HN Explorer

What's the most profitable programming hobby?

37 points by metaphyze ↗ HN
I enjoy Android development, but I've never really made much at as a hobby. I was thinking of starting iOS development or maybe Alexa Skills development. In your opinion, what's the most profitable programming hobby currently? Thanks in advance.

48 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] thread
ketanmaheshwari
May be writing code to analyze financial markets' data and using the results to make profitable investments.
giantg2
I don't know. I feel like that was more a thing 10 years ago. Now all the big players have the ability to use algos, read public sentiment via Twitter, etc. Maybe if someone has a novel strategy that can work (patent and sell it is where the real money is), but for the most part the tecnofinancial arms race has gone to the big players leaving us little guys out gunned.
cosmodisk
I had a small engagement with someone in this area last year. He essentially provides consulting on ML based trading. One man band, $200-300K annually. Not quite sure who the end clients were thought..
giantg2
As a hobby?
cosmodisk
No, that was his full time job, but my reply was more to ' it's been popular 10 years ago,now nobody can do it'.
giantg2
I mean, he's just an AI/ML consultant. Is he also the one coming up the financial logic? At this point it's basically Finance PhDs coming up with the ideas and then the AI consultants are building the system. If he was coming up with the ideas, then $300k is extremely underpaid.
giantg2
I've never made any real money as a hobby. Maybe $50 building a website for someone as a kid. I tried with an android app but decided just to make it free since it wasn't making money.

Excluding the rare possibility of making a top tier app, I feel like it's a more lucrative option to do yardwork. I'm a beekeeper and would guess I can average $500/yr with that.

acconrad
Consulting your programming knowledge out is a very high ROI per hour (more so than coding).

Some people build plugins for ecosystems like Wordpress and that's pretty profitable.

I have a Slack marketplace app that is ramen profitable.

Write code to solve a problem and charge for it is probably the best way to monetize your programming hobby.

metaphyze
Was that an autocorrect error: "ramen profitable"? I like it, but I'm looking for more than ramen money. I'm guessing you meant "really profitable".
fhffbirrrer
I believe ramen profitable means, it generates enough profit for the person to be able to subsist entirely on ramen.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
gremlinsinc
To piggy back on another person...I'd say "ramen profitable"....means maybe something like 2-3k per month recurring income, with maybe 5-10 hours of maintenance required to run the application.
blackarck
hey cool use of ramen profitable !!
hourislate
This may sound crazy but developing a simple professional website for small businesses. Auto Mechanics, small manufacturers, mom and pop shops, etc. If you could do it for lets say $500-$1000 and charge like $20 for small changes, I feel like you could do well for yourself. A lot of these types of operations don't have the skills nor the resources to create an online presence (at least a decent one). An older guy I know who had a small Tool and Die shop was complaining to me that everyone he contacted wanted over $5k and said he just couldn't afford it.
aynyc
I did this back in college. I had a Perl script that takes in a text file (before markdown) and generate a static one page site for local small businesses. I started with $250, depending on complexity. Ongoing maintenance was $25 a year for domain registration/server maintenance/etc, plus extra whatever they want to add. I was making a good profit, but getting customers was my issue. I cold called a lot of shops and even handed out my business cards to other shops.
bhu1st
I do this now with avg. yearly maintenance of $80 per website. It brings in around $800/yr of side income. New clients usually come from referral.
cosmodisk
The doing side is easy- there's endless options from off shelf templates to some generators. The problem is on the other side: if a business in 2021 still have no website, it's either they don't need it( e.g. a good builder) or they are decades behind with everything, including understanding what's the benefit of having a website.
Zababa
Not really, it could be just like the person you replied to said that people are asking for too much. Not everyone can make a website for themselves, even if for us it may seem really easy.
hourislate
There are a lot of auto repair guys (Owner operator types) that don't have a website. They either don't have time, know how, or want to spend 5-10k on a 5-8k page website. Yoou would'nt believe how many don't have a website and still do well. My barber has no website and if you walk in you're waiting 1.5 hours to get a haircut minimum. My Mechanic also doesn't have a website and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind one but the cost is prohibitive $6k plus for a few pages.
cosmodisk
The thing is that just getting a website doesn't really help that much. I have a childhood friend,who managed to carve himself a pretty decent niche in rentals.He has no website, all the stuff is being logged on a piece of paper and the marketing can be summed up as a few Facebook post behind his house. So I could do him a website. But unless there's marketing, resource planning,some approach to existing clients,the business won't move a bit from where it currently is. And that's the problem most of those, who currently don't have a website face
ArtWomb
Besides pump and dump altcoins on PancakeSwap? Flipping websites using online marketplaces. Especially if you can develop a private network of buyers. On iOS for example, I've heard of like basic functionality TikTok clones that took 6 weeks to build going for $500k. Best of luck ;)
kulikalov
Can you tell more? Maybe give some articles
meiraleal
I came to say this. Also programming bots to buy, pump and dump altcoins.
praveentiwari
front end development, imo. Both web and mobile. If you could do things like react or vue, there are tons of high priced work for the skilled.
sevagh
If you want to work on machine learning problems, you can try your luck at winning AICrowd/Kaggle competitions. Some have cash prizes:

