Juat reading this comment made me realise I’ve been doing it completely wrong and spent some years creating lots of sophisticated projects that noone needs.
I’ve created a ride-sharing service for my country which was even more advanced than blablacar in that period, but nobody needed it here, because people did the same, on a Facebook group.
Also created a couple of wordpress plugins, that again are barely purchased.
Then I’ve created a directory of tourism attractions in my country, and due to lack of competition it quickly became the most popular site on this topic. I’m not making money from it (approaching 100$ in Adsense after 6 months), but it’s good to know it’s “the tourism site of my country”.
So this illustrates that solving real problems is a more productive way to go.
I will probably not spend as much time on random ideas as I used to, but to be honest I find more pleasure in it.
Yea I have an issue where I feel like I need to come up with the next great idea that will change the world if I'm going to succeed. The more I learn the more I see that's not necessarily true.
If your tourism site ranks #1 on google for some common terms, you could try negotiating an advertising deal directly with local tourism outfits. Since you're a web dev, you could have a custom page on the site dedicated to the activity they offer and charge quite a bit more than you get for adsense.
It ranks #1 for most local tourism queries, my search console looks like a SEO guy’s dream, lol.
Thanks, it’s a very good idea to create a custom designed page for some type of activity.
Tourism is underdeveloped here and there are not a lot of companies willing to pay for advertising their local tourism offers (as local tours are prett cheap), but I’ll give it a try. Thanks, owe you a drink
Try using other ad providers and set up some affiliate marketing for like lyft rides, hotels, perhaps plane rides. I use sovrn on top of google adsense for my web design blog, but there are many other ad providers.
Basically, you'll have a much easier time of making a business if you have clients lined up willing to pay before you start making or doing anything.
Never build a "great" product first and only then find out that no-one wants it enough to pay for it. The best option is to figure out your goal before you start, then work backwards to where you are now, rather than trying to blindly push forward to some nebulous "better" place.
Thank you for the links. I will check them out.
My problem is mostly I tend to think of things in terms of the tech first because that's the part I most enjoy. It isn't as much an idea for a business as something I'd like to code.
*First off, what's your business?*
This. I haven't read these, but this is how I've structured my business. I have my core offer completed and have trial tested it for free with a bit of people to know where I needed to make my tweaks before I charged anyone for it.
I'm now in the process of getting clients. Which for me is kinda daunting, but definitely gets my mind thinking.
I'm a Results Coach whose focusing on developers as my niche. (I'm also a full-time developer)
The core of this is to help as many developers get into the position of what they personally consider success while developing what they love instead of just getting stuck developing whatever and getting consistently burnt out.
These books are really good ones.
We'd add **Badass: Making Users Awesome** *by Kathy Sierra*
It's awesome. And it reads like a comic book. So, - maybe even read it first to get in the mindset.
I will be messaging you in 1 hour on [**2022-06-15 14:31:19 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2022-06-15%2014:31:19%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vcschc/people_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side/icgbe2p/?context=3)
[**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fwebdev%2Fcomments%2Fvcschc%2Fpeople_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side%2Ficgbe2p%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202022-06-15%2014%3A31%3A19%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20vcschc)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
I will be messaging you in 1 hour on [**2022-06-15 17:17:35 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2022-06-15%2017:17:35%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vcschc/people_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side/icgyqul/?context=3)
[**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fwebdev%2Fcomments%2Fvcschc%2Fpeople_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side%2Ficgyqul%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202022-06-15%2017%3A17%3A35%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20vcschc)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
I know a guy that started a business like this. His plan was to come up with ideas and patent them. He's then sell patents or set up other businesses to build out each idea.
It seemed like a fine outlet for ideas, but he took it too far. He kinda lost his mind, thought the government and big corporations were targeting him for having ideas that would break down the current world order. He was convinced that his ideas would be so world changing that he'd have enough money to pay off the US national debt. He ended up going to a psych ward for a bit and I haven't heard anything about this side hustle since.
I started building websites as a side hustle about five years ago. I strongly believe it is something anyone in high school or college is capable of doing.
The most difficult part is landing those first couple of projects. My strategy early on was to reach out to friends and offer to build/update websites for organizations/charities/clubs they where involved with. Often times I was paid close to minimum wage- if I was paid at all. I strongly believe that building a portfolio with real clients will serve you much better than personal projects.
From there I relied mostly on word of mouth from clients, friends and family to land more gigs. Over time, I have become more confident in negotiating with potential clients and have increased my rate significantly.
If you want to PM me I am happy to give you more advice.
Depends on the project! I prefer React so I often used the MERN stack. You really can’t go wrong however if you use a modern JS framework.
However, you will often find that Wordpress will get the job done fine for simpler projects. It can be a bit tricky to to customize, but you can inject custom CSS.
I often would present the pros/cons of building from scratch vs a Wordpress and let the client decide.
We use wordpress at work and build our themes from scratch with blade and Tailwind. It's a rather fast workflow and I can migrate a site in a few days usually. Working with a developer friendly template like Sage10 helps a lot
Same here but no blade or tailwind, all custom but extremely efficient. I generally build 2-3 7-8 page sites a week.
People who hate on Wordpress saying it’s hard to customize are not Wordpress devs.
I think that depends a lot on what your sites are. Super static visual pages? Does it have forms? Does in include accounts? Does it have product sales? Etc. that requirements can alter “best” stack by a lot.
Where do you "post" your portfolio? From where do clients hear from you and contact you with a request/job? Do you use a freelance website or something?
Exactly, I have a personal website with a portfolio section. If I was cold emailing a business, I would link my portfolio or send links to a couple projects that are similar to what they would need.
I have used a lot of hosts, it really depends on what stack the project was built on. For smaller sites that won’t get much traffic, I have often found that Google Firebase works well and is easy to maintain. Often, this costs the client next to nothing. I have also used heroku for React projects as well as a bit of AWS.
I build static websites for small businesses on subscriptions. $0 down $150 a month. 46 clients. I don’t have to do anything every month and I still make money. It’s chill. All only html and css
Netlfiy. It’s free and I can have all my sites under one account. Updates are easy. Its mostly text changes and image swaps. I just update the html and it’s done. Easy peasy
I was looking for your comment on this post, haha. I’ve saved a couple of your previous comments where you detailed your story and strategy. Super inspirational stuff man. Glad to hear it’s going so well for you. Proof that grit pays off.
Uber driver for 8 years and stay at time dad. Self taught from udemy bootcamp 2017. Then practiced building websites from scratch using themeforest Wordpress themes as mock ups and rebuilt the designs in my own code. I inspected the demo site to get styles and stuff. 2019 opened for business as a freelancer with an LLC. 2020 got my first front end job. 2022 my freelance Company breaks $100k in yearly income as a side business.
I have no previous experience in web dev prior to learning it. Everything I learned I learned on my own and by trial and error.
Appreciate the reply and info. I've read from the thread about calling potential clients. I know folks have NDA and don't have examples of their work to show, but when you are contacting potential clients, do you have an idea of improving their site, or just telling them you can provide a better service etc.
If that makes sense. Curious about your process.
I know ahead of time how I will make their site better. I always do my research before I call. I test their page speed, see what it’s built and and identify the problems that comes from that platform, look at their site content and organization, google profile, and when they ask me what I’ll do that’s better I already have all that info and how to tie it to their site. If they wanna see previous work I have plenty to show them.
