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Ask HN: I have ~12hrs of free dev time a week. How do I turn that into money?

30 points by ios_developer ↗ HN
I'd like to hear people's opinions or experiences on what I could be doing in my spare dev time to earn money outside of my fulltime work. I'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'd like to be able to makeup somewhat our drop in income.

21 comments

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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.

Trundle
Freelance on the side seems like the obvious answer.
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.
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).
[dead] 946789987649
Which websites do you use to do freelancing? I had a very brief attempt at it, but it seems there's so many other people bidding that the chance of you getting chosen is ridiculously tiny.
qplex
Use dev time to dev something that makes money ;)
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.
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.

mod
Watching a live feed of the astronauts I was sending to Mars.
bbcbasic
That is what the OP's wife is doing. But what should the OP do?
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.
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
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/

Microconf talks 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.

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