There are many ways to make money as a developer, but these are some of my favorites, mostly because of their flexibility. One can take advantage of any of these, even while holding a 9 to 5 job.
1. Freelancing
This is one of the easiest ways to make money as a developer. There are lots of people looking for developers both online and offline.
Online, there are platforms like; Fiverr, Upwork, and others. If you don't have any experience on any of these platforms, it may be difficult to land your first client. I recommend setting your price to be as low as possible. Your goal at first should not be to make lots of money but to gather positive reviews. And when you have enough reviews, you can then increase your prices.
To get freelancing gigs offline, you also need to apply the same principle, you can even do some simple projects for free at first just to have something to add to your portfolio.
2. Plugin & Theme Sale
If you have done development long enough, there are chances that you have already developed a feature that you can extract and package as a plugin. Whether it's a WordPress plugin, a Javascript package, etc. You can start selling some of your work on Codecayon.
You can also come up with designs or collaborate with a designer to create website templates that you can sell on Themeforest.
3. Technical Article Writing
This is another great way to make money as a developer which a lot of people don't know about. There are companies that are willing to pay you as a developer to write technical articles for them or their community. This is a great way to spend your free time and receive an additional income. Check out this list of companies you can write for and get paid.
4. Launch Product on Affiliate Networks
If you create a product that solves real issues people have or can help businesses grow, you can launch it on Affiliate Network platforms like JvZoo, Warriorplus, etc, and make thousands of dollars. Last year, I help build an app called Contentburger that helps users manage and curate content for all their social media in one place. The app generated over $150,000 in gross sales on JvZoo.
5. Create a course
If you have an in-depth understanding of a particular topic or framework, you can create a course on that, and people will be willing to pay to take your course as long as it's good.
Creating courses can be work-intensive, but can be very rewarding. There are two ways you can go about selling your course; you can sell it on your own website or social media, or you can sell it on a learning platform like Skillshare.
6. Start a Blog
Blogging can take a lot of effort and time to start seeing results. And it may be difficult to make a lot of money on blogging, especially for technical blogs. Unless you’re being paid by a company to write blog posts like in item 3 above. Nevertheless, a blog can be a great tool for growing your social media following, and a good place to start selling your courses or other products that you create.
7. Create a Youtube Channel
Just like starting a blog, starting a Youtube channel can take a lot of time and effort. But it has the invaluable benefit of allowing you to share your other products or courses with people who already know, like, and trust you.
8. Tutor People Online/Offline
There are many people who are willing to pay some good money to learn to code, both online and offline. If you enjoy teaching or tutoring, this is a great way to make some extra income as a developer. There are also platforms like Codementor that allow developers to mentor people who need help with their coding tasks and get paid while doing so.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I have not tried all of these methods myself. But what do you think? Have tried any of these? And what are your favorite ways of making money as a developer?