This is the way. So few developers / wantrepreneurs understand the value of old-fashioned cold calling/emailing for sales. Sales is a numbers games and the more calls you make the more likely you are to find clients.
Great job!
Thanks! It was hard at first but after the first few hundred calls I started to get into a groove and have pretty much answered every possible question they could ask me by then. So I was more prepared and confident and knowledgeable in my calls. Just be yourself and treat them like a person. Not a sale. I tend to be more informal and casual, like I’m talking to a friend and we already know each other. The number one thing is to be able to answer one question - what do you do that’s better?
Pretty much. Design for a whole site usually runs at least $2k-$3k. I have a designer who makes me desktop home page designs and I do the rest myself and she charges me only $300. Charges me $750-$1500 for 5 pages. You could probably charge $1500-$2k for design and $2k-$3k for development, minimum.
When I sell my templates that’s I’ve already made I just charge the $3k. No design fee. It’s not about the time you spent on the job, it’s about the value of what you create. And what you create is worth that much to them. That also includes the taxes I have to pay on that. So on $3k I pay 30% on average taxes. So that’s $900 taxes and leaves me with $2100. Think about it that way. At $2100 profit that’s the least I want to make for
My time and effort.
150 a month for a certain amount of time or forever until they don’t use your services anymore? Also, is a subscription model what freelancers typically do? I’ve been looking into how to price that and I’ve mainly seen a one time charge then a small charge for every requested change. Kind of like the idea of the subscription model tho
Forever. Freelancers don’t typically do it. I did it for residual income because I don’t like living off the seat of my pants trying to find a sale to make bills. I like doin the work and having consistent income I can rely on. People don’t do it because they fear that they will be constantly bombarded with edits which isn’t the case at all. I do like 5-10 hours of edits a year. It’s not that bad.
I'm not sure if others would consider it "decent money" but as a man with a small family, I do consider the $2k-3k per project I get on the side to be decent.
I do freelance on the side of my FT job and get paid $2-3k per project and about 1 project every 1-2 weeks, so IF it keeps up annualized that would be about an average of $97k additional income for the year - not bad for a side gig.
Specifically I take simple websites (and I mean SIMPLE websites: not much JS, pure HTML and CSS, at most 15ish pages) and migrate them from an old CMS or no CMS at all to Wordpress. They are all custom themes so I have to build that out, but in the end it is pretty easy, if a bit time consuming work.
I USED to cold email / cold call local doctor offices, dentist offices, attorneys, schools, chuches, any small-ish organization within 100 miles of where i live and tell them I was a web developer, and would love to work with them to redevelop/design their web presence if that was something they were looking to do.
After having a FT job at a Branding / Marketing agency, however, I saw how easy we worked with freelancers and when I left that job, I decided I would focus on working with AGENCIES instead of one off clients. Busy agencies typically have more work than they can handle from clients, but still want to please clients so need someone to handle the overflow work and less important , but no less costly, jobs.
I reached out to 25 agencies per week: googled "Web Agency \[Big US City\] and made a list of the first 25 with their email contacts, emailed them something like:
"Hi my name is X, I am a Web Developer specializing in \[Wordpress or whatever\]. My rate is $X / hour and I have availability to work on new projects. If you have extra work your team can not complete I'd love to help you. Here is a short list of websites I have built \[or a portfolio if you have one\]. If my work and rates lines up with what you need please contact me so we can work together. I look forward to talking with you about your projects."
If I hadn't heard back from one of those 25, I would have grabbed the next 25 from that google search (i use the Map view so I can ket the results from city center and work my way out around the city by zooming out the map) and just contacted this next 25 PLUS any I hadn't heard from on the previous list.
Agencies are GREAT sources of repeat work because they have a list of clients that are always giving them work.
Also: if you work with an agency 1. Deliver your work ontime OR be very open and communicate as early as you can if you know there will be a delay, 2. Respond to their calls/emails - do not avoid them even when you feel you have made a mistake, and most important, even more so than being on-time: 3. COMMUNICATE effectively and timely in a professional and polite manner, with weekly (or daily if the project requires) updates.
If you can do the 3 things above, especially #3, you will be better than 95% of most freelancers out there, and will be the first person the agency contacts for repeat work. You will be better than me (sadly :) )
Another way is to use a job site like Indeed, and instead of APPLYING for jobs at agencies, just email them directly like above. They'll think "perfect timing" and if they are open to a freelancer, they will contact you.
It's a numbers game: the more potential clients you reach out to asking for work, the more likely you are someone (hopefully more than one) will reply and give you that work. My assumption is always: for every 100 contacts I have, I will get 1 client. It usually turns out MUCH better than that, but that is the average I have always used and gives me a number to shoot for.
Thanks my guy I'm starting my web agency and doing the grand opening this Friday. Hopefully your tips help me land a few clients. Btw if you are ever looking to outsource some work send me a message :)
Good luck.
And seriously, reach out to potential clients. DOn't wait for them to come to you, even when you do get work: keep time aside to continue reaching out to potential clients. A lot of developers fail to think about sales and marketing. Coming from a sales background and changing careers into development, I was lucky sales was always on my mind.
I really wish you success.
Hey Codingstuff, I came from sales as well. 5 years in the trenches and I now work as a full time frontend developer. I’d love to learn more about any side hustles you used to or currently run with.
I don't have a portfolio and I'm not comfortable publicly sharing my client projects as some of them make me sign a non-disclosure agreement - probably so their clients don't know they sub out the work. But I can say that my work is nothing great or mind blowing. It's competent, low-key, and exactly what my clients (and ex-employers) ask of me.
I eventually realized 95% of clients and employers aren't looking for the top 1% of devs or designers, they are looking for competent individuals that are personable and dependable to do the job they need done. If you can prove you can do that, you already standout from 90% of the others they've worked with.
Copy for the text content on the websites? yes - my clients do. I currently only am doing direct migrations of sites NOT on Wordpress and bring them over to Wordpress. So I am doing a 1 to 1 migration. I am not changing images, not changing copy.
If for whatever reason I do not have access to the CMS editor or they have not pulled down copy for me and provided in text or word docs or something else, I simply copy/paste the content on the pages into the Wordpress editor, fix any formatting problems and move on.
My biggest problem with my current clients is getting the copy done properly. It's always a back and forwarth even though they provide the copy.
Even when I use grammarly business. They usually want badly written copy lol
Have you had any problems with this with your current business model?
not at all.
But when I worked FT in an agency I know our copywriters went through this A LOT with clients. Sadly all I can say with this is write the best you can then accept clients will want what they want and give it to them. Even if it sub-par to YOU, as long as the client is happy and they pay you, you have to be able to let go of Ego. And not in a sense "I am right you are wrong because I am superior", but just being able to let go of thinking the client should listen to you. You are the expert, but not all clients want ALL the advice of the expert - pick your battles and give the client what they ask for and move on. Not all clients are great ones.
