Making Passive Income as a Developer

As a fullstack developer, you can build just about anything you want. Perhaps you’ve got caught up in the idea that you need to work for some company as a developer. It’s absolutely not the case. In fact, you should be trying to create real projects regardless, whether you’re applying to jobs or trying to generate your own income. If you generate your own income, congrats, you’ve made it. If not, you have a real-world project that you’re able to show to potential employers.

So, how can you make passive income with your skills? Read on to find out.

Writing ebooks

You’ve spent countless hours studying and learning about specific topics. Why not put it to use and create some ebooks? It’s a bit easier said than done, but we’re sure anyone can do it with some proper planning. There are, of course, already so many books available. What can you possibly add to the list?

Well, take what you know, and ask yourself what you can do with it. Create an ebook based on this. For example, you might be really good at designing websites with CSS. So, create an ebook with titles such as: 5 Beautiful Designs with CSS, Mastering CSS: 100 days to better designs, etc. You can add something beneficial to someone’s life. Perhaps what you write about will be exactly what they need.

There is one major difficulty which comes to actually earning money with your ebooks. Sales. Where are you going to sell your ebook? How are you going to market it? This is really for you to figure out, but here are some ideas:

• Facebook groups/pages
• Amazon
• Gumroad

If you only make $50 per month, it’s still $50 per month ($600 per year) you didn’t have. Write it once and you’re done. It’s an extra revenue stream.

Creating courses

As per the above, applying your knowledge to courses can be a good way to earn extra income. What comes to your mind when you hear “courses”? I bet you’re thinking about Udemy video courses. That’s great, but it’s not entirely necessary. While you can deliver your course(s) via video (if you’re up for it), you can also deliver courses via text.

A good example of offering a text-based course would be through email. Collect emails. Send your course 1 lesson per day. A great example of this is Highbrow.

Let’s also consider the fact that you can essentially make courses as ebooks. It’s indeed basically the same thing. However, if you want to go the video route, then all the power to you. It would be superb if you managed to get your courses published on Udemy, and perhaps gained a following on YouTube.

Creating Templates

This is where we sell our skills rather than our knowledge, by creating themes/templates. The idea here is to write some code once, and sell it again and again. It can be a frontend, static page, or a fullstack web application.

There are quite a few marketplaces where you can sell these templates/themes, such as ThemeForest. However, you may also keep them and reuse them for client projects, although this isn’t passive income.

Creating Niche Websites

Do you have a particular interest in something? Create a website for it. It could be a blog, a forum, or an information website.

Let’s say you have an interest in chess. Create a blog, and start writing articles every day about different topics of chess. It could be chess drama, advice on improving in chess, your book recommendations, a list of movies that must be watched, etc. Just start writing.

Once you’ve written a few articles, you can focus on the growth of your traffic.

However, as a developer, you can create anything you want. Maybe a social media website which connects founders (Founders List), or a website to connect developers to startup jobs (Angel List Talent). The list is truly endless, but if you can think it, you can build it.