
Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money? - ios_developer
I&#x27;d like to hear people&#x27;s opinions or experiences on what I could be doing in my spare dev time to earn money outside of my fulltime work. I&#x27;m a senior iOS developer with a well paying 9-5 job, however my wife has decided to leave her full-time job to pursue her career as an artist, and so I&#x27;d like to be able to makeup somewhat our drop in income.
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saluki
The most immediate way would be taking on 12 hrs per week of
freelance/consulting iOS work . . . network and make connections. (Try not to
use upwork/online sites try to network and charge 1.5 to 2x your 9-5 hourly
rate.

(Taking care to work with in the bounds of your 9-5 job/contract, I wouldn't
bring it up with your boss/co-workers but make sure you're not breaking rules
in case it would every come up). Get an EIN number and work as a 1099 contract
dev with clients, LLC if you're bringing in lots of hours over the year.

I'll mention the app store seems like minimal return on investment if any for
most iOS devs so I wouldn't expect to make money off that. If you enjoy it
just want to roll the dice without any expectations more as a hobby but sounds
like you want to bring in revenue.

Beyond that investing 12 hours in building an audience for a product
(ebook/training/info products) might be worthwhile.

Give this podcast a listen . . .
[http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/)

Microconf talks
[https://vimeo.com/user12790628/videos](https://vimeo.com/user12790628/videos)

Building a product or SaaS app times time/is hard but having recurring revenue
down the road is a huge payoff . . .

Congrats to letting your wife pursue her dream.

Good luck.

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meric
If you had all the money you could ever want, what would you be doing?

Then, if you could do that in your 12 hours of free time, you'd have turned 12
hours of your time into all the money you could ever want, and used it to do
whatever it is you want to do.

~~~
bbcbasic
That is what the OP's wife is doing. But what should the OP do?

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keithblaha
12 hours/week doesn't sound like enough time to make any money via appstore to
me, as some are suggesting. It's just enough time to freelance a bit though!
You can find part time freelance work without an established network pretty
easily actually. I've done this successfully for web dev work several times:

1) search angellist jobs section for companies looking to hire their first iOS
dev, or to have an MVP of their app made 2) contact all of them (this is a
numbers game) by pitching yourself and how you have the exact skill set they
need, include a portfolio, and mention your terms up front (hours per
week/desired rate/no I don't work for sweat equity)

Even people looking to hire full timers are probably desperate enough to
consider taking on a part timer, even as a temporary stop gap.

I prefer angellist jobs section to traditional freelance sites because you can
avoid race to bottom bidding and avoid much of the competition. There are a
lot of open minded people looking for high quality workers out there and are
thus willing to pay a better hourly rate, but they avoid most freelancing
sites and focus on full time because they don't think there is an alternative-
be that alternative to them

~~~
emmasz
Could you detail the hourly rate you can have there as senior/junior dev? Do
you happen to know the rates for php programmers?

~~~
keithblaha
It depends... if you are picky and can sell yourself well, 80+/hour as a
senior. Unsure of junior rates but maybe 50+. PHP may be less in demand on
angellist in particular though as compared to JavaScript/Ruby

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fryiee
Probably freelancing via something like Upwork. I work an additional 15 hours
a week on top of my current job, and the pay seems quite competitive (I mainly
take Laravel jobs). The service seems way less 'Wild West' than Freelancer
does (which I've had bad experiences with in the past).

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SyneRyder
From experience, I'd opt for freelancing / consulting over "make an app" or
"contribute to open source".

Making an app is great when it works, but it's not guaranteed to earn
anything. It can take a while to find the right product. Even then, you're
better off having a diversified portfolio of products, it's unlikely that one
product alone will replace a full-time income, and they'll have individual
dips & peaks in sales / subscriptions (several products helps make your income
more steady).

Contributing to open source _guarantees_ you won't earn anything upfront.
Freelancing / consulting is far more immediate income, you either have a
paying client or you don't. It's possible that some of your prospective
clients won't even know what open source is, let alone be able to judge the
quality of your code.

Of course, there are lots of ways to earn income that don't involve code.
Getting casual work at Starbucks is an option. Being a day trader on stock
markets might be another. Not everything has to be solved with code.

