
Ask HN: As a skilled developer, how do you make pocket money with little time? - Kmaschta
Hi, I&#x27;m a web developer and I search a way to get extra money, in a regular way if possible.<p>I tried to be a freelance, it is well paid but with my full-time job it&#x27;s too time consuming and I&#x27;m not so ambitious.<p>I&#x27;m not here to make advertisement but to hear your experience. I&#x27;m considering security audit, consulting and things like that be it&#x27;s the same as to be freelance: you need to search for prospects, etc.<p>Do you have some clue or experience?
======
goldenbeet
So I have experience working with Udacity (MOOCs for various coding related
fields)

I work as a mentor for a few of their courses. You're connected to X number of
students (you set x yourself). Then as they progress through the course they
have the option to send you a message to ask a question or whatever. You also
do a weekly check-in with them to see where they're at, if they have any
blockers, what their goals are for the next week.

You then get paid (via PayPal) based on how your student interactions went on
a per week basis. 0$ for every student who didn't message you, 5$ for 1-9
messages, 15$ for 10+ messages. You get bonuses for them completing major
sections as well.

You interact via a mentor dashboard on web or via a mobile app. If you use
mobile, you're basically being paid to text some students a few times a week.
Pay will obviously vary depending on how many students you have and how good
you are at interacting with them. (The better your mentor rating the more
students you're allowed to take on). I had 40 students and made 1.4K a month.
The work didn't feel stressful or anything. It's pretty easy to land (no
formal interviews or anything), you just have to get involved in their slack
and PM one of the Udacity staffers. Was pretty easy, plus I enjoy
teaching/mentoring.

You can also be a project reviewer rather than a mentor, but not sure how that
works.

~~~
hulahoof
Not being skeptic but genuinely curious, does the per message pay model drive
less succinct answers that require clarification? I imagine that there is
little discussion or choice within the student body to select a mentor

~~~
goldenbeet
> "drive less succinct answers"

Not really, mainly because there's very clearly two kinds of students. The
ones who don't talk to their mentors at all outside of the weekly check-in (a
single message) and the ones who utilize the mentor to the fullest. So if
someone is asking you a question you generally don't have to worry about
getting to 10 messages with them because it'll just happen.

------
philip1209
We're working to solve this problem at
[http://MoonlightWork.com](http://MoonlightWork.com). At my last startup, I
had a lot of friends who wanted to help us out - but they had day jobs that
they couldn't leave. So, I started hiring them part-time as contractors. It
was great - we had top talent, and they could focus on interesting problems
while making extra money.

Moonlight is still in its early stages but we are doing thousands of dollars
per week in business. Our average hourly rate based on paid contracts so far
has been $146.79. We're focusing on more specialized work rather than generic
web development from scratch. Early projects have ranged from a custom
algorithm for a hedge fund to some infrastructure work to support Tensorflow.
The benefit to companies is that they have access to specialized engineers for
focused projects, and they can get a match within 48 hours.

If you're interested in short-term projects, you can join at
[https://MoonlightWork.com/apply](https://MoonlightWork.com/apply) \- we're
working on increasing the number of projects, so sorry if it takes a couple
weeks to get a first project match.

We're going though YC's Startup School MOOC, and we did live office hours with
Sam Altman a few weeks ago. You can see the video here:
[https://youtu.be/abtHadERzXU](https://youtu.be/abtHadERzXU)

~~~
vlokshin
Hey, Philip!

We're in a similar space and more companies like yours need to exist.

I'm one of the cofounders at [https://turtle.ai/](https://turtle.ai/)

Our average paid out hourly rates have been lower than yours, but we make it
REALLY easy for both sides to work together. We've built our own task manager
and chat app that makes customer and freelancer lives easier.

We have a lot of PhD students and full time developers doing 5-15 hours per
week on Turtle.

Good luck and we'll be looking out for you! More "alternative work" options
need to exist. The 40-hour, butt-in-seat life needs to go (or other options
have to at least exist).

~~~
philip1209
Cool - we've been taking a very manual approach to optimize our process so
far, and are finally just starting on a web app! We have a lot more work to do
in automating the process and creating a great user experience. We're users of
our own product too - I'm working 10 hours a week through Moonlight to afford
rent.

Our mission is to help engineers earn what they want, and for some people -
that means working more time for more money, but for others that means working
just a few hours per week.

