In this piece, I am going to be sharing five ways that you can make money as a developer without a job. Now, this is important because I know a lot of developers out there are not able to get a job right now. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to use your programming ability to make money on the side. The five methods I am going to address are the same ones I have tried before. You can try these different ways alongside your day job. Sometimes they may end up making you more money than your actual job.

1. Freelancing

Freelancing is such a great opportunity to take whatever skill set that you have and be able to get paid to use those skills. It does not matter what you are good at. If you are good at one specific thing, there is probably someone willing to pay for it. When I first decided to go the freelancing route, I opened different accounts from different platforms. I thought that the more account I have, the better my chance of getting projects will increase. So, I applied to Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer, Toptal engineering, PPH, guru, you name it.

I was not successful for a while until I got a client from Upwork from which all my other clients came. I came to notice that it does not matter how good you are to freelance. You do not have to be a pro at the different web development stacks or even at mobile development. All you have to do is to learn how better market yourself.

If you are beginning and have low rates, you might even get more clients because people want the lower price for what you can do. I am not asking you to sell yourself short. Do not be afraid to start small. You can build a website for $20k for a company, or you can make a little program for $20. It does not matter what skill you have. As long as you can market that skill correctly, you will be able to get clients and be able to make money. With online platforms like Upwork, you need to gauge yourself and your prices so that you will be able to land clients.

2. Tutoring

Tutoring is popular for most developers. Some may choose to do this through instructional videos on YouTube or creating courses online for websites like Udemy, Udacity and Skillshare. If you are a developer who enjoys interacting with people, you may do well in personal or online tutoring. The best part about this is that you can charge different rates depending on the clients. If you are a teenager in school, you can start offering classes to your classmates. Age is not a limiting factor.

#entrepreneurship #web-development #freelancing #software-development #programming