Ask HN: What are some easy ways to earn some side money?

Beekeeping can offer a relaxing, nature-oriented antidote to the stresses of coding, and moreover, there is a burgeoning market for smart apiary technology. Bee mortality rates have increased over recent years for numerous reasons, and technology is beginning to find ways to address these problems.

As a developer, you could design systems to monitor hive health, honey production levels or even bee activity. This data can be used to predict illnesses, optimize honey production, or understand more about bee behavior, providing valuable insights to the beekeeping community as well as researchers.

This unique combination of software development and beekeeping could potentially be a lucrative side gig. Not to mention, a proportion of the honey could be sold for additional profit or used for personal consumption.

So, while it may seem far fetched, your coding skills could help save the global bee population while offering a calming, profitable new hobby.

(:

However, you know how to hold a job. You've had one for 11+ years. So, just get a second one. You could be making double your current salary within as little as 4-6 weeks after interviews etc. That's likely the fastest path if you need money quickly.

People who advocate "hustle culture" tend to not have very lucrative main jobs, or no upward mobility in their current role. So they look for weird "hacks" to make a few bucks on the side, like drop-shipping garbage or starting some weird self-help YouTube channel. In the world of engineering, I think it's way more useful to focus on your core skillset and learn new things around that.

That said, boringcashcow.com has inspired me to try to come up with a simple programming project that could turn over 4 figures a month. It made me realize in software you can just go for base hits, not home runs, and still make plenty of money.

Take hourly projects instead of fixed price.

My first company (Skritter.com) fits this mold. It's been growing slowly, but steadily for more than 15 years now. In the first couple of years we were able to generate low five-figures per month, now it's substantially higher.

There are other ways to earn cash outside of tech, but most of the common suggestions (drop shipping, affiliate marketing, laundromats, etc) are mostly terrible if you really do the analysis.

For better or worse, low risk generally means low upside!

[1] https://github.com/malgamves/CommunityWriterPrograms

1. Are you doing everything you can to put yourself on an upwards trajectory towards a promotion and/or a raise? You spend most of your waking hours on your current job, and the easiest way to increase your life time earnings is bending the curve here.

2. Have you been interviewing to make sure you're getting fair market value and have? If you are not growing as well as you're capable of in your current role, a new role is a potential option. This introduces risk.

3. Have you taking a knife to your expense list and maxed out 401k and HSA contributions? Every dollar you don't contribute there is one that you're giving away to the government, so make sure you're using all the tools available to optimize.

4. Have you begun to invest in real estate? In the USA, the existence of federally backed homebuyer loans and 1031 swaps is an incredible tool to build wealth, and the leverage from the loan is even partially tax deductible on the interest side. You of course need to be careful here given the choppy state of the macro environment and real estate market so that you don't end up underwater.

5. Are you investing surplus earnings into a safe ETF? Ensuring that your earnings are working for you making passive income from the market is critical for long term earnings.

None of these approaches are quick fixes, but they're all time tested approaches than anyone can use.

So, I looked at all the certifications available and plotted a path through them that gets me the minimum amount of points required to reach the highest bonus tier each fiscal year. It's been, by _far_, the most lucrative "side hustle" i've ever had. I study for, and take, about 4-5 cert tests per year and am on year #2 of the program. If they run the program for 5 years and I keep dropping the whole bonus into my investment account I'll have enough to pay for college for both of my boys (currently in middle school).

/I'm 47 and still paying my student loan, i don't want that hell for my kids.

Seek out local folks who wants to go online selling their tupperware, tobaco, small services, books, photos, small mom-n-pop coffee/fastfood shops etc and offer to build them a site they can maintain.

Then buy them a subscription on no-code sites(wix, weebly, squarespace etc) and get a commission for the initial setup. Worked for my nephew who just wanted something he could do on the nights to save up some money for his summer vacation. He still gets referral offers from folks who are happy with their sites and their friends also want similar sites.

Wait tables. A lot of service based businesses are struggling to find good staff. Go for a higher end high average ticket place, and or places that close relatively early so you're not stuck there too late.

Usually at first there's not a lot of quality shifts open but also, frequently, you can pick up shifts from other people and a lot of restaurants are okay with having a few staff who have few regular shifts but whom they can rely on in a pinch. You can make decent cash. The work can be pretty "fun" and the time tends to go pretty quick.

The issue for me is that, since I’m not in the development world, I don’t have any mentors or people to talk to and bounce ideas off of. I’ve been looking into getting an internship at a software company but those are rare for evening time remote work since that’s all I would be able to lend my self to because of my full time job.

I think I’m heading the right way but there’s just hurdles that need to be jumped over.

All that to say, try a different field than software development? A reverse of what I’m doing?