13 Best Side Hustles For Programmers

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Hi there, my tech savvy friend! You are looking for side hustles to earn some extra cash, and I have compiled this comprehensive list for you.

I hope this helps, and if you have any side hustle suggestions or ideas that are not mentioned here, please share it with me on the comments section below.

Your simple gesture can help many other people like you supplement their household income.

I am assuming you are a computer programmer (aka software developer or a coder) and this list of side hustles utilises your profession and expertise to earn money. It is not a general list that talks about low income opportunities like mystery shopping, renting your car/house, nor paid surveys.

Let’s get started…

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1. Freelance website developer

Brick and mortar stores and retail outlets are becoming a thing of the past, which is why businesses and entrepreneurs today are trying to establish an online presence as quickly as they can.

However, many of them don’t have an idea of how to design and create websites themselves, and they could use the help of a skilled programmer such as yourself to overcome this hurdle.

You can offer your services to various clients and help build a professional website that connects their business to their target audience, whatever niche they are in.

This side hustle is a good way to make extra money from home and hone your skills while helping other people at the same time.

How to start?

• Visit local businesses within your area and offer your service to them.
• Find clients that are looking to hire freelancers online in sites like Gun.io, Codementor, Codeable, Coding Ninjas, Topcoder, FlexJobs, SimplyHired, Fiverr, TopTal, PeoplePerHour,  and Upwork
• Advertise your services on your social media accounts (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) or blog
• Advertise your services on Craigslist

2. Create and sell WP themes and templates

You can combine your skills in programming and coding with your creativity to create attention-grabbing WP themes and templates during your spare time.

Furthermore, there are clients who are looking for freelancers to create a custom WP theme or template for their eCommerce business.

You can find clients on freelance sites we’ve mentioned above like Codeable, Coding Ninjas, Topcoder, Gun.io, SimplyHired, Fiverr, and Upwork.

So whether you want to make money by exploring your creativity, or hone your skills by helping other people, you have options to pick from.

3. Provide programming consultation services

This is perfect for experienced programmers who wants to help other people but would rather not do all the grunt work themselves.

As a consultant, you can give advice to new programmers on how to tackle their current job projects. You can also offer your services to business firms and clients who don’t have a clear idea of what they want to be done for their business website or blog.

Sites like Codeable charge $59/hour for consultation services for this kind of project.

You can also find similar side hustle opportunities in sites like Codementor, Coding Ninjas, Gun.io, Fiverr, Upwork, and more.

Just Google “programming consultation jobs online” to get more options.

4. Accept programming-related freelance jobs

If you don’t feel like doing any of the first three side hustles we’ve listed so far, then there’s more!

For starters, you can find various jobs and projects that are related to programming and website development in different freelance online sites.

Aside from web development, creating themes and templates, or consultations, there are also a high demand for projects like:

• Web design
• Website feature customization
• Web troubleshooting and maintenance
• Plugin creation and development
• API customization and integration
• Develop anti-malware and anti-viruses programs
• And a long list of various projects that requires a programmer’s skills and expertise

You bet hundreds and even thousands of clients would want to hire you out there.

How to start?

• You can offer your services within your community by approaching business and firms near you and pitching your services
• Find clients online within your area by checking out sites like ZipRecruiter, TaskRabbit, and Craigslist
• Go global and find clients worldwide in general freelance job platforms like SimplyHired, Fiverr, TopTal, PeoplePerHour, FlexJobs, and Upwork, or on tech-inclined platforms like Gun.io, Codementor, Codeable, Coding Ninjas, and Topcoder

Aside from the options above, you can also advertise your services using your social media accounts or by using your blog, which brings us to an exciting side hustle for programmers out there…

5. Start a Blog

This is perhaps our favorite side hustle for a programmer (especially if you like writing) since it is very flexible and can be scaled to become a full-time income source in the future.

In a nutshell, you can use your blog to show your work, teach other people your craft, and address the most common issues your audience has in your industry.

Some in demand topics for a programming blog includes:

• Life of a programmer
• Programming tutorials
• Different apps and software functionalities
• Troubleshooting and solving coding errors
• FAQs and info about the latest technologies and software
• The latest trends in WP themes, plugins, API, templates, etc
• Features and pros and cons of new technologies

Meanwhile, here are some of the advantages of blogging:

• No prior experience needed and even complete beginners can make money with blogging.
• You can work on your blog in your own hours – at nights, weekends, or even during office breaks!
• In terms of flexibility, you can start a blog based on your profession and share topics about programming to your audience, or it can be based on your other skills and passion like fishing, photography, music, etc.

