Update: I wrote an eBook on Ten++ Ways to Make Money as a Developer. You can get it now by clicking here.
Below you can find a list of ways you can make money as a developer. I've wrote these items a while back and I thought that people might find it valuable so I decided to share it with you. 😄
- The most common is to have a job at a company or work as a freelancer for multiple clients
- Create and sell digital products (plugins, components (in React, Angular, Vue, Bootstrap, etc), themes, etc)
- build a SAAS (Software as a Service)
- create web, mobile and/or desktop apps where you can have ads or in-app purchases
- Create a blog and monetize it via:
- ads (Google Adsense, carbonads, etc)
- sponsorships
- become an affiliate and promote other people’s products
- promote your own products
- get paid to write articles for publications
- write and sell ebooks and/or physical books*
- create a YouTube channel (on topics like: tutorials, developer lifestyle, tips & tricks, news in the field, etc) and monetize it via:
- YouTube ads
- sponsorships
- affiliate marketing
- promote your own products
- create online courses and/or online programs
- live stream (on Twitch, YouTube, etc) and monetize it via:
- donations
- monthly subscriptions
- create a podcast
- sponsorship
- promote your own products
- work on Open Source projects and get donations and sponsorships
- create a Patreon page where people can support you
- create a job board and get paid by companies to connect them with developers, designers, etc...
- sell swag
- sell a newsletter
- have 1-on-1 coaching sessions
- create a trading bot
- participate in paid coding challenges
- participate in bug bounty programs
Feel free to suggest anything else that should be added to the list! 😃
Stay connected - subscribe to my emailing list by clicking here
Oldest comments (54)
Hi, great post - such post desires to be bookmarked!
what's interesting is that you'll probably find your favorite dev influencer on Twitter doing one or more of these things to make extra money on the side :)
The thing about being a developer, is that, there are many ways of 'monetizing' your experience. It's not quick cash and whatever you do will take a lot of work, but the opportunities are there.
Indeed, there are a lot of opportunities but you have to put in the effort 😃
Nice post! But how many do you know who really make money with their own trading bot? ;)
I know a guy 😜
Well, to be fair, people who have analysed trading bots have something different to say. As it turns out, the vast majority of people using trading bots lose money, while a tiny handful who tweak their trading bots constantly actually make money.
There are also a growing number of places where trading bots are banned, esp. areas where someone has made money off trading. As it turns out, the people making money with trading bots often run multiple bots on multiple servers, with a few running entire facilities, which has led to excessive energy consumption. A trading bot facility in a small town can double or triple the power consumption of that town (apparently it's not just small towns anymore, according to the article I just found), and it's not the facility paying for it all; it's the residents. Higher power bills, higher taxes, and the extra pollution created by creating all that extra power has actually tanked more than one small town's economic stability.
On the surface, it sounds great, making money by doing basically nothing, but in truth it's more likely you'll lose money, and if by some miracle you do start making money, you'll probably be contributing to the decline of the economic and physical health of your community.
cnbc.com/2019/03/22/majority-of-bi...
vice.com/en_us/article/7xgzpy/cryp...
vice.com/en_us/article/zma4w3/quad...
Don't misunderstand; the idea of easy money is tempting (I'd considered it myself, once), but the reality is a sordid mess.
Jajaja that was a cool one haha
nice!
1) I just started with open source. I mostly report bugs and issues. I don't know if I can ever reach stage where I get paid by github for open source contribution like that.
2) YouTube requires 100K subscribers for anything serious in terms of earning.
3) Podcast & Streaming not for beginners. Need to have solid experience to share for longer duration.
Many options require you to be in shoes of seller than just a developer. I am learning. I hope I get there someday :)
1) you don’t get paid by GitHub. You get paid by other developers who are using your open source projects - but yes, you need to be pretty good at it and the project has to be popular
2) true, but you have yo start somewhere. No one started with 100k subs
3) I believe you don’t need to have solid experience to start streaming. You can have a “build/learn with me” type of stream.
Yes, selling is a valuable skill, but with all of the other skills, it can be learned ☺️
Good luck on your journey!
Hi Mahesh! For the Youtube, you can use not only their Creator tools for earnings, but other affiliate programs.
For example, templatemonster affiliate team has Youtube Manager, who can help you with links, ready-made videos and other stuff you need for earning.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, it was helpful to know newbies experience.
Wish you good luck!
The bug bounty programs are different than reporting bugs on GitHub.
I've made money in the thousands of USD having under 100 subscribers but excellent SEO on my videos promoting a good affiliate product.
Gary Vaynerchuk talks a lot about sharing your journey and you can find a lot of people doing this successfully online in various industries.
I would add productized services like on launchpropeller.com
so cool... i will keep this page for me :D
Where can I find "paid coding challenges"?
I believe HackerRank has some.
These are my goals as well.
Some comments may only be visible to logged-in visitors. Sign in to view all comments.