I see that Turtle focuses more on web development. I think this is a good way
to go about it - but for Moonlight specifically, I knew there was a problem
when a friend of mine making $400K/year as a security researcher couldn't find
a way to apply his skills in contract work. He wanted to travel and contract
for a bit, and was having to look at webdev contracts at $50/hour. So, instead
of focusing on building products for non-technical clients, we're focusing on
more specialized tasks like dev-ops and algorithms for technical clients.

~~~
toexitthedonut
Hi philip1209, I just applied to your Moonlight site as a software developer.
With that said, my experience has all been in web development, and have some
personal experience writing native desktop apps. Would I have a problem
finding work in your platform as a web developer? I also like the idea of
working for more technical clients. I believe that finding high-rated clients
is one of the bigger problems that freelancers have in using most common
freelancing websites.

~~~
philip1209
No, it should be fine. But the projects will be more pointed and for a more
technical client. So, rather than "build me a thing", the projects should be
more specific - like "build me a thing in Redux with this low-fidelity
mockup."

------
stanmancan

       I tried to be a freelance, it is well paid but with my full-time job it's too time consuming and I'm not so ambitious.
    

That's your problem in a nutshell. If you don't have any time to spare, and
you're not ambitious enough to find time, then there's not much you can do.
However, unless you're putting in 60+ hours a week at your day job you most
likely have a lot more time than you think. Even 1 hour a night can add up
quick.

\- I've build a number of websites businesses on the side. Most the jobs come
through word of mouth and recommendations.

\- A few of them have agreed to keep me on a retainer, they pay me $XXX a
month and I'll host their sites and give them a couple hours of maintenance
each month if needed.

\- I started a little API about 5 years ago and dropped an advertisement on
the homepage. 3 years went by with next to no revenue from it, as time went on
though it started to pick up. It runs on a $10/m VPS and at it's peak it made
$1600/m in ad revenue. These days it hovers around $600-700/m and runs on a
$20/m VPS. This takes about 0.5 hours a month of my time to keep up.

\- Another company wanted a web application but didn't have the budget to pay
for it up front. Built out a proof of concept on my own time and presented it.
They liked it, so instead of selling it outright I host/maintain it and sell
them seats. They pay $X/m per employee. They're trailing it right now in a few
stores but they're in talks to launch it nationally.

\- About to launch a small SaaS; one of those 'scratch your own itch' things.
Whether there's a market for it or not remains to be seen.

All of those things have been accomplished over the last 5 years. I have a
wife, 10 year old daughter, a full time job, and coach a soccer team. I know
there are many people much busier than I am out there, but if I can find time
to work on side projects, so can most people. You have to want it though, and
your lack of ambition is most likely the prime culprit.

~~~
csben
How do you find side gigs developing web applications for companies? I read
about it a lot on HN, but never understood how these opportunities just fall
into people's laps.

~~~
blackflame7000
You would be surprised how many companies are severely lacking tools that
could greatly increase worker efficiency. The first webdev gig that I ever got
came while visiting a friend who worked in a pharmaceutical research lab. Upon
finishing her report, she proceeded to print it out and append it to these
massive binders. I asked her why not digitize it all and make it available on
all the lab computers via an intranet to which her response was "I didn't know
that was possible".

After seeing that, I created a quick demo in about 3 weeks as a proof of
concept and asked my friend to bring it to her boss. She gladly accepted
because it made her look good by going beyond her duties to help the company
be more efficient. The boss loved it and set up a meeting with me where we
ironed out their ideal use cases as well as settled on a price and release
date. After drafting a contract, viola, I had my first side gig.

I guess the main takeaway is to keep an eye out for professional friends and
acquaintances outside of the tech world who could benefit from automation or
digitization in their daily jobs but are simply unaware it's possible.

~~~
AznHisoka
Yep it all comes down to knowing people and beyond that getting to know their
day to day responsibilities and problems. It doesnt fall into people's laps at
all.

------
kentt
I'm in a similar position, a web developer with a reasonable salary interested
in side income, but not interested in onerous responsibilities of running a
business. I've been had two projects I'm sort of happy with

1\. A shopify app that makes about 150/mo. I answer about 2 emails about it
per month and otherwise don't work on it. It took about 150 hours to build so
I haven't been paid well for it, but I enjoyed building it.

2\. A WordPress plugin I acquired for about 10k that makes 800/mo. I get a lot
more emails about this but I think if I get it into a less buggy state then I
can get that down to something more reasonable.

~~~
6DM
Do you mind if I ask how you found out about this plugin? Did you get lucky
and buy from someone you knew or did you seek it out? Was it doing well before
or did you grow it to this point.