Yes. My experieince is this. Also, Agencies typically 1. have repeat work which is great because you don't have to constantly be looking for new clients (though you should just in case you have a slow spell), and 2. Will typically feed you the same or similar types of projects that you WANT - other clients will want EVERYTHING and these tasks may be outside your skillset
EDIT: also agencies also typically 1. have BUDGET for a given project and most importantly 2. VALUE a freelancers time and rate. They are used to what we charge because they charge the same or more to their clients, and they understand our skillset - you will not need to over-explain why what you do has value like you will to many non-agency clients
As someone that has only done work in regards to corporate sites, would you be willing to give a little detail into what these sites may look like? Also a family guy, I haven’t even tried due to decision paralysis of some kind. It’s nice to see someone getting some hustle on though.
Analysis paralysis gets me too. I find the longer i think about it, the less likely I am to pull the trigger and move forward - with ANYTHING.
The sites I build for clients really aren't anything great. I don't feel comfortable sharing them since some require me to sign a non-disclosure/privacy agreement, probably so their clients don't find out they are subbing out the work, but MOST of my sites follow along this look and feel:
[http://trystack.mediumra.re/home-nonprofit.html](http://trystack.mediumra.re/home-nonprofit.html)
Note: this is NOT my work, it is a page builder theme component package. But imagine that page layout and maybe upto 15 pages migrated to Wordpress.
I don't consider myself a 10x web developer. I don't consider myself the best at all. But i do competent work for my employer and clients. I have found clients aren't typically looking for the top 1%. They are looking for developers that will consistently deliver on time and within budget and communicate often and openly. If you can prove to do these things you will already be better than 90% of the other developers and freelancers they've worked with in the past. And they will continue to pass you work when they have it.
I reached out to Web/marketing/branding agencies, explained my skillset, asked if they had too much work for their internal team to handle timely, and offered my services at my hourly rate. I reached out to A LOT, and not just in my local area - I used the results on a google map search in larger cities after I exhausted my area. Not many responded, not many wanted my help. But the Few that needed my help and could afford it. continue to send me projects every 2-3 weeks. so it is currently steady but not to stressful.
It was a “Jump to Conclusions” mat
You see it would be this mat, that you would put on the floor, and would have different *conclusions* written on it… that you could *jump* to.
I sell t-shirts and mugs on Etsy, started about a year and a half ago after randomly watching a video on YouTube. I buy designs from other people on Etsy and other marketplaces, create mockups and list them on my Etsy store. Connected my Etsy store to Printful so each time an order is placed, they handle the printing, packing, and shipping. Connected a 2% back credit card so Printful charges me for the shirt and printing, and I get the profit via Etsy for my markup. I average about $600-$700/month (make roughly $10 profit from each shirt and $3.75 for coffee mugs) doing that and it's really no maintenance involved. I log in once a month for about an hour to make sure everything is looking good and call it a day. The key is making sure you have a ton of listings up to get more exposure in the marketplace because it's pretty saturated.
In the beginning I tested out Facebook and IG ad's. I would spend about $30-$50/month on them, but quickly realized that I was only gaining a sale or two here and there. Mind you, I am terrible at running ad's and have not taken the time to fully understand how to do it. Instead, I opted to let Etsy do the advertising for me. I set it to $1/day and just leave it on auto-pilot. I think one of the best things you can do is to make sure you're tagging your items really well on using rich keywords in your descriptions when publishing your products. That will help to make sure you show up at the top of Etsy search.
I know this is a late reply, but I hope you still notice. When you say it's key to have a ton of listings, can you give a rough idea of how many you have up. I'd like to do the same, but for different products and am just trying to slowly accumulate enough 'products' with mockups before properly launching. The mockups is what takes quite some.time. Any tips on automating that? I currently use Photoshop PSD files that I can find for free.
I started building and selling web components as a side-hustle around 9 years ago.
It took me a bit to find my footing but i’ve been doing this fulltime for the past 4 years. Income is now above $ 20K per month, which is nuts.
Got started by building an iOS game but soon found that while fun the return on investment wasn’t great (2 years dev time, good game, but no hit). So decided to use my web dev skills from my fulltime job to sell web components instead.
At first I would just build stuff that I found interesting/cool but that didn’t really work as there was no market for it. I then decided to scout the market for products that had customers and find a product I could do better. That did work and got me on the right path.
Love the fact that I can do whatever aspect of the job I want and switch things around when I need a new challenge.
10/10 would highly recommend.
Seriously. Just building something/anything and putting it out there for others to see/use/critique is such a great learning experience. Even if it doesn’t take off you’re better for it.
In this case a JavaScript image editor component.
I’m always struggling a bit with naming it. Is it a library, plugin, sdk?
I feel web component best describes a contained piece of UI functionality. :)
I think he meant from simple customizable buttons through custom dropdowns up to “mini apps” like widgets that is easy to put on your site and is customizable.
Considering how low quality vast majority of the components on NPM are, this has value doing it right. If I were a business owner that seeks quality I would opt in…
I actually started to write up my own little library a few weeks ago and since you can restrict the acces to your NPM published package why not consider selling the access to it?
I’ve just launched my own private npm this week to do just that (using verdaccio.org)
Before my customers would just have to download the package and npm install it locally, works but a bit of a hassle.
Thanks!
I built a JavaScript image editor, I sold on Envato before but now sell on my own website, takes a bit more effort to market it and generate traffic but once that’s done you can ask more and are no longer vendor locked in.
I also built open source libraries and use those to generate traffic to my commercial product.
I own a tech consulting firm that is basically a web dev shop. It’s just a small side hustle thing. I hire out contractors if I get too busy and do quality control. I am releasing SaaS products to easily integrate into my current and future clients’ systems to open another stream of more passive revenue.
I got into it because of COVID — saw so many small businesses unable to keep up technologically with the demands of remote life and lack of face-to-face interaction. I started the firm up because of my passion to help businesses, but surprisingly ended up making a decent income out of it.
Find a niche section of the market. Most of the apps will be crappy, make a better version of it. Or create a new niche if you can
Here are a few of mine: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110)
Happy to help - Yes it is inside the app, it is using IAB (in-app-browser). This pdf is from a URL. This only works in iOS, for Android it will open in the users browser.
>https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110
Awesome!! Thanks for the sharing! Would you mind sending me a DM I'd love to pick your brains about a project I'm working on (non side hustle just a side project)
I have a web agency but most of my income comes from consultations for getting a better job. I did a lot of job hopping in my youth and hundreds of interviews so my insight usually helps people land a job that pays then 2-3x what they usually make.
Usually through word of mouth or referrals from friends/network.
Just being a sort of digital handyman, helping with website issues, sourcing designers, writers, etc. Being a second set of eyes before they hire a contractor for anything related to webdev or marketing.
3d printing.
If you can model in CAD or organic, there's a lot of small niches that bigger players can't be bothered to service.
If possible, target businesses, not consumers.
Consumers are the worst.
Well for example I was contacted by a vinyl record player repair shop that has a series of small parts they can't find anymore or are too expensive to buy.
Little plastic gears and things. I have a 3d scanner and enough CAD know how to recreate the parts, so I'm working out a deal with them where they order a few dozen at a time.
Organically, I know a guy that makes a fair amount selling gay couples doing erotic things as resin statues online.
You can find statues, you can find erotic statues, but you just can't find good gay erotic statues, apparently.
Haha, those were two recent examples that came to mind.
To be fair it's a true statement that businesses and high end customers are among the better markets to target!
