". I told them that donations were appreciated, but I wasn't going to do commissioned work. I don't want that kind of responsibility for my hobby projects.
• seydor 4y ago
  It used to be easier to start an internet business before the Great Monopolization of the '10s happened. For us it was simply the WWW. Now you have to look for a platform that still has a window of opportunity open before the monopoly in charge of it decides to choke everyone out. A kind soul mentioned the iOS app store. Perhaps there is a window of opportunity in content, video content. For youtube, start with making shorts or just copy popular shorts from tiktok. Youtube promotes them so you can get subscribers (but no money), that you can then use to upload longer, money-making videos. Gaming is also a possible niche. If you can create something that complements a popular game, you have a dedicated community to monetize.
• trap_goes_hot 4y ago
  Reading your post, I think for you - consider working only for a paycheck, rather than wanting to work for nebulous concepts such as 'good work', 'passion', 'fun', etc. Work a 9-5, go home and enjoy your time outside of work. Just be a solid, dependable person, and give no reason to be fired. Don't try to overachieve, because that can lead to additional responsibilities/stress/etc. This type of person is very much required in every single company.
• racl101 4y ago
  Private tutoring. I know a guy who does it and while he don't doesn't have an actual teaching degree he has a degree in CS and experience to boot. It is a decent side gig for him.
• difflens 4y ago
  This is a great post! I have very similar thoughts! I haven't escaped the corporate job yet, but the pandemic and subsequent layoff scares have convinced me that bootstrapping a business is a good way to take back some economic control. I'm working on DiffLens to improve how developers see diffs of their code changes. DiffLens uses abstract syntax trees to make diffs more focused and understandable. It's free at the moment while we iterate on it and get the word out. I think it's the best way to view source code changes. If someone is interested in checking it out, see https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DiffLens.difflens https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DiffLens... . It works within VS Code and supports JS, TS, CSS and text diffs. JSON support is coming soon!
• mr_gibbins 4y ago
  I have tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, to maintain interest in full time office-based positions. I just can't. I've never held a FTE position longer than 3 years. I'm nearing 40, by the way. I use my skills, such as they are, in contract positions. I've been working continuously since 15 or so and aside from a brief spell of 4 months, never been out of work. When I became experienced/qualified enough to use my programming/engineering skills, after another failed FTE position I went contracting and never looked back. Once again, recently, I have failed to engage with my latest run at an FTE role. I can't be doing with the monumentally slow pace of my employer, the power structures, the bureaucracy, the 45-minute daily standups (yes, I know), the broken business processes. So I'm back to contracting. Some people aren't cut out for office life. Contracting is office life, sure, but you dictate the terms, you (generally) dictate the pay, you stay when you find a good team and walk when you want to. The problems are harder, you're generally solving issues the client can't solve themselves and bureaucratic blockers magically disappear when the client remembers you're costing them three figures a day. LinkedIn jobs (HEAVILY filtered) tends to be my go-to when I go shopping for a new client, but there's plenty of contract-specific talent networks and bodyshop consultancies who you can find work from.
  • codealot 4y ago
    After all your time contracting, how easily can you find a new contract in terms of weeks/months spent searching for one? The reason I ask is because I'm getting tired of bureaucracy too and have been considering taking a break and getting into contracting as a software engineer for a while to see how that goes...How reliable is the pipeline of work in the software dev contracting world if you want to maintain access to a steady supply of income/benefits?
    • mr_gibbins 4y ago
      In the UK at least I can correct your timeframe to days and weeks, not weeks and months. The quickest I have found a contract position from a cold start is 45 minutes. Market's teeming and has been for years, aside from the obvious Covid period, there hasn't been any meaningful market collapse for a long time. Saying that, this time of year is generally poor as companies eye Xmas and start shutting up shop. You'd do well late January onwards and especially after the start of the next budgetary cycle, typically end of March.
• najustprosper 4y ago
  I don't know anything abut coding I'm a medical student I Found out my interest is in software engineering ect and I would love it if I get a guide on it I'm from Nigeria my country dose not have good reputation and I'm hoping to change it