Edit: spelling

~~~
kentt
Sure. I spent a ton of time finding something. Happy to answer any questions
about the process.

I found the plugin on flippa.com. Flippa has a lot of crap. Maybe almost all
crap. But there are some good things there if you just watch for it. There was
a really high quality magento plugin and there I wanted to buy and I chatted
with the dev a bunch but it didn't work out.

I was looking for something that was programming centric rather than
sales/marketing centric, which is fairly limiting. And something that was <10k
which means you have to filter through a lot of cruft. If I had more to spend
then I would look on FEI which seems to have things that would be more
interesting to programmers, but is a higher price point. Empire Flippers is
another place I'd look.
[https://www.sideprojectors.com/](https://www.sideprojectors.com/) didn't seem
to have anything interesting to me, but I checked there a bunch too.

> Was it doing well before or did you grow it to this point.

It's been a bit volatile so it's hard to say how it's trending, but I don't
think I've helped or hurt it much. If anything it's making a bit less. Haven't
prioritized working on it so I can't expect much.

------
avisaven
I've recently been playing around with HackerOne. It's a great way to both
benefit society (by finding, reporting, and eliminating security flaws in
software that people rely on) and yourself (most companies on HackerOne give
Bug Bounties out, anywhere from a couple hundred to thousands of dollars,
depending on the bug). Specifically, I looked at shopify's mruby bug bounty
([https://hackerone.com/shopify-scripts](https://hackerone.com/shopify-
scripts)) and used a fuzzer (AFL/honggfuzz) to find bugs in mruby, which I
could then investigate and report. That specific bug bounty is a lot of C/low
level security, but there are many bug bounties which are geared towards
websites/web development (XSS/SQLi/etc).

~~~
Kmaschta
It's a good idea, on top of that I want train myself about security. Thanks!

------
parametrek
Web dev? Affiliate links.

Consider a consumer item you are passionate about. Walk through the typical
shopping process, either as a newb or as an enthusiast. Identify all the pain
points, every bit of friction. Consider everything you've listed as an
embarrassment that you will personally make right. Build the smoothest,
fastest, most respectful experience possible. Compile lots of information too
- your goal is to become the best resource on the internet. Put the user first
at all times. And when appropriate add affiliate links. (In my case only 27%
of URLs are affiliated.)

Why is respecting the user the #1 priority? Because you do not want to look
like an affiliate content mill! Go read the blogs that teach you how to
affiliate^W build dark patterns and do the opposite of what they suggest.

Of course even if you are unquestionably the best resource on the internet,
some communities will still tar and feather you for having affiliate links. I
was very lucky to find a great and supportive community.

~~~
Zak
I'm a moderator of one of the communities in which your site is relevant,
[http://reddit.com/r/flashlight](http://reddit.com/r/flashlight)

We do see some bad affiliate behavior there, though most of it gets
automatically filtered. When it doesn't, the community usually ruthlessly
mocks people who post low-quality content that's obviously just intended to
make money.

Almost every time somebody shows up asking for purchase advice, somebody links
parametrek.com because it's so _useful_. You want a flashlight under 120mm
long with integrated charging that has a removable, non-proprietary battery?
Here are 34 of them.

Make something people want.

~~~
vijayr
that site is neat. Would've never guessed there are so many options for a
flashlight, of all things. I'm curious how these sites manage to keep the
pricing up-to-date.

~~~
Zak
Those are just the major brands. There's a lot more only available from mildly
sketchy Chinese sites, most of it bad but some of it excellent. There are
exotic customs that cost hundreds and sometimes even thousands of dollars.
There's a significant hobbyist/DIY community as well, even open-source driver
designs and firmwares.

~~~
vijayr
I guess this is a model that can be applied to a lot of products/services -
even for things like Job Search, apartment search etc, as long as the data is
reliable and is in machine readable format. I forget the name of the site -
few years ago, Google bought a site that helped people look for laptops, but
instead of saying 8GB RAM, it said "run photoshop fast" or something like
that.

------
vlokshin
We're working to solve this exact problem.

Check out [http://turtle.ai/](http://turtle.ai/)

We've focused on building software that makes it really easy for "plug and
play" software development work. We think 40 hours isn't perfect for every
kind of engineering job. We even have some software developers delivering
customers value in just a few hours per month.