https://www.aicrowd.com/ https://www.kaggle.com/competitions

cweill
What do you think the expected return is that good on these competitions? Especially since the number of hours required to do well can be extremely high.
sevagh
It's definitely not guaranteed income (the competition is stiff if you're not on top of your field).

But it's an option.

doanerock
If it is a hoppy then it is not supposed to be profitable.
robotnikman
And if it does turn out to be profitable its a happy surprise.

I just took up drawing as a hobby without any expectations that it would bring me money, and its been much more enjoyable than other hobbies I've had where at the back of my mind I was thinking 'how could I make money off of this'.

qorrect
Seriously! So many of these posts lately, I'm starting to think nobody codes for fun anymore... or at least the new generation.
HeyLaughingBoy
I code for fun all the time; I just like it more when people pay me to have fun.
metaphyze
No, if it's a hobby, it's supposed to be enjoyable. I do enjoy programming. I could enjoy iOS development as much as Android development or server development so why not combine that with making money?
waynesonfire
why would you have an unenjoyable hobby? that's so incompatible that it's not even helpful to think about it that way.

a hobby seizes to be such once it's a business. i suppose for each the distinction between the two can be wide or narrow but it exists.

a business inherently involve transactions and this implies vastly more amount of responsibility.

WheelsAtLarge
Companies are making big bucks making apps for small business but they are relatively expensive. Write one app that is useful for one business type,you need to focus, and reuse the same over and over again using the original as a template. Charge a one time fee and an on going maintenance fee. So MAYBE, 5000 for the app plus 750 yearly fee. You'll need to define what you will do for the 750 otherwise you will end up working forever on one app modification.

You'll need two abilities, being able to write the app and to sell your app services to businesses.

ohyes
750 per what unit of time? 1 year that’s not enough to even get me to answer the phone.
BenjiWiebe
750 per year for doing mostly nothing. That's what the client pays to access the $5k CRUD app you wrote on a weekend and never update.
rufus_foreman
>> You'll need two abilities, being able to write the app and to sell your app services to businesses

They just need one ability, the ability to sell the app services to businesses. Everything else will work itself out.

darthgoon
depending on your skills (obv)... You can try your hand at security bounties.

Sites like https://www.hackerone.com/ is basically companies daring you to break their stuff, for money.

zealsham
Not trying to discourage you but bug bounties are one of the easiest ways to get depressed . Especially when you don’t find any bug and then go on Twitter to see “yay, i was awarded XXXX bounty on hackerone “ . Some take that as a motivation but for most it’s depressing
bernardv
Unless you’re only looking to make pocket change, making serious money with a hobby presumes you’re employer does not have rights over your IP.
Buttons840
Worth keeping in mind. There are various strategies for dealing with this.
Cycl0ps
Make small tools and programs that easily chain together through command line or web APIs. Put those on GitHub or self host and put a little donation link somewhere at the bottom. Anything more complex than free software and donations stops becoming a hobby and starts becoming a business. Code what you want, release whenever, and if you have something worthwhile people will let you know
joshxyz
Anything that involves recurring sales and subscriptions.
blackarck
Ah sounds like you are looking at it other way round !! Enjoy whatever your hobby is , desktop, web, batch , cron job, api make it a beast and if its good it might sell. If you start a new hobby ( ahem !!) for profit its not a hobby.
cweill
Most profitable? Start a YouTube channel teaching people Android dev, and then sell courses.