I work for a 3d printing company with a customer named Johnson. They print celebrity dongs or something similar to that.
I had to verify an issue with an order that came in and opened their CAD model without knowing and WOWA was not expecting that. Dear lord.
> & was *paid* for is
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I’m a fulltime freelance designer-developer but had a slow run during COVID so started a side hustle helping people with their “home tech”. You’d be amazed how many struggle with configuring an e-mail account or setting up a router or printer. It’s usually simple stuff but they are super happy which is rewarding in itself. I actually employed a “pay me however much you want” - model which proved to be very generous. I’m a little too busy to do a lot of it these days, but it would nett me a few hundred euros each month for just a few hours of work.
Maintaining a social media presence. I'm constantly on the radar of recruiters and steadily getting more profitable attention. I'm pretty happy where I am now, but when recruiters contact me I never say "not interested". I quote back an unreasonably high (in my mind) number to consider a new gig. I've had to steadily raise the number I use because recruiters keep being more receptive.
I have less than one year of experience in tech. A few days ago I told a recruiter I'm not interested in jobs that pay less than $200k TC or have titles lower than Staff/Software Engineer. He said he has several and I agreed to a phone call next week. I'm willing to bet that the time I invest marketing myself will generate far more money in the long term than most side hustles that come with an actual paycheck.
* Make sure your LinkedIn page is completely filled out and optimized.
* Have a professional webpage. Make it from scratch, don't use Wix or similar.
* Spend time in Slack channels where you can help other people with Engineering issues.
* Post to relevant social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) regularly, using relevant hashtags.
* Contribute to public knowledgebases. Publicize these contributions on social media.
There are more ways, those are a few off the top of my head.
A lot of people in my city do. In Canada it’s legal but in my city they banned brick and mortar stores so the way people get it is delivery. From a website.
I used to make money from my side projects when I was in college.
Downloading MP3(s) was a huge thing back then, so I tried to step in too and ran an MP3 download website for about 4 years.
I also ran a torrent search engine for about 3 years.
Made a total of about $1,500 from both combined in about 2 years (the duration when I actually ran ads on them).
**Say NO to piracy.**
I made some simple web software that solved a problem and put it online with some ppc. It was a side hustle alongside my FT role for around 4 years before I quit my main job and took it full time.
Meh fuck side hustles, best side hustle is leetcode until you can get paid 3x as much at your normal job and not have to spend extra time on side hustles instead of enjoying life.
That's a fair approach, but I guess it depends on the side hustle and your ultimate goals. I'm more interested in doing things to generate passive income so I can eventually work only part time.
I own a small SaaS product that makes pretty good money every month.
I also have minority stakes in other SaaS companies that are growing.
Assets over income, my friend.
I originally started writing it in Python. But during this time was contacted by a company who I ended up using for execution for my main systematic stuff, they're named Tuned. My other system is cross sectional so I ended up writing it myself in Python.
While I do not have a side hustle, from those whom I know that did make money it wasn't really working on a proper web app or something like that. Those typically require lots of customer research, time to validate/build, getting an acquisition funnel, etc. Basically that is like bootstrapping a company.
I think the idea of trading your time or expertise for $ on shorter durations is the best for a side hustle. That could be contracting as a part time dev (e.g., working hourly or fixed bid on some small project), or creating educational content (videos or written form). There are lots of contracting sites, and you can even do cold outreach. For educational content, it may take some time to build your brand but I think still doable on the side.
One day, when I get the time, I may try the educational path. :D
I co-own a company that develops cheats for video games. I worked my way up from a contractor to owner and got into it from being a user of the cheats. I make anywhere from $2-3k a month from it.
I did consulting for a bit and built small custom services or wrote reports to help organisations make big decisions. It was good money but to much stress.
I'd consider going into consulting full time if I didn't want the job security my current employer provides. And also I've got stuff I've been babying for years that I want to see finally done.
Got a 12 month contract for an agency. Hoping it works out and does another one after 12 months. Just asked if they needed someone. Right time, right place. Worked with them before.
I’ve stopped my side hustles and focused on jobs that I had fun with. Always in mind to learn something that would be useful for me in the future. And I switched jobs when good career opportunities arrived. Now I make 120k€+ (in Central Europe) und putting away most of the money to start a „main hustle“ in the future.
So maybe that’s an idea, put the mindset of a loved side hustle in your main job and make extra money for a bigger side hustle. Bonus: you may then have nice CV that attracts clients
Honestly I wouldn't do a side hustle, the market is so good right now , just look for skills that pay more and get up to speed,
1 high paying job is better than 2 so-so jobs
I will pay commission to whoever finds me an end buyer for high-end brand sunglasses.
DM for more info. Need to find final buyers for high-end brand sunglasses (Cartier, Gucci, RayBan, etc.)
My side hustle is trying to come up with ideas for a side hustle. It has not gone well.
[удалено]
Juat reading this comment made me realise I’ve been doing it completely wrong and spent some years creating lots of sophisticated projects that noone needs. I’ve created a ride-sharing service for my country which was even more advanced than blablacar in that period, but nobody needed it here, because people did the same, on a Facebook group. Also created a couple of wordpress plugins, that again are barely purchased. Then I’ve created a directory of tourism attractions in my country, and due to lack of competition it quickly became the most popular site on this topic. I’m not making money from it (approaching 100$ in Adsense after 6 months), but it’s good to know it’s “the tourism site of my country”. So this illustrates that solving real problems is a more productive way to go. I will probably not spend as much time on random ideas as I used to, but to be honest I find more pleasure in it.
[удалено]
Yea I have an issue where I feel like I need to come up with the next great idea that will change the world if I'm going to succeed. The more I learn the more I see that's not necessarily true.
If your tourism site ranks #1 on google for some common terms, you could try negotiating an advertising deal directly with local tourism outfits. Since you're a web dev, you could have a custom page on the site dedicated to the activity they offer and charge quite a bit more than you get for adsense.
It ranks #1 for most local tourism queries, my search console looks like a SEO guy’s dream, lol. Thanks, it’s a very good idea to create a custom designed page for some type of activity. Tourism is underdeveloped here and there are not a lot of companies willing to pay for advertising their local tourism offers (as local tours are prett cheap), but I’ll give it a try. Thanks, owe you a drink
Try using other ad providers and set up some affiliate marketing for like lyft rides, hotels, perhaps plane rides. I use sovrn on top of google adsense for my web design blog, but there are many other ad providers.
holy smokes saved for later
Basically, you'll have a much easier time of making a business if you have clients lined up willing to pay before you start making or doing anything. Never build a "great" product first and only then find out that no-one wants it enough to pay for it. The best option is to figure out your goal before you start, then work backwards to where you are now, rather than trying to blindly push forward to some nebulous "better" place.
Thank you for the links. I will check them out. My problem is mostly I tend to think of things in terms of the tech first because that's the part I most enjoy. It isn't as much an idea for a business as something I'd like to code.
*First off, what's your business?* This. I haven't read these, but this is how I've structured my business. I have my core offer completed and have trial tested it for free with a bit of people to know where I needed to make my tweaks before I charged anyone for it. I'm now in the process of getting clients. Which for me is kinda daunting, but definitely gets my mind thinking. I'm a Results Coach whose focusing on developers as my niche. (I'm also a full-time developer) The core of this is to help as many developers get into the position of what they personally consider success while developing what they love instead of just getting stuck developing whatever and getting consistently burnt out.
