Want to know how to make side income as a web developer? Then this article is for you. Here you'll get to know which are the best ways to earn well.
Well, passive income is one of the strongest income sources someone can have. First of all, in order to make the passive income, you’ll have to put in initial work to set up the streams of passive income, but unlike your 9–5 job you don’t really need to be working every second actively for income.
Passive income is something all want to have. Who doesn't like more money, eh..!!?😂 In the web development world, there are some great sources and ways that can help you to earn passive income along with your regular work. So, we have listed down some of the best ways for passive income that you can try.
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Now, let's start the article...!!
1. Developing & Selling a SAAS
Next up we have the first one on the list is SAAS development and selling. Now, what is a SAAS? Well, It stands for software as a service, some famous examples of a SAAS are: Microsoft Office (Excel, Word), AWS, Dropbox, etc. Although developing a SAAS is not an easy thing at all, you are gonna need tons of research and development needs to be put in to even have a profitable SAAS, but if you’re able to deliver a product to the world you can make an impressive passive income.
Here is a basic layout of how a SAAS is created: software is created > website/storefront is created > user buys/uses SAAS from website > SAAS owner is paid. You really only need to create the SAAS and the website, after that the sales are pretty much passive but time must be spent on managing and updating the SAAS.
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2. Mobile App / Game Development
This next one is a very popular option for a lot of people. Mobile app/game development is an ever-growing industry. Similar to a SAAS, you’ll have to put in the work to develop the app/game but all of the income is essentially passive.
Some of these passive income ideas from an app or game could be mobile ads, game sales, in-game / app sales, etc. There are endless possibilities in this sector, if you have some knowledge of mobile game/app development you can make some very powerful passive income streams.
3. Create a Video Course (Becoming a Coach)
Well, video tutorials are always in demand if you are good at explaining things in detail then this option is worth trying. Now, at this point in time, there are actually more positions for skillful programmers than there are people to fill those positions. With that in mind, it is easy to conclude that programming is in incredibly high demand right now, and will be for years to come. With that much demand, not only can you make money through programming but also you can make money teaching programming.
There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the world who want to learn what you already know. And if you are a talented teacher, this could be an excellent side income for you. You can literally teach programming to anyone in the world. It is a HUGE market.
Platforms like Udemy make it super easy to create your courses and make money from them. All you need to do is create a high-quality course. They will take care of the marketing and everything else.
4. Creating Articles / Courses
This is one of the best ways to make side income as a web developer right now. You can spend some time developing an article, post it, and forget about it, the article will then continue to garner revenue forever (as long as it gets views/reads) without spending much time on it anymore.
Courses are another great way to develop income, I would definitely say a course takes more effort to develop but I have heard courses are very lucrative as well. From all of the side income sources, this one is probably the best way.
You can start as a writer on platforms like Medium, dev.to, etc. Building an audience will eventually help you.
5. Web Hosting
Next up we have web hosting, which is a bit different than website development. Web hosting is essentially storing a website on a server, thus the website is able to be accessed anywhere online, these websites will be renting server space from you. Some very popular web hosting websites are Hostgator, Siteground, and Bluehost, you would essentially be creating your own web hosting service.
6. Buying a Profitable Website
This is one of the best ways to have a side income. This is more of an investment that can lead to side income. You have to choose a website that allows you to sell and buy websites/applications, you'll be also able to get income reports from the websites as well.
Let’s say you didn’t want to develop an application right now, well you could just buy an existing application and profit off of that specific investment. This one doesn’t really require massive amounts of programming knowledge, but if you plan on updating the websites/applications it could totally help by understanding the programming languages around those products.
7. Finding Bugs
It is a well-known fact in the web development world, that Software failures are a genuine problem for companies’ economies. They affect their overall income and the experience for their users. And in today’s world, all businesses know that their product must be reliable to be considered acceptable.
That’s my so many firms out there have created something called bounty programs. These initiatives focus on paying developers to look for and fix vulnerabilities in their apps.
You can go on one of the following websites:
And check with your eyes the real possibilities of making money with these programs. Some vulnerability fixes are being paid actually more than 2000$.
So why not make yourself a name out there as the new Mr. Wolf of company bugs while earning a lot of cash?
Conclusion:
So what is the solution? Where do you start to see your coding skills make you some good money at the end of the month? Which one should you pick from the one listed above?
The answer is all of them.
Yes. All..!! You may have read many books about personal finance, and all of them agree on one thing: you need to diversify your income streams. Having multiple income sources is always a good choice.
So that’s what we suggest to you. You don't have to pick more than one way at once. You can start with one method and then ampliate yourself to work with other cash flow ideas.
For example, Start writing on platforms like Dev.To. Learn what good writing is and what developers want to read about. Build your writing portfolio. Use it to promote yourself to tech companies to write paid content for them.
Try to build your authority with the content you write or create and then use that to become a coach on a platform like Codementor. If you have many people who follow your teachings, you can start thinking about creating your first eBook or video course.
Let Us know what your favorite side income ideas are!
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Top comments (13)
Just a heads up, not all of these are "passive income". Be careful with that term. It has profound tax implications.All of the above are merely "secondary income".
When you are providing a good or service for a fee, that's active income. Finding bugs for bounties or selling SaaS is not passive income.
Writing a book or course and collecting royalties, on the other hand, would be considered passive income. So would renting out a home, even though you'd have to maintain it.
Active vs. passive income has nothing to do with effort. Talk to a licensed CPA.
Related, but I found it amusing it started with a picture of Warren Buffet and then listed a bunch of jobs. I'm not sure about the context of the quote, but I doubt that's what the "Oracle of Omaha" meant.
These aren't passive income tips. Moreover you added game and app development which are out of scope for web developers.
It varies from person to person. There are many developers who in their free time develops games or apps and earn. So, in the end it depends on person what they consider as passive income source.
If you need to actively work on it, it's not a passive income but an active income.
I think a more appropriate way to define it in this context is trading time for dollars. All of the methods mentioned have a loose correlation between work and revenue. Spend 1000 hours building a course and you might sell 10 subscriptions or you might sell a million.
I agree with you though, I sometimes TRY to code games for fun. I'm not good at it because I'm not good at math. I don't understand basic matrices or trig, lol. I also agree with Nikola. These are active incomes rather than passive incomes.
Regardless, thank you for posting this. It is people like you who keep the community running. I realize that this website has mostly beginner level developers, which is a really good thing because people share and interact a lot!
Yes, but I'm sure there are also many developers who are good watercolour painters who could paint portraits as a side job!
Bounty Program deosn't seem to be passive Income.
You'll have to work every time you are going earn income from it.
But I guess its a really good resource for people to look for differnt income source for web developers.
Unless you make bounties out of recommending peers for jobs :)
Very interesting, thanks for this article!
Thank you very much for your appreciation.🙂
Not the best title (a bit misleading as others have mentioned) but still, a great list of ideas one can use, as a software developer, to generate diverse sources of income. Cheers for that!