Hi HN,<p>I work as a full time dev earning an OK salary (In UK terms). I find myself often struggling to buy any luxuries/pay off debt after my paycheck comes in.<p>I have lots of free time which I just spend doing side projects for fun. I need to turn this fun time into money time.<p>As a developer, what are some ways I could turn my time into money? Obviously I could try and sell some side projects, but I love open-sourcing everything I write.<p>Thanks
This is a hard question to answer. For some people, it's easier to A) find a higher-paying job, B) lower their cost of living, or both.<p>Is your lifestyle or your city expensive? Do you actively apply to jobs with better salaries? Have you asked for a raise recently?<p>Passive/side income often results from luck and lots of hard work, despite the stories you see on HN making it look easy.
I used to be in the same situation. Two pieces of advice come to mind from my experience.<p>1) If you have a problem, most likely someone else does too.
2) Although others can replicate what you have built (proves it is a good market fit), many will still prefer to pay something reasonable for it (to save time or simply because they can't build it on their own).<p>Just make a landing page for a handful of "projects" you already built, post on HN/twitter, and see how much traction they get (google will also pick them up if it's a good niche).<p>At that point, you will know if investing time for minimal packaging (payment system, user admin etc) is worth it.
Possibly do an occasional freelancer work? Earn a bit when needed.<p>Also, you can work your way up by offering an additional customization to projects you release as open source.
I have a full-time office job running mostly automated systems that rarely need any intervention, leaving me free time to get another full-time job doing the same job remotely.<p>Technically I am working the two jobs simultaneously which most people would consider a no-no, but the remote job is aware of the local job so that's covered, and the local job really, truly doesn't need full-time attention so as long as the few tasks are covered I don't really see the harm.
What kinds of things do you enjoy building? The best side projects play to your advantages.<p>Definitely try to sell some existing side projects on SideProjectors or Borderline.biz - even a small purchase feels like a success.<p>If you're stuck for possible profitable ideas, I can suggest quite a few depending on your preferred tech stack
indiehackers.com is a good resource for this.<p>Your goals are different from the startups here, in that you're not after investor funding, but instead want to earn a side income.<p>Therefore you won't need to quit your job and spend 100 hour weeks on your side projects, like you might have to with a startup. You can simply build it and grow slowly.