Side hustles come up in almost every conversation I have with other devs. Everyone’s curious about how to earn outside their 9–5, but the big question is: which ones are worth the effort? Here are a few that stand out right now.
Freelance coding gigs
Freelancing is still one of the most straightforward ways to make money with your skills. Platforms like Upwork and Toptal connect developers with clients who need everything from bug fixes to full-stack projects. It’s not passive income, but it’s a reliable way to turn skills into cash quickly, especially if you want flexibility.
Digital products
Selling things like code snippets, starter kits, or niche APIs can be surprisingly profitable. Once you’ve built a solid product, it can keep selling with little extra work. Marketplaces such as Gumroad or Itch.io make distribution simple, and platforms like Whop let you bundle digital products into communities or subscriptions so you can scale beyond one-off sales.
Teaching
Sharing knowledge is a huge opportunity. Developers are creating everything from micro-courses to live workshops. Sites like Udemy or Skillshare make it easy to package your skills, while platforms like YouTube let you grow an audience for free. If you’ve ever explained a tricky concept to a junior dev at work, you already know you’ve got something to teach.
Web apps
This one is exploding right now. Building lightweight web apps lets you solve a specific problem and monetize it directly. At Whop, apps are one of the most popular side hustles because they’re fast to build, flexible to deploy, and easy to monetize through subscriptions or gated access. If you’re curious, Whop’s guide on creating apps is a great starting point — it shows how developers are turning small apps into real income streams.
The best side hustle isn’t necessarily the one trending on Twitter. It’s the one that matches your skills and feels enjoyable enough that you’ll keep working on it. Even a small project can grow into a serious income stream if you keep iterating.
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