You do need to be able to clearly say "here's what I'm doing, and here's when
to expect results", but we also recruit customers that buy into our vision.
Also, our software makes it really easy for both sides to keep smiling :)

------
verigit
I made a macOS app [1]. It was a lot of work and the outcome is always unknown
beforehand, but I could do it at completely my own pace (which could be an
answer to the "little time" problem).

[1] [https://easygit.me](https://easygit.me)

------
amelius
I think there should be a service for that.

For example, if I say that in the following two weeks, I want to do X hours of
programming work, and they know my skill level, they should be able to match
me up. Like a job agency, but for short-term freelance work.

~~~
Danihan
Wasn't this called elance? Until they renamed it and it got weird.

~~~
ge96
UpWork now I think. I was working there a lot but it in total was not income
to live on. It helps to have near 100% rating. My rating dropped, I had some
contracts that were open for a while (didn't bother to close them) that
murdered my rating... I also wonder how easy it is to game that system ie.
hire a friend to hire you, and offset your score.

Still... the overall experience of bidding on jobs and possibly getting 1/20
tries not a very pleasant experience. Also I'm not an expert so... sore loser
I guess.

------
upbeatlinux
Freelancing takes some degree of ambition and if you're just starting it can
be time consuming.

What I'm hearing though is you want the benefits of freelancing without having
to do the work of a freelancer? That's a huge fallacy. Freelancing requires
some degrees of ambition and most importantly work.

Unless you've built a reputation for providing these services its going to be
difficult obtaining customers.

What should you do? At the very least

    
    
      - build your profile and build your brand
      - "become" an "expert" in your field by blogging, tweeting, etc to drive engagement
      - get connected to other "experts" and start conversations
      - build a simple landing page (site) for each area you want to provide services for. A/B test the landing page using Google Ad Words, etc
      - sign up as an organization on freelancing sites and start doing jobs which can be done asynchronously
      - become a maintainer or contributor to security auditing software
    

Alternatively you could buy an existing business and improve it.

Again, all this requires ambition and work.

If you don't have time or interest in finding the time it's probably not for
you.

~~~
5_minutes
Aren't these a bit of the cliches? Build your brand? Become a blogger?

Seems like quite putting yourself out there for getting some pocketmoney, or
extra as the OP requests.

~~~
upbeatlinux
> Aren't these a bit of the cliches?

To an extent. The op doesn't have to do one or any of these. They are
suggestions which can be leveraged.

As I mentioned in a previous comment I probably didn't quite understand quite
what the op was asking.

------
SirLJ
Hey, here is my idea for you to consider: stock trading, for me it is the
ultimate lifestyle business with no customers, no employees and no
investors...

You only need some python (and pandas) knowledge, a Linux server and some
historical stock market data - please check my older posts for a source (I
would love to post the source here, but there is a forum bully stalking all my
posts – a failed day trader who will crap all over your post).

The barrier for entry is very low, you can program your trading strategies in
your spare time and run the tests while sleeping without loosing a single cent
and once you find what works for you can automate it and it’ll run on
autopilot...

Just my 2 cents, hope whatever you do works for you in the end, I was in a
situation like yours and this is what is working for me...

~~~
padfootprong
Hey, just created an account and can't figure out how to PM. Can you give me
bit more details about this please? a starting point / reference material /
resource / blog.. anything helps. Thanks!

------
dejv
My best source of good income was doing code reviews for an agency, but after
while they realised how lucrative it is and started to do them inhouse.

I also did some presales engineering work for another agency. Agencies are
great for this kind of biz/senior dev roles: they dont always have enough
skilled personel that could do this kind of work and might be open hiring
somebody to do it. If this is something you might want to do, then try to look
around for it.

~~~
BoG
Apologies. A bit late to the party here but can you point out where you found
the agencies that hired for pre-sales work? I would like to do this but have
not found any sites.

~~~
dejv
Well, all of those gigs were for agencies I used to work as a developer. I was
not interested in taking another fulltime project anymore (I was migrating
into farming) and those code reviews, pre-sales (and I also did tons of
interviews) was offered as a compromise.

I don't know how you can get those kind of jobs, but I don't think they will
outsource it to some person over internet without history of working together.
Those gigs really affects the income of those agencies so they are probably
very careful to hire for those roles.

I think you should ask around the people you are working with, companies you
worked with and so on. I think most rapidly growing agency is in desperate
need of people like this, especially if you work for them just for hours per
week so you are not destroying their cash flow.

------
5_minutes
Normally if your social circle knows you're a webdeveloper, you'll
automatically get offers, or let's say: requests for sites. Most of them you
want to skip (like your friend who want to start a bar and has no money but
will pay you in beers), or anything that is not for an established and
succesful business. But still there should be a few freelancer opportunities
without really trying, just around you.

So perhaps that could be a first step, getting word out more in your closer
circle.

I personally have too much work with this ever expanding social circle
freelancing stuff, as sidebusiness, that I think of outsourcing it or am
wondering when the point is of quitting my day job (which is well paid). That
said, I'm using "social circles" for lack of better wording.

What I really would like to do is creating my own sideprojects like goldenbeet
here addresses, that seem like fun or just interesting myself. I have a bunch
of good project ideas, but the sideproject freelance work keeps on flowing
steadily and I never get to it. If this sounds like a brag: it's not. I
actually consider anything of (semi-)passive income much of a success then
regular freelancer gigs.