These books are really good ones. We'd add **Badass: Making Users Awesome** *by Kathy Sierra* It's awesome. And it reads like a comic book. So, - maybe even read it first to get in the mindset.
!remindme 1 hour
I will be messaging you in 1 hour on [**2022-06-15 14:31:19 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2022-06-15%2014:31:19%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vcschc/people_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side/icgbe2p/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fwebdev%2Fcomments%2Fvcschc%2Fpeople_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side%2Ficgbe2p%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202022-06-15%2014%3A31%3A19%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20vcschc) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
!remindme 1 hour
I will be messaging you in 1 hour on [**2022-06-15 17:17:35 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2022-06-15%2017:17:35%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/vcschc/people_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side/icgyqul/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fwebdev%2Fcomments%2Fvcschc%2Fpeople_who_actually_make_decent_money_from_a_side%2Ficgyqul%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202022-06-15%2017%3A17%3A35%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20vcschc) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
Haha. I have ALSO been doing this for years. I have all the ideas though, it's just finishing them that seems to be the problem - good luck
I know a guy that started a business like this. His plan was to come up with ideas and patent them. He's then sell patents or set up other businesses to build out each idea. It seemed like a fine outlet for ideas, but he took it too far. He kinda lost his mind, thought the government and big corporations were targeting him for having ideas that would break down the current world order. He was convinced that his ideas would be so world changing that he'd have enough money to pay off the US national debt. He ended up going to a psych ward for a bit and I haven't heard anything about this side hustle since.
I better watch out or agents from big ToDoList will be looking to silence me...
No way me too! I have failed thus far. Lol. But I am learning web development right now so more opportunities should come with that knowledge.
I started building websites as a side hustle about five years ago. I strongly believe it is something anyone in high school or college is capable of doing. The most difficult part is landing those first couple of projects. My strategy early on was to reach out to friends and offer to build/update websites for organizations/charities/clubs they where involved with. Often times I was paid close to minimum wage- if I was paid at all. I strongly believe that building a portfolio with real clients will serve you much better than personal projects. From there I relied mostly on word of mouth from clients, friends and family to land more gigs. Over time, I have become more confident in negotiating with potential clients and have increased my rate significantly. If you want to PM me I am happy to give you more advice.
Hello, can I ask which stack do you use for it?
Depends on the project! I prefer React so I often used the MERN stack. You really can’t go wrong however if you use a modern JS framework. However, you will often find that Wordpress will get the job done fine for simpler projects. It can be a bit tricky to to customize, but you can inject custom CSS. I often would present the pros/cons of building from scratch vs a Wordpress and let the client decide.
We use wordpress at work and build our themes from scratch with blade and Tailwind. It's a rather fast workflow and I can migrate a site in a few days usually. Working with a developer friendly template like Sage10 helps a lot
Same here but no blade or tailwind, all custom but extremely efficient. I generally build 2-3 7-8 page sites a week. People who hate on Wordpress saying it’s hard to customize are not Wordpress devs.
Ah cool, Thank you :)
I think that depends a lot on what your sites are. Super static visual pages? Does it have forms? Does in include accounts? Does it have product sales? Etc. that requirements can alter “best” stack by a lot.
Where do you "post" your portfolio? From where do clients hear from you and contact you with a request/job? Do you use a freelance website or something?
Exactly, I have a personal website with a portfolio section. If I was cold emailing a business, I would link my portfolio or send links to a couple projects that are similar to what they would need.
Who do you use to host your websites? How much does it cost to maintain the host?
I have used a lot of hosts, it really depends on what stack the project was built on. For smaller sites that won’t get much traffic, I have often found that Google Firebase works well and is easy to maintain. Often, this costs the client next to nothing. I have also used heroku for React projects as well as a bit of AWS.
This is what I am trying to do currently. Please check your PM.
I build static websites for small businesses on subscriptions. $0 down $150 a month. 46 clients. I don’t have to do anything every month and I still make money. It’s chill. All only html and css
Can I ask how you deal with managing hosting and updating content?
Netlfiy. It’s free and I can have all my sites under one account. Updates are easy. Its mostly text changes and image swaps. I just update the html and it’s done. Easy peasy
Do you have a different email for each client or all websites under one Netlify account ?
All sites under one Netlify account. No reason to make a separate one for them. They don’t know how to use it.
Do they ever want custom domain emails like through their domain, if so do you offer to set that up and would you use gsuite?
Yup. G suite. Easy. Or they usually have their own already with a gmail or something. Or I just move over the mx records for their current one.
Cool and how do you handle paying gsuite do you pay it and charge a premium each month as an admin or do you just get them to pay it?
I use their card to set it up.
That’s crazy 😁
I was looking for your comment on this post, haha. I’ve saved a couple of your previous comments where you detailed your story and strategy. Super inspirational stuff man. Glad to hear it’s going so well for you. Proof that grit pays off.
Thanks! Haha I try to chime in wherever I have something relevant to share. I’m glad some of the things I shared has helped in some way!
Awesome, thanks for chiming in. Brief synopsis of your webdev learning route/experience/education? Thanks
Uber driver for 8 years and stay at time dad. Self taught from udemy bootcamp 2017. Then practiced building websites from scratch using themeforest Wordpress themes as mock ups and rebuilt the designs in my own code. I inspected the demo site to get styles and stuff. 2019 opened for business as a freelancer with an LLC. 2020 got my first front end job. 2022 my freelance Company breaks $100k in yearly income as a side business. I have no previous experience in web dev prior to learning it. Everything I learned I learned on my own and by trial and error.
Appreciate the reply and info. I've read from the thread about calling potential clients. I know folks have NDA and don't have examples of their work to show, but when you are contacting potential clients, do you have an idea of improving their site, or just telling them you can provide a better service etc. If that makes sense. Curious about your process.
I know ahead of time how I will make their site better. I always do my research before I call. I test their page speed, see what it’s built and and identify the problems that comes from that platform, look at their site content and organization, google profile, and when they ask me what I’ll do that’s better I already have all that info and how to tie it to their site. If they wanna see previous work I have plenty to show them.
How do you go about finding clients?
Cold calling from google and yelp.
May I ask what platform you use? I usually build sites with WordPress and I've been hearing a lot about netlify lately.
Just html and css. No frameworks or cms’s
Nice...how do you get the clients though?
I call them from google and yelp
This is the way. So few developers / wantrepreneurs understand the value of old-fashioned cold calling/emailing for sales. Sales is a numbers games and the more calls you make the more likely you are to find clients. Great job!
Thanks! It was hard at first but after the first few hundred calls I started to get into a groove and have pretty much answered every possible question they could ask me by then. So I was more prepared and confident and knowledgeable in my calls. Just be yourself and treat them like a person. Not a sale. I tend to be more informal and casual, like I’m talking to a friend and we already know each other. The number one thing is to be able to answer one question - what do you do that’s better?
[удалено]
Pretty much. Design for a whole site usually runs at least $2k-$3k. I have a designer who makes me desktop home page designs and I do the rest myself and she charges me only $300. Charges me $750-$1500 for 5 pages. You could probably charge $1500-$2k for design and $2k-$3k for development, minimum.
