149 How Do I Get Side Income as a Developer?

How do I bring in side income as a software developer? What types of jobs can I get? Are there easy ways to use my skills to get additional money? These a re the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

How do I get side income as a developer? Maybe you've decided, hey, I need a little more income to supplement my current day job, or you just even want to become more skilled and more rounded in more development areas and you want to make some money doing it. Either way, how do you get there? This is a question that was asked on a suggestion site, and it's one that I am very personally familiar with and one I want to talk more about because I've gone through a lot of these different options, and I want to share with you what I have found that works and doesn't work. Now, if you have a suggestion, go to suggestions.imtimcorey.com and leave your suggestion there. Hopefully you'll see your question answered in a future episode of DevQuestions. So let's get started with kind of the overview of what I'll talk about. First of all, I'm gonna say it depends. You know that's coming, but let's talk about why it depends when it comes to how you get side income as a developer. But then we'll talk about the general ways that you can look into making money as a side income. And then we'll talk about very specific things you could do that could make you a side income from. Okay, so let's start with why does it depend? Well, it's going to depend on a number of things. Being able to get a side income does depend on your skill level. Let's be honest here. If you are brand new to C sharp development, you probably won't get a great side income as a C sharp developer because you're just learning it. And so being able to say, I know how to do this as a consultant, for example, that's hard because you don't. And so that's gonna be a difficult thing to do. But you do have other things to offer besides just C sharp development. Maybe you can work in a help desk. Maybe you can take on smaller roles. There's things you can do on the side, but let's be honest about your skill level, because your skill level is going to determine what you can and cannot do as a side income. It's also gonna depend on your areas of expertise. So let's just say you are a back-end developer. Well, you won't have the same opportunities as a web developer might. Because a back-end developer, you know, you work with databases, you work with logic code and data access and things that are behind the scenes. Well, that's a different place and a different set of opportunities because a web developer can go to a business and say, hey, I can build a website for you. You can't really say, hey, I could build a back-end system for your existing website. I mean, maybe you could, but it's a little different. So it depends on your area of expertise. It also depends on your market, because different markets are going to have different needs. Some markets are super saturated with people looking for side work who are very skilled in different areas. And so it's gonna be harder to find just a consulting side income. But that market may be ripe for other types of consulting or other types of ways to make side income. And consulting is not the only way. Okay, so it does depend on your market which things are gonna work best for you. It also depends on your time. Now, again, I have done consulting on the side quite a bit, and I've also done it full time. And so when I was consulting on the side, there were times when I would only have you know five, 10 hours a week. And that's all I had of time to dedicate to consulting. There were other times when, you know, if I wanted to really take on the projects that made a significant side income, I had to work 30 hours a week on something. Well, that's a bit different. That becomes almost a full-time job in addition to your full-time job. And do you have time to do that? That's tough. And so you've got to figure out what time do I realistically have to dedicate to this? Because that will determine what you can and cannot do on the side. And then this people cringe at this because it's hard, but it does depend on who you know. You can absolutely make a side income without knowing anybody. But it's harder. It's a lot easier if you know people and say, hey, this is what I'm doing. Do you need this? Because having that foot in the door will allow you to get into places that you otherwise wouldn't have access to. So who you know is going to be important in figuring out what you can and can't do and how successful you can be in them. Okay, so I can't just say do this and you'll have a side income. It's just not that simple. However, I do have some general suggestions of categories or things you can look into, again, not just consulting. So the first one is one that I have used quite a bit, and I have done some work on the other side, consulting side, and that is upwork.com. Things like opwork.com. Again, that's one specific suggestion, but it's really a general category of I offer my services to companies for short bursts of work. Upwork.com is one I've used quite a bit when I started this business. I have before done some work on the consulting side where I've done work for people through Upwork. But now, for example, the audio you're listening to right now has been cleaned up using an automated program. That automated program was customized to my mics, my room, my voice, my environment, and everything else. So it was customized for me, but still an automated program. But that automation, the tools it goes through, the steps it goes through to clean up my audio, that all came from a person through Upwork.com. I was looking for a person who could do this type of project for me. I found a person in the country of Georgia who is amazing, does great work. And so I said, hey, can you do this? And he spent a lot of time, gave me a great result, all from where he was. And yet I was able to get a great result. And quite frankly, I paid him a significant bonus because of how well he did. So that can be a great opportunity, and it can even be a worldwide type opportunity. Again, Georgia, the country, is quite a distance from where I am, and yet whenever I need audio work, that's where I'm going because I know he provides quality work. And I found him through op work. So that's one option is to use some type of third-party distribution system to put out there, hey, this is what I can do, and then have people find you that need that work done or bid on jobs and those kind of things. Another option is to identify and solve a problem for a business. Let's take a scenario. You have a problem with your car, you need to take it to a garage, you're trying to find a good garage in