In terms of income potential, there are many effective ways to monetize a blog. You can make money via ad revenues, promoting affiliate products, selling your own products like custom themes, templates, merchandise, what-have-you.

Another good thing about blogging is that it’s also a great way to build your brand and establish a rep within the programming community. Once you’ve become a blogging personality, you might even get big companies paying you to promote them in your blog (sponsorships).

So even if you have a full-time job now, a lot of opportunities might open up for you once you’ve established a good online presence.

And just in case you want your blog to be anything but related to your profession, maybe you need a breath of fresh air, there are plenty of other profitable blogging niches that you can choose from.

Start Your Blog Here

6. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative source of income, and the best thing is, you don’t need to be an expert to find success in it.

We included this in the list because of how promising this side hustle is and how it allowed many people from all walks of life to earn a passive income online – if this is something you’re also hoping to accomplish.

In affiliate marketing, you can make money without:

• Owning a product;
• Prior experience;
• Talking to customers;
• Worrying about the business aspect of things (operational cost, overhead, etc)

You simply influence people to buy products from companies you recommend, and you earn a commission whenever there is a sale.

Simply speaking, you are the sales representative of a company without a title, and the best part is, you don’t even need to do any sales talk.

Everything can be done online, without any face-to-face interaction.

Best Place to Start Affiliate Marketing

We bet you’ll be amazed at how simple how affiliate marketing works in the video below, or you can read a detailed article here.

There are millions of affiliate products that you can choose from and you can promote as many as you want as long as they are related to your blog’s niche.

If this side hustle interests you, we highly suggest you watch this video about the success formula of affiliate marketing:

Best Place to Start Affiliate Marketing

7. Create and Sell Online Courses

There’s an almost never-ending demand for reliable and skilled programmers in the market today, which is why more and more students are flocking into learning this craft.

I know teaching may be a little different from what you do but if you’re up to it, you can take advantage of the market demand above and create a series of online courses based on your programming skills and expertise.

You can then sell them on educational sites like Skillshare, Lynda, Udemy, Thinkific, Teachable, Click4Course, or Brightstorm.

You can also sell your online courses using your blog (start a blog here) or on some affiliate networks that accept digital products.

And you don’t have to worry if you’re uncomfortable speaking in front of a camera. You can teach your course using infographics, PowerPoint presentation or by using screen capturing apps.

The important thing is you can convey information clearly and effectively to your audience.

And, even if there are other online courses about programming, coding, and software development, you can still get a lot of sales.

You just have to make your online courses more comprehensive and much better than your competitors.

8. Self-Publish an eBook

Aside from creating online courses, another good side hustle for skilled programmers is to publish and sell eBooks about various programming topics.

While this may sound a little daunting, self-publishing an eBook has never been easier thanks to sites like Scribd, Barnes & Noble, Kindle Direct Publishing, MindStir Media, Smashwords, Leanpub, and Lulu.

You can create an eBook for topics that you have ample knowledge about, may it be about programming languages or software development.

Online Courses vs. eBooks

The main difference between an eBook to an online course is that eBooks are usually a digital product that you don’t have to revise for years after it is published, whereas an online course is something you have to update regularly.

Online courses are also more interactive and require you to work directly with your students, whereas people who bought your eBook just have to read the product themselves and there is no need for you to interact with them.

On the downside, eBooks are usually sold at much cheaper prices compared to online courses. Nevertheless, many people might find your eBook helpful and you can earn a lot of passive income for years to come.

A wise thing to do before you write your eBook is to get ideas from programming eBooks that are already published out there. Try to find out what are the topics that most people didn’t get enough information about based on the people’s comments.

Then you can write an eBook to address those issues and meet the needs of your audience.

9. Create and sell your own software or app

I know that creating an app or a program takes a lot of time and work, but as a programmer, you probably know what kind of digital products are in demand right now.

So, if you’re one of the programmers who’d spend most of their time practising their skills at home rather than doing other things, then this might be for you. You can even work on this side project during office breaks.