~~~
montbonnot
You can certainly fail on the App store if you think like you do. Nothing is
easy in life, people who succeed are people who start with a positive attitude
and transform a failure into a learning experience. Anyone can make it on the
app store with hard work and dedication. The more you fail the better you get.
The 5th, 6th app might work out. Not the first ones for sure...

~~~
SyneRyder
Been there done that for the last 15 years, it's one of the ways I make my
living :) I love product businesses, they're a great source of semi-passive
income. The lifestyle of choosing your hours & where you work is bliss.

But the OP asked specifically about earning money to replace a full time
income, and consulting is a faster route to money. Product businesses take
time to build an audience (you do have an email list of prospective customers,
right?) and you're looking for thousands of customers. Whereas with
consulting, you only need to find a handful of clients. Charge your client
$100/hour (really you should charge more, or charge weekly) and you'll be so
far ahead of most App developers. Which is easy, since most apps earn no money
and many get no traction at all.

You could always try both. Split half your time into consulting, the other
half into doing an app. See which works better and gets more traction.
Hopefully the consulting half becomes unnecessary as the apps take off and
become a hit.

~~~
montbonnot
I agree with $100/hour for consulting, it's "easy" money. It depends on how
you deal with micro-management. If you work as a consultant you'd be treated
as an expensive external resource by your clients. Which is usually not the
best place to be. On the other hand you have your corporate main job where
your manager owns your life, which sucks. So he might end up going nuts. It
all depends on how you deal with structures and bosses. If money is the main
focus then yeah, Starbucks, consulting, any factory or freelancing is the
right path for him. If he wants to use these 12h/week to learn something
valuable and give himself the opportunity to not have to think about money
anymore, then he should invest a couple of month in learning how to build an
entire product from scratch, marketing, how to interact with his users, UX,
business strategies, priorities, you know what I mean if you've done it
already. He might not make money at all but he will acquire a lot of valuable
knowledge. Knowledge = long term investment. It's like stock versus real
estate.

~~~
SyneRyder
That's a good point. If you've already got a full-time job with a boss, adding
a micro-managing client on top is a fast road to burnout & reduced quality of
life. And the best way to learn how to build a product & market it & deal with
support is to jump in and give it a try.

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ferrari8608
Kind of the obvious suggestion here, since you're a mobile developer, make an
awesome app. I know, it's not that simple. I'm not a mobile developer, so I
honestly don't know how not simple it is. Just a thought though.

As a senior developer, you could try consulting on the side. Do you network?
If you're good at what you do, there's probably someone you know or someone
you know who knows someone who might be able to use your expertise. It never
hurts to ask around.

That's all I can think of. They're probably not new ideas for you though. Hey,
you can always contribute to open source software. It won't make you any
money, but you might get your name out there and help a cool project out in
the process. You might even learn some new things to put to good use in your
career.

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montbonnot
app store... write your own app, submit it, do some marketing by putting up a
website (wordpress template = 10 min kick ass website), run some FB/youtube
marketing for like $100 and you're set. If you end up having a great idea
it'll pay off and you could make 10 times what you're making as a slave.. I
mean, as an employee. It's like 1-2 month of development and the rest is
passive income. You'll have 12h of free time looking at when you could quite
your 9 to 5 to go full time on the app store. If you don't make a dollar with
your app you'll get to learn all the process from A to Z which is gold. So
you'll never lose your time.

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danieltillett
I hope it is just loose language, but it should be both of you who decided to
support your wife's dream to be an artist. I can't imagine making such a
decision on my own and expecting my wife to work extra to make up for our loss
of income.

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vygandas3
I'd like to team with you to make something viable! What are the fields of
interest you are searching to put your valuable time into?

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tmaly
Build an authority site on something you are passionate about.

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Trundle
Freelance on the side seems like the obvious answer.

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qplex
Use dev time to dev something that makes money ;)

