How to Earn Extra/Passive Income as a Techie in 2024

There is a famous saying by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, “Love your job, not your company, because you may not know when your company stops loving you.”

Having income streams other than your regular day job is always better. In this blog, I will explain various ways to earn extra/passive income as a techie.

As passionate techies, we all have one thing in common. We like to learn and experiment with new tools and technologies. All you have to do is just turn this passion into money.

Whenever I meet people, I always tell them to turn their passion into money.

However, they get motivated at that time and lose interest the next day. So, one thing that you need if you want to make extra income is “perseverance.”

There is no overnight success.

You need to work smart and hard to make something happen. Behind every successful person are a lot of sacrifices and hard work. You make your own luck by taking action and working hard.

According to me, there is no such thing as failure. If you succeed, it is a success, and if you fail, it is learning. Taking action pays off in one way or another.

Earn Extra/Passive Income as a Techie

As a techie, I have used the following ways to earn extra income.

Everything I did took some time to yield results, and all the failures taught me a good lesson about doing things right the next time.

Blogging

As a techie, you would have read a lot of blogs written by other people. Have you ever thought of having one for yourself?

Writing blogs is a great way to share knowledge, learn new things, and connect with like-minded people online.

The next question you might have is, can you make a passive income through blogging?

The answer is yes!

There is no limit to how much money you can make through blogging.

There are full-time bloggers who make more than $100,000 per month from blogging. They have worked hard to reach that level.

Apart from money, blogging creates an online identity and can help boost your career.

You can earn money from blogs using the following ways.

1. Google Adsense  – An advertising program from Google based on clicks and impressions.
2. Affiliate Marketing – Earning a commission per sale for a product you refer to your blogs.
3. Direct Advertisements – Companies pay a fixed amount to display their ads on your blogs.
4. Paid Product Reviews – When new products get launched, they might contact relevant bloggers in their niche to review their products. And yes, you can get paid for that.

One thing that you need to keep in mind is that blogging requires consistency.

You cannot create just ten articles and wait for them to generate money. You need to create quality, user-engaging content consistently.

To get started with blogging, you need a domain name and self-hosted WordPress hosting. Although there are many free blogging platforms, it is better to self-host your blogging platform using WordPress, as it is very customizable.

Moreover, we are techies, its always good to start with a little technical work 😉

Authoring An eBook

If you can explain complex concepts in an easy-to-understand way, you should definitely give it a try to write a book.

With platforms like Amazon Kindle publishing, you can easily self-publish your book on Amazon. You can start by writing getting started guides for a technology you work with.

My suggestion would be to always choose the latest programming language guide or a tool guide (mainly open source).

You can start by writing getting started guides for the technology you work with. I suggest always choosing the latest programming language guide or a tool guide (mainly open source).

I co-authored a technical eBook and self-published it on Amazon during the second year of my career. I also promoted the book on relevant LinkedIn groups.

Selling e-books allowed me to make decent money and gave me more confidence to write more books.

Also, you can try publishing platforms like Packt, Leanpub, Apress, etc. You can send them a draft of your writing, and if they like it, you can publish the book on their platform.

Create A Video Course

Creating video courses on platforms like Udemy is a great source of passive income for techies. You can upload your courses for free on Udemy and sell them for an amount you choose.

For every paid subscription to your courses, you will receive a 70% sale amount, and Udemy will take 30% as commission. This is a great deal because your course will be visible to millions of Udemy users.

Also, If your course gets a good user rating, many Udemy partners will promote your courses on their own blogs and websites.

I am in the process of creating a video course on WordPress cloud hosting. I use GoAnimate for explainer videos and Camtasia for screencasting and editing. Both software are awesome for creating good video courses.

Do Freelancing

Being a part-time freelancer is another way of earning some side income. You can search for freelance gigs related to your domain on sites like freelancer.com and upwork.com.

Blogging is another great way to get freelance gigs. Blogs show your authority in your domain. I have got freelance gigs through my blogs.

People see my blog posts and email me to ask if I can do the work for them.

Being active in LinkedIn and Facebook groups is another way of getting freelance gigs. Either share your blog post that solves a problem or interesting and informative articles from other websites.

By doing so, you can network with people in your domain, and people will contact you for part-time freelance gigs.

Also, create your own LinkedIn and Facebook groups. Share interesting content consistently, and eventually, people will join the group.

I started a LinkedIn group with 0 members, which has grown to more than 2,30,000+ members. The same is true for a Facebook group that has grown to more than 8000+ members.

Conclusion

I have explained the proven ways that you could earn some extra/passive income as a techie. I have explained all the ways that I have tried and worked for me.

You can earn a legitimate side income based on your talent in many other ways.

For example, some techies are good artists and photographers. They can sell their pics on sites like Shutterstock. All you have to do is spend 2 hrs a day doing things that you are really interested in.

I have seen people working for more than 12 hours (Myself Included¯\_(ツ)_/¯)  a day for the company even when the company pays them only for 8 hrs.

I am not saying you shouldn’t work hard for your company or your career goals, but work on things that you really like doing.

This will help you even if you lose your job. And you don’t know, sometimes, the side hustles might turn into big business for you.

So, all you have to do is sit back, think, and take action today!

Please drop a comment in the below section to share your thoughts!