~~~
unclesaamm
If said bar friend were to offer me free drinks forever, I would make the shit
out of that website

~~~
gremlinsinc
Ditto, or even a Massage Therapist... I'm okay w/ bartering things I need/want
for coding... I can then host the site for them -- to ensure continued
'benefits' and the 'value' of hosting / upkeep keeps them happy.

------
cefthurston
Hi Kmaschta,

I saw some folks mentioning Gigster so thought I'd add some notes. For
reference I'm Christian Thurston and I've been working at Gigster from early
on.

The benefits of our model is that we do fixed price, not hourly, so if you're
able to work better and faster then your effective hourly goes up. Also, with
us you don't have to interface with the client - you work with a PM who speaks
tech and write code - that's it.

Our clients are both technical and non-technical but it's a lot less relevant
because you'll always be working with that PM layer as a dev, not directly
with the client.

Here's what the higher end of pay looks like as well:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2016/10/24/the-
skill...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/reneemorad/2016/10/24/the-skill-thats-
paving-the-way-for-freelancers-to-make-500k-or-more/#7dda10fa13ae)

Good luck on your search and hope you find a good situation that fits your
needs :).

------
deedubaya
I've gone the side-gig-for-extra-cash route before. It was easy to make the
money, but hard to sustain with a full-time job. It's a recipe for burnout.

If you're a skilled developer, you're much better of demanding a raise,
switching jobs, or switching up your skillset to a higher paying job if your
motivations are strictly cash.

------
vijayr
I don't know if it still works today, but Forbes says there are some people
who make very serious money on fiverr, but they are mostly creative work
though (voice over, writing etc). Not sure if it will work for software dev.
Also the site is quite established now, so there is some stiff competition for
low price.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how-
these-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/05/31/how-
these-3-people-make-6-figures-a-year-on-fiverr/#2f39a7d31df2)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to-
mak...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/04/25/how-to-
make-1-million-on-fiverr-secrets-from-the-sites-top-earner/#25ba992031f8)

~~~
nsxwolf
I signed up for voice over work. I felt kind of silly putting myself out there
like that. There's a sea of voice actors on fiverr so I figured I would never
get a gig. But after about a week someone bought $25 worth! (I charge $5 for
300 words)

It's funny, that little amount felt more like "real money" than my steady
paycheck does.

~~~
vijayr
Have you done voice over before? Also, is it okay to ask if you are a guy or a
gal?

I find fiverr super interesting for coming up with creative ideas. Stumbled on
this one randomly, which made me smile (even though I have no use for it) -
[https://www.fiverr.com/irishguy1/create-a-silent-movie-of-
yo...](https://www.fiverr.com/irishguy1/create-a-silent-movie-of-your-message)

~~~
nsxwolf
Never have. I'm a guy. Midwestern American accent. But if you look at the buy
requests, people are looking for anything but that! Big demand for British
female and different languages and bilingual.

~~~
vijayr
Yeah, that is why I asked. I am surprised you are able to sell male voice
over, without experience. Kudos!

------
namuol
Have you considered asking for a raise? How about switching your full-time job
elsewhere that pays you more?

------
msencenb
The easiest way to make more money, without devoting more time into working,
is to ask for a raise. If that doesn't work, find a job that pays more.

All of these other ideas are good, but are not easy and require time
commitments.

------
tmaly
check out some of the posts on indiehackers.com it lists side projects that
are all cash flow positive to some degree. I use it to gain insight into how
they got started. The IH community is also very cool.

oppsdaily.com is another great resource, it sends out a daily email with
problems people are willing to pay to be solved.

------
rollingpebbles
iPhone and Android apps, freemium or ad-supported

