How To Make Money Coding

Know how to code? Familiar with coding languages such as C++, Python, Java, HTML, NET, and PHP?

If you’re a programming geek, coding is a valuable skill that could make you a lot of money. Especially now that we are living in a technological world, there are tons of ways to apply your programming skills.

Although learning how to code takes time and effort, it can come in handy in many ways. Combining your creativity with knowledge in various coding languages and programs enables you to offer your skills in different platforms. The more flexible you are, the better.

In this article, you’ll learn realistic ways on how you can earn money with coding.

We have listed several tips below. 

How to Make Money Coding

1. Freelancing

The most well-grounded way for you to start making money while coding is by doing freelance work. With freelancing, you get to enjoy flexible work schedules and work set-ups even in the comfort of your home. 

The most common coding jobs that you can apply for in these platforms are: 

• Front-end web developer (HTML, CSS, JavaScript)
• Back-end web developer. (Python, PHP, Ruby, SQL)
• Mobile Application Development (Objective-C, Swift languages, Java)

You can grow your career as a freelancer by getting hired on short-term or long-term projects in freelancing platforms. Make sure that your skill is at least on the level that your client needs in the job. Remember, never lie about your level of expertise and do not mislead potential clients. It will only cause inconvenience both to you and them.

You can set up a profile on freelancing platforms and start applying for jobs and bidding for projects. Here are some of the best freelancing platforms: 

• Upwork
• Freelancer
• Fiverr

Also, nowadays, you can find job opportunities on various job boards and social media platforms. There is always an individual or a company in need of your coding skills.

Sounds like a good deal, right? However, it’s easier said than done. As more companies are shifting to remote working and as freelancing is getting more and more recognition, the competition also increases. 

This is why you have to build your profile and gain an excellent reputation for potential clients to see.

To grow your profile, you must earn good ratings from your client base. That’s why it’s always important to ask for feedback and recommendations from your clients after a successful project. This can help you establish your name and portfolio, which can eventually lead to a raise in income. 

2. Blogging or Starting a Personal Website

As a programmer, you can use your skills to start a blog in the programming niche. You can share coding and programming-related content for your website visitors. Eventually, you can even put up online consultations and charge your rates.

You can use your skills to design a website that is appealing to people. Having a personal website is also a way of branding yourself. You can also strengthen your portfolio using the content that you post on your blog.

There are many ways to generate income by blogging or starting your website. Here are some ways to monetize your website:

• Offer your coding services
• Charge for premium content
• Affiliate links
• Put up sponsored ads
• Google Adsense

Make sure to use your SEO optimization skills to establish stable traffic to your site. You can do this by writing SEO-friendly content with relevant keywords. Knowing your way around this can help rank up your page in search engine results.

As much as you can, try to be as interactive to your website visitors as possible. Being accessible to your audience by replying to comments can help build trust, which can gradually turn to income generation. Once you have established your brand, it will be the clients who will reach out to you for help.

3. Develop Apps and Games

For app and game development, you will specifically need to be familiar with Objective-C or Swift to create basic iOS apps.  You don’t need to be highly-skilled in coding to do this since you can finish an app in a matter of hours. All you need are your creativity and resourcefulness.

If you have a marketable app idea, you can make money by developing and launching it on the App store. If it sells to the market, it is very easy now to make money out of it. You can also use online platforms that allow you to sell your games online, such as Fupa and FGL portal. 

Developing apps have a lot of potentials to make a lot of money using your coding skills. But you need to have a good idea that will capture a market and an audience. 

Another downside with this is that most apps don’t last long—it only takes time for hypes to die down. The best example of this is the short-lived Flappy Bird hype. But take note, they still earned a lot of money in that short amount of time.

But generally, unless you have a highly-useful and long-lasting idea, only then can you generate a stable income from this.

4. Make A Plugin or Theme for WordPress

Did you know that you can earn money on WordPress? WordPress powers a vast number of webpages because a lot of website owners don’t know much about coding. 

WordPress is a free platform and an easy solution for this. But at the same time, they have to tweak some standard configurations to make their site unique. 

That means there is a high demand for plugins and themes that can improve these webpages. If you have the skills, building useful WordPress plugins and themes can be a great way to make money. 

Once you’ve built themes for a website, you can sell it publicly to millions of users in platforms such as Themeforest. 

To monetize your plugins, you can either make it available for free and earn through ads or donations. The other option is to create a free version and add an option to pay for extra features. The latter will help pique users’ interest more. 

5. Work for Small Businesses

A lot of small business owners don’t have the budget to hire web or app developers. And generally, they only need basic apps and websites to run their business. Offering your skills to them is a great way to start and gain experience. 

As long as you have the essential skills that can meet their needs, then you’re good to go. But before knocking on someone’s door, build a simple portfolio first showing your skills and what you can offer. Prepare a website or design that you made prior so that you can provide value upfront.