the area. You hear about one and you look them up online and you can't find much information. It's just a, hey, go to our Facebook page, and the Facebook page hasn't been updated in six months. And their website is kind of old, outdated, and kind of broken. And so, yeah, take your car to a garage, but also what if you said, hey, you know, I could do this for you. For this amount of money, I could create a new website for you that's very simple, easy to maintain, that has your name, your hours, what you offer, and will help bring in new customers. You know what? If you come in with not only a problem but a solution to a small business, that can be huge. And maybe, since websites are so quick to prototype, maybe you can create a little prototype and say, hey, I could create this for you, and it will cost you a random number here, $300, and I could have it done by Friday. Would you like me to do this for you? You know what? You're not going to win all the time. But that is a big deal when you identify a problem for a business and you've figured out how to solve it for them and made it simple for them to say yes. Where they just say, you know what? If I said yes, by Friday I have a new solution. Excellent. And if they're like, I'm not sure if you can do that or not, you know, for the first few, you can say, pay me when it's done. Pay me when you're like, yes, I'm gonna approve that. And you're gonna get burned a couple of times probably doing that, but it will get a few under your belt where you can say, hey, ask my previous customers. And you can point them out and say, these customers were success stories. And it may be a website, and maybe something else. Maybe it is, and I've done this one too. Uh, my work wife worked for a nonprofit where they had to send out, they're doing a fundraiser, and they want to send out an email to every person saying, Here's how much you've raised, here's how much you know we're hoping to get, and we'd love for you to do these steps. It's an email that's kind of automated, it's kind of a mail merge, but had to take in account some data from a database. So I created a very small little application that pulled the data from the database, that generated an email and sent it out using their email address. So simple little program, but it went from this is an hours a week process to this is a push a button process. Do you know how important that was to them? Do you know how much time it saved them? Being able to do that builds a reputation. And it often you can say, hey, you know what, I can do this, or here's a solution for you. You can go from 10 hours a week to pushing a button. Is that worth $100, $500, $1,000, whatever the situation may warrant, but having a problem and identifying the problem and being able to solve that problem for them. And yes, you can consult. I've done this a number of different ways. I worked for a consulting company where essentially I was an employee, but my boss would say, here's a new client, go solve their problem. Here's the problem, here's what I want you to do. And I'd go solve the problem for him. I also worked for, well, or with a salesperson where that person, her job was just to find clients and sell them solutions. And I was an independent consultant who would just get them done. So she'd come to me and say, hey, can we do this? I'd say yes, here's how much. She'd go and sell that solution. And then all I do is just do the work. It was great because I was concentrated on just doing software development, but I was able to have job after job after job lined up. And I've also done the just work independently and find your own customers. It's harder. But if you'd know people, if you're offering a good product, that can be a way to go as well. Start small. You can definitely start part-time, you can definitely start on nights and weekends and do a lot of these things. The last one, and it is last for a reason, is build an app. You can definitely build an app and make money. If you find a problem, again, you can solve that problem with an application, by all means, do so. Because solving a problem for people is valuable and people will pay for that. Now, not every app, and my goodness, iPhone, Android apps, they're the hardest to make money on because for whatever reason, mentally, we'll use free apps all the time, but paying a dollar is just too much for whatever reason for an app. So maybe in-app purchases, I don't know, those are problematic too. But you know, building an app for a desktop, building an app or a website that solves a problem. If you can do that, that can be beneficial and it can be scalable. Because if you can sell something where you don't have to do anything for the next client, where you know, if a thousand people buy it, it's no different than if one person buys it. Well, you know what? That's a great way to make some money. It's not really passive income. That's kind of a myth. But it is easier income because it is more scalable. So for instance, I um Intel had a contest oh, years ago, where they said, hey, build this app, you know, build us an app and we'll give you free hardware if you qualify for this contest and so on. I got a bunch of free hardware from them. I got a trip to uh Spain from them for building apps and building demos of what could be done with different things. And one of the apps, I said, you know what? I'm just gonna put this in the Windows Store. And it was a simple little app. The idea was I called it, I think, local picture viewer. And it would take wherever you were, your GPS coordinates of your ISP or whatever, and it would look for pictures, free pictures from your area and create desktop background wallpapers based upon actual like nature, pictures or whatever from free resources and put in your background. So if you traveled somewhere, when you open your laptop up, within a few seconds, you'd have a wallpaper that matched the area you were in. Simple little idea. That's all it did. It was super simple. I put it on the Windows store and I made 20 or 30 bucks off of it. Nope, like nothing barn burning. I didn't do any advertising. It was almost silly that people paid for it. But at the same time, you know what? I tried something, I put it out there just as a test, and it gave me some income. So it can be possible to do that. Um, just note that building an app can be hard. Keep it simple. Okay, that's a general suggestion, it's a general high-level overview of different ways to have a side income as a developer. But let's talk some specifics. Now, again, it all depends on your situation, it all depends on you know where you're coming from. But here are some specifics that just kind of off the top of my head, I went through and said, hey, we could make money this way. I've done