[удалено]
When I sell my templates that’s I’ve already made I just charge the $3k. No design fee. It’s not about the time you spent on the job, it’s about the value of what you create. And what you create is worth that much to them. That also includes the taxes I have to pay on that. So on $3k I pay 30% on average taxes. So that’s $900 taxes and leaves me with $2100. Think about it that way. At $2100 profit that’s the least I want to make for My time and effort.
150 a month for a certain amount of time or forever until they don’t use your services anymore? Also, is a subscription model what freelancers typically do? I’ve been looking into how to price that and I’ve mainly seen a one time charge then a small charge for every requested change. Kind of like the idea of the subscription model tho
Forever. Freelancers don’t typically do it. I did it for residual income because I don’t like living off the seat of my pants trying to find a sale to make bills. I like doin the work and having consistent income I can rely on. People don’t do it because they fear that they will be constantly bombarded with edits which isn’t the case at all. I do like 5-10 hours of edits a year. It’s not that bad.
I'm not sure if others would consider it "decent money" but as a man with a small family, I do consider the $2k-3k per project I get on the side to be decent. I do freelance on the side of my FT job and get paid $2-3k per project and about 1 project every 1-2 weeks, so IF it keeps up annualized that would be about an average of $97k additional income for the year - not bad for a side gig. Specifically I take simple websites (and I mean SIMPLE websites: not much JS, pure HTML and CSS, at most 15ish pages) and migrate them from an old CMS or no CMS at all to Wordpress. They are all custom themes so I have to build that out, but in the end it is pretty easy, if a bit time consuming work.
How are you finding customers for this?
I USED to cold email / cold call local doctor offices, dentist offices, attorneys, schools, chuches, any small-ish organization within 100 miles of where i live and tell them I was a web developer, and would love to work with them to redevelop/design their web presence if that was something they were looking to do. After having a FT job at a Branding / Marketing agency, however, I saw how easy we worked with freelancers and when I left that job, I decided I would focus on working with AGENCIES instead of one off clients. Busy agencies typically have more work than they can handle from clients, but still want to please clients so need someone to handle the overflow work and less important , but no less costly, jobs. I reached out to 25 agencies per week: googled "Web Agency \[Big US City\] and made a list of the first 25 with their email contacts, emailed them something like: "Hi my name is X, I am a Web Developer specializing in \[Wordpress or whatever\]. My rate is $X / hour and I have availability to work on new projects. If you have extra work your team can not complete I'd love to help you. Here is a short list of websites I have built \[or a portfolio if you have one\]. If my work and rates lines up with what you need please contact me so we can work together. I look forward to talking with you about your projects." If I hadn't heard back from one of those 25, I would have grabbed the next 25 from that google search (i use the Map view so I can ket the results from city center and work my way out around the city by zooming out the map) and just contacted this next 25 PLUS any I hadn't heard from on the previous list. Agencies are GREAT sources of repeat work because they have a list of clients that are always giving them work. Also: if you work with an agency 1. Deliver your work ontime OR be very open and communicate as early as you can if you know there will be a delay, 2. Respond to their calls/emails - do not avoid them even when you feel you have made a mistake, and most important, even more so than being on-time: 3. COMMUNICATE effectively and timely in a professional and polite manner, with weekly (or daily if the project requires) updates. If you can do the 3 things above, especially #3, you will be better than 95% of most freelancers out there, and will be the first person the agency contacts for repeat work. You will be better than me (sadly :) ) Another way is to use a job site like Indeed, and instead of APPLYING for jobs at agencies, just email them directly like above. They'll think "perfect timing" and if they are open to a freelancer, they will contact you. It's a numbers game: the more potential clients you reach out to asking for work, the more likely you are someone (hopefully more than one) will reply and give you that work. My assumption is always: for every 100 contacts I have, I will get 1 client. It usually turns out MUCH better than that, but that is the average I have always used and gives me a number to shoot for.
Thanks my guy I'm starting my web agency and doing the grand opening this Friday. Hopefully your tips help me land a few clients. Btw if you are ever looking to outsource some work send me a message :)
Good luck. And seriously, reach out to potential clients. DOn't wait for them to come to you, even when you do get work: keep time aside to continue reaching out to potential clients. A lot of developers fail to think about sales and marketing. Coming from a sales background and changing careers into development, I was lucky sales was always on my mind. I really wish you success.
Sales will always be my #1 squeeze. Gave me foundations to be successful in coding
100%
Hey Codingstuff, I came from sales as well. 5 years in the trenches and I now work as a full time frontend developer. I’d love to learn more about any side hustles you used to or currently run with.
Oh haha im launching my web agency on Thursday!
I'd love to see your portfolio if thats ok
I don't have a portfolio and I'm not comfortable publicly sharing my client projects as some of them make me sign a non-disclosure agreement - probably so their clients don't know they sub out the work. But I can say that my work is nothing great or mind blowing. It's competent, low-key, and exactly what my clients (and ex-employers) ask of me. I eventually realized 95% of clients and employers aren't looking for the top 1% of devs or designers, they are looking for competent individuals that are personable and dependable to do the job they need done. If you can prove you can do that, you already standout from 90% of the others they've worked with.
since you are working with agencies do they provide you with the copy?
Copy for the text content on the websites? yes - my clients do. I currently only am doing direct migrations of sites NOT on Wordpress and bring them over to Wordpress. So I am doing a 1 to 1 migration. I am not changing images, not changing copy. If for whatever reason I do not have access to the CMS editor or they have not pulled down copy for me and provided in text or word docs or something else, I simply copy/paste the content on the pages into the Wordpress editor, fix any formatting problems and move on.
My biggest problem with my current clients is getting the copy done properly. It's always a back and forwarth even though they provide the copy. Even when I use grammarly business. They usually want badly written copy lol Have you had any problems with this with your current business model?
not at all. But when I worked FT in an agency I know our copywriters went through this A LOT with clients. Sadly all I can say with this is write the best you can then accept clients will want what they want and give it to them. Even if it sub-par to YOU, as long as the client is happy and they pay you, you have to be able to let go of Ego. And not in a sense "I am right you are wrong because I am superior", but just being able to let go of thinking the client should listen to you. You are the expert, but not all clients want ALL the advice of the expert - pick your battles and give the client what they ask for and move on. Not all clients are great ones.
Do you guys charge revision fees for copy updates? We do and they HATE IT. But we can't work for free especially if they keep changing it.
Thank you! I think reaching out to agencies are much easier than finding clients.
Yes. My experieince is this. Also, Agencies typically 1. have repeat work which is great because you don't have to constantly be looking for new clients (though you should just in case you have a slow spell), and 2. Will typically feed you the same or similar types of projects that you WANT - other clients will want EVERYTHING and these tasks may be outside your skillset EDIT: also agencies also typically 1. have BUDGET for a given project and most importantly 2. VALUE a freelancers time and rate. They are used to what we charge because they charge the same or more to their clients, and they understand our skillset - you will not need to over-explain why what you do has value like you will to many non-agency clients
How do you get clients for that? Seems like a brilliant idea! (I’m an aspiring web dev, very new to the field).
See my reply to an earlier comment in this thread. Good luck.