Think of a product that you can create, something people wouldn’t mind paying money for. It can also be a mobile game if that’s within your abilities.

And in the event that you already have worked on some prototype of a mobile app or software, then you should finish that project, whatever it is, and sell it to interested parties.

The creators of the famous angry Bird Jaakko Iisalo and Rovio Entertainment has earned millions of dollars from that simple mini game. It even have two movies created based on it. You can only imagine how much money programmers that developed Microsoft Office or Photoshop made.

If you really want to make more money, you can create a mobile app, software, mini-game, or a SaaS – you’re the boss.

You can then sell your creation to private companies or you can sell them online in sites like GitHub, Google Play, PayLoadz, Avangate, ClickBank, Sellfy, Fiverr, or on your blog.

To get more options, you can search “sell software online” or “sell apps online”

10. Provide tutoring/mentoring services

I’m sure you can attest how frustrating it is to spend hours writing lines after lines of codes only to get an error message when you run the program.

I have my share of frustrations when I took a C++ class in my college days and I cannot tell you how annoyed I am writing #include <iostream.h> over and over again and I even barely passed the subject (lol).

But the thing is, there are probably thousands of students like I was out there, and as an accomplished programmer, you can help them out and make some extra cash.

You can offer your services within your community after office hours and weekends. And if you prefer to teach programming without any physical interaction with your tutee, there are multiple online sites where you can join to tutor.

Furthermore, this is a service that you can offer on your programming blog.

How to start?

• Advertise your services on Craigslist
• Advertise on your social media accounts or on your blog
• Offer your services in sites like Wyzant, Clarity, WizIQ, TutorMe, Evisors, Coach.me, Teachagora, and Udemy
• Google “tutor computer programming + country/region”

11. Become a part-time programming teacher

If teaching is indeed a passion of yours and you have some time to spare, aside from one on one programming tutorials, you can teach more students how to become an accomplished programmer by becoming an adjunct professor in schools near you.

You can teach high schoolers or college students, depending on your time flexibility and availability.

How to start?

• Visit schools and universities near you and offer your services
• Search on Google “part-time programming professor + country/region”

12. Start a YouTube channel

If creating educational videos is more up your alley than writing, then you can start your own YouTube channel about programming.

In your channel, you can discuss various programming topics and provide tutorials for C++, JavaScript, Python, SQL, how to make a video game, website development, coding, etc.

Some of the most successful programming YouTube channels are ProgrammingKnowledge, LearnCode.academy, DevTips, and Derek Banas.

With a YouTube channel, you can make money with affiliate marketing, selling your own merchandise and digital products, sponsorship, and Google AdSense (once you have 1,000+ subscribers).

And if you’re an introvert, you can make YouTube videos that help other people even without talking in front of the camera by using infographics, PowerPoint or screen capturing app. (more side hustles for introverts)

But I have to be honest, a YouTube channel would work well if you have a blog. You must be sick of me repeating this but yeah, starting your own blog can open a lot of opportunities for you.

In this case, you can create YouTube videos based on the contents of your blog to better serve your audience’s needs.

For instance, our blog Income Stream Builders also have a YouTube channel where we provide detailed videos about the topics we discussed in here, mostly about making passive income online.

You could do the same for your blog.

13. Provide computer repairs and services

Programmers may deal a lot with software than the hardware components of computers, but I’m pretty sure you know how to reformat, clean, debug, install some apps and run a general diagnostics on other people’s computer units.

It’s even likely that many of your friends and family members come to you for these kinds of issues. If so, then you can turn this into an extra income source.

You can offer computer repair and services within your community and charge for appropriate fees. There’s plenty of computer and laptop owners out there who doesn’t know how to fix even the most minor issues with their units, and you could help them out.

How to start?

• Post flyers and posters within your community to let people know about your services
• Let your friends, family, and neighbors know about your services
• Advertise on your social media accounts or on your blog

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To sum it up

I hope you got some good side hustle ideas from this list.

And, if you think I’ve missed out on any obvious or interesting side hustles for programmers, please, let me know in the comments below.

This article is written for folks like you, and your opinions or suggestions will definitely help others.

In case you are looking for other types of side hustles that are not related to the programming field, you may want to check this out.

Anyways, thank you for taking the time to read this article. We hope it was useful and you find it worth your time.

Best of luck!

Your friend,

Jack