these things. So I know they can make money. It all depends on your situation. If you are a web developer or an app developer, find local restaurants in your town, not the chains. Find the local mom and pop restaurants and look at their website and say, hey, you know what? I could create a simple little app for you and a website for you that you know would do these things. You know, menu for restaurant, menu, hours, how to order online, those things. An app that does the exact same thing. And say, hey, I could do this for you. But here's the trick. If you create or even buy a template and then just customize it for each business, you can reuse a lot of that work. And so you can say, hey, you know what? I'll just charge you $250. Done. That's it. That's super low, super cheap. But if you're reusing your work and you're spending a couple hours to put it up, well, that's a lot of money for a couple hours of work. And you can repeat that process. You can do that with a number of different things, realtors or uh garages, or you know, any number of small businesses that might not have the ability to do it themselves. Make somebody else's life easier. Here's another one. If you can get into or have learned how to do search engine optimization. And what I mean by this is something tangible. For example, on Google, when you Google a business, and it doesn't just have the business URL, but it also has underneath there subcategories that go right to specific areas of their website. If you can do that for a business, if you can make them show up on the local searches more prevalent, if you can help them with local advertising, if you can help them with making their message clearer, that's huge for business. And again, it's something where you can do this ahead of time and kind of invest a little bit in the hope you'll get something back. But you could say, hey, this package, I have this for you. This is what it will do, and this is how much it will cost, and have it really packaged up. And the more you can do that cleanly and clearly and professionally, the more hits you'll get from people. So the big deal here, though, is that you come across professional, that you have a professional result, and you can prove it will be better and it will be better in this time frame. And also another one is creating documentation for a business. Documentation is always hard. It's always hard. But if they're a small company, if they're creating software, or if they're creating systems or tools or whatever it may be, you can say, hey, I can come in here and help you with documenting your onboarding process and putting things in place to help you. It's not necessarily tech, but it could be. This is what it would do, and it's just gonna cost a couple hundred dollars. Again, finding that problem and solving it. You may find that there's existing consultants in your area, and you're like, oh man, I don't want to compete. Don't compete. Talk to them and say, hey, you know what? I'm around. Do you need help? Do you need an additional set of eyes? Do you need an additional person to do some grunt work? I can do these things well, I can do these things somewhat well, and I can even just, you know, do data entry or whatever. And you can help out. There's the number of consultants I know who have more work than they can do is pretty high. I get calls a lot, and I've tried to discourage them, not because I want to discourage people, because I just don't have time either. But I get calls from people like, hey, I got this client, I don't have time to help them out. Can you help them out? And it happens a lot. And the more people you know in that area, the more likely it is you'll get that phone call to say, hey, I don't have time to build this website, can you? Or I don't have time to finish this project, do you? And so when that happens, if you get the call, then you get the side work. So it's a lot of different ways, but if you noticed throughout this, both the general and specific ideas, that it all comes down to making someone's life easier. Currently, I own a small business. I have uh four employees besides myself. And you know what? The thing that is most precious to me is my time. It's there are so many things where I'm like, if only I had time to dedicate to that, I would be able to do this better. Because I just have too many things to do and not enough time. This is common among small business owners. And so if you can solve a problem for me, if you can say, hey, I know this is a problem, and here's a solution I could do, and I've proven I can do it, or I've already done it, but you know, just take it, um, then it's much more likely that I would be like, yes, let's do that. Now let's be clear here, because I have an awful lot of marketing people who email me every single day saying, I've already solved this problem for you. And they send it's a marketing gimmick more often than it's actually true. So you have to have some way of a relationship, or you have to be very clear in how you've solved something, or you can prove it by not making me email you back and saying, yes, please give me that free thing you've already created. Show it to me, give it to me, and say, hey, I've already done this, would it be helpful? Okay. And you have to know your audience. Don't try and make my life easier, please, specifically. Okay. But um, I got enough people trying. But you know, if you target someone and say, hey, I know your business, I've I've seen you, I've worked with you, I'm friends with you, and I could do this to help make your life easier. Would it be helpful to you? Being able to solve a problem for somebody else will go a long way towards getting you in the door of actually doing it. So that's how I recommend trying to go about getting some side work as a developer. I have worked on the side as a developer pretty much since I started becoming a developer. Um, you know, over time I started building these skills up and I said, hey, I can I can get some side side money. And now, you know, I actually turn work away a lot because I just don't do side work except for nonprofits. So I do help a nonprofit or two, depending on the circumstances, um, but very few. Um but you know, even then, I'm like, hey, I could offer these services to make your life easier. So let me do that. Let me make your life easier. Because when you have a solution to a problem, you become more valuable to that person. So that's what I recommend. Become more valuable to people, and you'll find that your side income, your side jobs may even turn into your full-time day job. They did for me more than once. All right, thanks for listening. As always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Def Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.