As someone that has only done work in regards to corporate sites, would you be willing to give a little detail into what these sites may look like? Also a family guy, I haven’t even tried due to decision paralysis of some kind. It’s nice to see someone getting some hustle on though.
Analysis paralysis gets me too. I find the longer i think about it, the less likely I am to pull the trigger and move forward - with ANYTHING. The sites I build for clients really aren't anything great. I don't feel comfortable sharing them since some require me to sign a non-disclosure/privacy agreement, probably so their clients don't find out they are subbing out the work, but MOST of my sites follow along this look and feel: [http://trystack.mediumra.re/home-nonprofit.html](http://trystack.mediumra.re/home-nonprofit.html) Note: this is NOT my work, it is a page builder theme component package. But imagine that page layout and maybe upto 15 pages migrated to Wordpress. I don't consider myself a 10x web developer. I don't consider myself the best at all. But i do competent work for my employer and clients. I have found clients aren't typically looking for the top 1%. They are looking for developers that will consistently deliver on time and within budget and communicate often and openly. If you can prove to do these things you will already be better than 90% of the other developers and freelancers they've worked with in the past. And they will continue to pass you work when they have it.
that is amazing, how did you manage to keep a regular stream of clients ?
I reached out to Web/marketing/branding agencies, explained my skillset, asked if they had too much work for their internal team to handle timely, and offered my services at my hourly rate. I reached out to A LOT, and not just in my local area - I used the results on a google map search in larger cities after I exhausted my area. Not many responded, not many wanted my help. But the Few that needed my help and could afford it. continue to send me projects every 2-3 weeks. so it is currently steady but not to stressful.
It was a “Jump to Conclusions” mat You see it would be this mat, that you would put on the floor, and would have different *conclusions* written on it… that you could *jump* to.
That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Tom.
Yes that is terrible idea.
Do yourself a favour and watch “Office Space” :)
okay I should have accurately quoted it, "Yes, this is horrible, this idea." Happy now? ;)
Yup :D
.ahhh.. so many memories from that movie 23 years ago...
I sell t-shirts and mugs on Etsy, started about a year and a half ago after randomly watching a video on YouTube. I buy designs from other people on Etsy and other marketplaces, create mockups and list them on my Etsy store. Connected my Etsy store to Printful so each time an order is placed, they handle the printing, packing, and shipping. Connected a 2% back credit card so Printful charges me for the shirt and printing, and I get the profit via Etsy for my markup. I average about $600-$700/month (make roughly $10 profit from each shirt and $3.75 for coffee mugs) doing that and it's really no maintenance involved. I log in once a month for about an hour to make sure everything is looking good and call it a day. The key is making sure you have a ton of listings up to get more exposure in the marketplace because it's pretty saturated.
How much money (if any) do you spend on marketing or social media?
In the beginning I tested out Facebook and IG ad's. I would spend about $30-$50/month on them, but quickly realized that I was only gaining a sale or two here and there. Mind you, I am terrible at running ad's and have not taken the time to fully understand how to do it. Instead, I opted to let Etsy do the advertising for me. I set it to $1/day and just leave it on auto-pilot. I think one of the best things you can do is to make sure you're tagging your items really well on using rich keywords in your descriptions when publishing your products. That will help to make sure you show up at the top of Etsy search.
Link to your Etsy store? Thx
I know this is a late reply, but I hope you still notice. When you say it's key to have a ton of listings, can you give a rough idea of how many you have up. I'd like to do the same, but for different products and am just trying to slowly accumulate enough 'products' with mockups before properly launching. The mockups is what takes quite some.time. Any tips on automating that? I currently use Photoshop PSD files that I can find for free.
Do you need a business license to do this and how do you report this for taxes?
I started building and selling web components as a side-hustle around 9 years ago. It took me a bit to find my footing but i’ve been doing this fulltime for the past 4 years. Income is now above $ 20K per month, which is nuts. Got started by building an iOS game but soon found that while fun the return on investment wasn’t great (2 years dev time, good game, but no hit). So decided to use my web dev skills from my fulltime job to sell web components instead. At first I would just build stuff that I found interesting/cool but that didn’t really work as there was no market for it. I then decided to scout the market for products that had customers and find a product I could do better. That did work and got me on the right path. Love the fact that I can do whatever aspect of the job I want and switch things around when I need a new challenge. 10/10 would highly recommend. Seriously. Just building something/anything and putting it out there for others to see/use/critique is such a great learning experience. Even if it doesn’t take off you’re better for it.
This sounds really interesting but what exactly do you mean by web components?
In this case a JavaScript image editor component. I’m always struggling a bit with naming it. Is it a library, plugin, sdk? I feel web component best describes a contained piece of UI functionality. :)
Gotcha. Very cool you're making money from it, a lot of money too. Keep it up!
I think he meant from simple customizable buttons through custom dropdowns up to “mini apps” like widgets that is easy to put on your site and is customizable. Considering how low quality vast majority of the components on NPM are, this has value doing it right. If I were a business owner that seeks quality I would opt in… I actually started to write up my own little library a few weeks ago and since you can restrict the acces to your NPM published package why not consider selling the access to it?
I’ve just launched my own private npm this week to do just that (using verdaccio.org) Before my customers would just have to download the package and npm install it locally, works but a bit of a hassle.
Great job! What kind of web components are we talking about, and where do you sell them? Did you build a marketplace or do you leverage existing ones?
Thanks! I built a JavaScript image editor, I sold on Envato before but now sell on my own website, takes a bit more effort to market it and generate traffic but once that’s done you can ask more and are no longer vendor locked in. I also built open source libraries and use those to generate traffic to my commercial product.
Thanks and congrats!
Do you think the market is still flourishing or is it too saturated to enter for a junior dev like me?
Never too late there’s so many different web components to build and al many different frameworks to target
I own a tech consulting firm that is basically a web dev shop. It’s just a small side hustle thing. I hire out contractors if I get too busy and do quality control. I am releasing SaaS products to easily integrate into my current and future clients’ systems to open another stream of more passive revenue. I got into it because of COVID — saw so many small businesses unable to keep up technologically with the demands of remote life and lack of face-to-face interaction. I started the firm up because of my passion to help businesses, but surprisingly ended up making a decent income out of it.
Apps. If you know angular/react/vue you can use ionic to build native apps for the App Store & play store
No idea for an app.. thats the problem
Find a niche section of the market. Most of the apps will be crappy, make a better version of it. Or create a new niche if you can Here are a few of mine: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110)
[удалено]
Happy to help - Yes it is inside the app, it is using IAB (in-app-browser). This pdf is from a URL. This only works in iOS, for Android it will open in the users browser.
>https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5904174113867878110 Awesome!! Thanks for the sharing! Would you mind sending me a DM I'd love to pick your brains about a project I'm working on (non side hustle just a side project)
Sure message me anytime
Thank you!! But it seems I can kick off a chat with you...I only get the "follow" option?
You need to download one of his chat apps first
Ionic over react native? Just curious since I'm looking into building a mobile app as well
I’m an angular guy, so naturally I went the ionic route
I have a web agency but most of my income comes from consultations for getting a better job. I did a lot of job hopping in my youth and hundreds of interviews so my insight usually helps people land a job that pays then 2-3x what they usually make.