It will not make you lots of money in an instant, but it’s great for a first job. Who knows, you may even get follow-through projects from your first job. You can also build a network of clients through referrals and recommendations from your previous clients.

6. Run Tutorials or Online Courses

If you learned how to code online, chances are more aspiring coders like you also want to learn. As more and more people are getting interested in learning how to code, how can you use this to your advantage? 

Nowadays, we can learn so much from watching free tutorials we find online. And even you can quickly start making tutorials online too.

You can work on some easy-to-follow tutorials while recording your screen and putting a voiceover. You can post it on your website, or you can create a tutorial series on YouTube. 

Just make sure that you are posting good quality content so that people will bookmark you for more future tutorials. It can also be helpful to learn SEO, web design, and marketing to be more well-rounded with your audience. You can also even put out content related to these topics. 

Once you’ve built a stable customer base, you can start selling your courses on learning management systems like Udemy, Coursera, or CodeAcademy. Or, there also online coding tutoring platforms that pay you to teach coding like Bootcamp.

If you learn how to utilize these platforms well, this option can be very profitable.

7. Sell Coding-Related Products

This is ideal if you have already established a strong following and audience base from your website or social media platforms. Once you’ve enough traffic, you can build your list and sell information products. This can physical or digital products on your expertise (coding, software development, programming).

One good example of a profitable product is eBooks. You can write an eBook about coding tips and tricks and publish it. After that, you can sell it through various platforms, such as your social media, personal website, or on Amazon. Moreover, you can take advantage of free publishing platforms like Kindle Publishing and then sell it directly on Amazon’s Kindle Store.

Some examples of products in digital form that you can sell are:

• eBooks
• Webinars
• Infographics
• Video courses

Some examples of physical products are:

• DVDs
• Books
• Self-study courses

You’re not just limited to digital and information products. You can also sell: 

• Affiliate products (for commission)
• Your own software, apps, plugins, etc
• Tangible products that are relevant to coding like laptops, etc

Put links in your seller profiles and in the pages of your eBook that goes back to your website. Email marketing is one of the most powerful and effective forms of marketing. If you can collect the names and emails of your audience, you can create a list of potential customers. Make sure to engage with your audience by sending emails that will strike their curiosity from time-to-time.

If you do this right, this is one of the most profitable options to make money with coding. You don’t even have to be an expert to do this; you only need to know slightly more than other people. 

Similar to creating tutorials, you will most probably cater to a majority of coding beginner audience selling these products. Just be genuine in the content that you put out, and make sure that people will get something valuable out of it.

8. Create A YouTube Channel or Start a Podcast

There are a lot of opportunities to earn money on YouTube. It is undoubtedly one of the most thriving and visited online platform right now. 

The formula for YouTube success is—the more subscribers, the more views and the more opportunity to earn.

If you upload content regularly, you will attract more subscribers and prospects for putting up ads. As mentioned earlier, you can post your coding tutorials on your YouTube channel. But here, you can create any content related to coding and not just tutorials. 

You can find a partner program that will allow you to earn an income percentage. In addition, you can earn through the ads that run alongside your videos. You can also promote your products and affiliate products on your videos. Include links on the description box for easy access to your viewers.

You’ll also need to learn Youtube SEO to rank your videos. Applying this technique allows you to grow your channel faster.

Moreover, in the past years, podcasting has consistently grown in popularity. There are specific platforms where you can upload your podcast shows, such as Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Google Podcast. 

You can deliver coding content to your audience via recording yourself speaking or by interviewing experts. Some people also post videos of their podcast episodes on their YouTube channels.

9. Join Coding Competitions

Finally, if you’re up for some competition, coding contests can be a great way to make money with your skills. You’ll compete in single-round tournaments to handle-real life problems and show your skills and creativity.

The areas of coding competitions are development, data science, and design. No matter what your field or area of expertise is, you will gain valuable experiences from joining a coding competition.

Most contests offer incentives and cash prizes to winners who participate.

Some of the most popular coding contests you can join are:

• Topcoder
• CodeChef
• HTML5Contest
• CallingAllInnovators

The most popular is Topcoder, with over 1 million members. 

Even if you don’t end up winning, it still gives you an invaluable learning process that will help you in many ways. Moreover, you can also build a network with other participants who solved the same problem with their own codes. And if you come out as one of the finalists, it gives you an opportunity to reach out to big companies.

You will not lose anything from joining coding contests, so just try and try!

Get Going

There are numerous methods to make money using your coding skills. You can create a full-time income in these ways, depending on your goals and abilities. 

Just like any other job, you have to exert effort and patience to make it work for you. When it comes to coding, learning never stops. You have to continually improve yourself to catch up with the latest technological innovations and updates.

We hope that this article helped you decide which method is best for you to make money coding. Good luck!