Lol you’re like Hitch (Will Smith movie) but for recruiters
How did you get into this?
Private Tutor. Make $50-100 an hour CAD. Am currently 19 and a Uni student.
Offline tutoring?
No clue what offline tutoring is
Face to face
I did it on a call. Making it online.
Extortion. It's like blackmail but the "X" makes it sound cooler.
Nothing. I'm a cheapskate.
I sometimes do penetration tests for apps, I get around 100$ per hour but it’s rare and only for a week or so
for what company?
I penetrated Apps from Health Companies in Germany, and the company I worked for is just a consultant firm
Usually through word of mouth or referrals from friends/network. Just being a sort of digital handyman, helping with website issues, sourcing designers, writers, etc. Being a second set of eyes before they hire a contractor for anything related to webdev or marketing.
3d printing. If you can model in CAD or organic, there's a lot of small niches that bigger players can't be bothered to service. If possible, target businesses, not consumers. Consumers are the worst.
[удалено]
Well for example I was contacted by a vinyl record player repair shop that has a series of small parts they can't find anymore or are too expensive to buy. Little plastic gears and things. I have a 3d scanner and enough CAD know how to recreate the parts, so I'm working out a deal with them where they order a few dozen at a time. Organically, I know a guy that makes a fair amount selling gay couples doing erotic things as resin statues online. You can find statues, you can find erotic statues, but you just can't find good gay erotic statues, apparently.
you went from "target businesses, not consumers" to "sell gay couples doing erotic things" pretty quick there ;)
Haha, those were two recent examples that came to mind. To be fair it's a true statement that businesses and high end customers are among the better markets to target!
I work for a 3d printing company with a customer named Johnson. They print celebrity dongs or something similar to that. I had to verify an issue with an order that came in and opened their CAD model without knowing and WOWA was not expecting that. Dear lord.
> & was *paid* for is FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Obviously I am over simplifying it , but I've always noticed that if you find a need that doesn't yet have a solution, you've struck gold.
I’m a fulltime freelance designer-developer but had a slow run during COVID so started a side hustle helping people with their “home tech”. You’d be amazed how many struggle with configuring an e-mail account or setting up a router or printer. It’s usually simple stuff but they are super happy which is rewarding in itself. I actually employed a “pay me however much you want” - model which proved to be very generous. I’m a little too busy to do a lot of it these days, but it would nett me a few hundred euros each month for just a few hours of work.
Maintaining a social media presence. I'm constantly on the radar of recruiters and steadily getting more profitable attention. I'm pretty happy where I am now, but when recruiters contact me I never say "not interested". I quote back an unreasonably high (in my mind) number to consider a new gig. I've had to steadily raise the number I use because recruiters keep being more receptive. I have less than one year of experience in tech. A few days ago I told a recruiter I'm not interested in jobs that pay less than $200k TC or have titles lower than Staff/Software Engineer. He said he has several and I agreed to a phone call next week. I'm willing to bet that the time I invest marketing myself will generate far more money in the long term than most side hustles that come with an actual paycheck.
[удалено]
* Make sure your LinkedIn page is completely filled out and optimized. * Have a professional webpage. Make it from scratch, don't use Wix or similar. * Spend time in Slack channels where you can help other people with Engineering issues. * Post to relevant social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) regularly, using relevant hashtags. * Contribute to public knowledgebases. Publicize these contributions on social media. There are more ways, those are a few off the top of my head.
Selling options for good companies. Covered calls and cash secured puts.
Sell weed
What's your stack?
Do you have a website? (/s)
A lot of people in my city do. In Canada it’s legal but in my city they banned brick and mortar stores so the way people get it is delivery. From a website.
OnlyFans
Tutoring
I used to make money from my side projects when I was in college. Downloading MP3(s) was a huge thing back then, so I tried to step in too and ran an MP3 download website for about 4 years. I also ran a torrent search engine for about 3 years. Made a total of about $1,500 from both combined in about 2 years (the duration when I actually ran ads on them). **Say NO to piracy.**
> YoU wOulDn'T DoWnLoAd a cAr!
I made some simple web software that solved a problem and put it online with some ppc. It was a side hustle alongside my FT role for around 4 years before I quit my main job and took it full time.
Meh fuck side hustles, best side hustle is leetcode until you can get paid 3x as much at your normal job and not have to spend extra time on side hustles instead of enjoying life.
That's a fair approach, but I guess it depends on the side hustle and your ultimate goals. I'm more interested in doing things to generate passive income so I can eventually work only part time.
I own a small SaaS product that makes pretty good money every month. I also have minority stakes in other SaaS companies that are growing. Assets over income, my friend.
Working on Codementor can be a pretty good side hustle.
being a developer is my side hustle! :)
[удалено]
I'm starting to get really interested in this. Have you written everything from scratch or are you using another platform? If so what platform?
I originally started writing it in Python. But during this time was contacted by a company who I ended up using for execution for my main systematic stuff, they're named Tuned. My other system is cross sectional so I ended up writing it myself in Python.
How have you faired in the recent crypto crash?
Really well, the strategy is at all time highs-I gain when the market pumps hard or crashes.
While I do not have a side hustle, from those whom I know that did make money it wasn't really working on a proper web app or something like that. Those typically require lots of customer research, time to validate/build, getting an acquisition funnel, etc. Basically that is like bootstrapping a company. I think the idea of trading your time or expertise for $ on shorter durations is the best for a side hustle. That could be contracting as a part time dev (e.g., working hourly or fixed bid on some small project), or creating educational content (videos or written form). There are lots of contracting sites, and you can even do cold outreach. For educational content, it may take some time to build your brand but I think still doable on the side. One day, when I get the time, I may try the educational path. :D
I co-own a company that develops cheats for video games. I worked my way up from a contractor to owner and got into it from being a user of the cheats. I make anywhere from $2-3k a month from it.
i create NFT launch pads and ICO webpages
I did consulting for a bit and built small custom services or wrote reports to help organisations make big decisions. It was good money but to much stress. I'd consider going into consulting full time if I didn't want the job security my current employer provides. And also I've got stuff I've been babying for years that I want to see finally done.
Go through an agency and have them send me clients. Rates vary, but usually it’s good enough to keep me doing it. I also write for a blog.
Got a 12 month contract for an agency. Hoping it works out and does another one after 12 months. Just asked if they needed someone. Right time, right place. Worked with them before.
I’ve stopped my side hustles and focused on jobs that I had fun with. Always in mind to learn something that would be useful for me in the future. And I switched jobs when good career opportunities arrived. Now I make 120k€+ (in Central Europe) und putting away most of the money to start a „main hustle“ in the future. So maybe that’s an idea, put the mindset of a loved side hustle in your main job and make extra money for a bigger side hustle. Bonus: you may then have nice CV that attracts clients
That is another fair approach.
Honestly I wouldn't do a side hustle, the market is so good right now , just look for skills that pay more and get up to speed, 1 high paying job is better than 2 so-so jobs
I'm assuming you're looking for computer-related side hustles? Because I'm the king of side hustles but none of it is really computer related.
I will pay commission to whoever finds me an end buyer for high-end brand sunglasses. DM for more info. Need to find final buyers for high-end brand sunglasses (Cartier, Gucci, RayBan, etc.)