Ways to make money from Tech: with Real-life examples!
Go from hard work to wealth struck!
Table of contents
Introduction
Are you looking to make money in the tech industry? With the rapid growth of technology, there are various opportunities to turn your passion for tech into a lucrative career. So whether you are into software development, design or any other tech-related field I’ve got you covered.
Without further Ado, let’s get into it!
Methods of money making
Jobs: This is the number one way of making money in tech, and there are various job options that you can choose to explore in the jobs category. It primarily involves working for an organization towards a common goal. For example: Software developers work hand-in-hand with UI/UX designers to ensure proper implementation of a project that is being built to move the business forward. Jobs can be categorized based on two criteria, Location-based and time-based.
Location-based Jobs
On-site: This is telling you that the job is one that you have to be at an office location of the particular company.
Remote: These are jobs that you can do from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection and you’re able to deliver on projects within specified timelines.
Time-based Jobs
Full-time: These are jobs that you have to spend a minimum of 7 hours doing daily. Depending on the organization you choose to work for, Saturdays and Sundays are usually considered off-days.
Part-time: These are jobs with flexible working schedules. They typically take less time than a full-time job in that the number of hours per day might be less, or workdays can be 2 to 3 times a week.
Project-based / Contract jobs: These are jobs that hire you for a specific period or until the completion of a specific project. The T&Cs, scope of work, duration and compensation (payment) are outlined in a contract between you and the other party (individual or organization). And it doesn’t offer job security beyond the specified period.
So how do we get these jobs? A very good way to go about it is through your basic Google search. When you just search for the type of job you’re looking for on Google. For instance: “Entry level developer jobs”. The search results display top job companies like Indeed, LinkedIn (which is also a good way to build your social media reputation), Glassdoor and many others. All you have to do at this point is to explore your options properly and select the one that fits you best.
Internships: Another good way is to seek out paid internships, depending on the area to live, these may be hard to find. But for a start, you can try out Y-Combinator companies. Just search on LinkedIn or Twitter for the word “YC” and a good number of results would come out then you can just check if they are doing internships and around what time. Y-Combinator (YC) is a startup accelerator that provides funding and resources to early-stage companies and they helped in the launch of successful startups such as Paystack, Airbnb and Reddit. So you can be sure that YC companies are trustworthy. But if you just want the experience and you don’t mind financing yourself SideHustle is a good way to go.
Other ways to find paid internships include Internshala, Let’s Intern, and Indeed. Once you can pass their interview rounds you get an acceptance letter from the company mentioning how much stipend you’re going to get for your period of stay (Usually between 3 to 6 months).
Freelance: This is a very popular way to make money in tech. The word “Freelance” simply means to offer your skills in exchange for your skill’s worth in money. There are many popular websites to do this such as Fiverr, Upwork, Peopleperhour and so on. And these platforms have ranks that you can rise through as you offer your services and ensure you deliver properly on clients’ projects. And as you do, you simply get more clients. Some people have managed to scale their freelancing from personal to agency level as the workload increased due to their rise through the ranking system of their freelancing platform of choice.
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is a very interesting way of monetizing your technical knowledge as it allows you to become a DaVinci of sorts, a modern-day inventor if you will. Consider the example of saviomartin, he has always been a person to participates in open source by building amazing tools both by himself and in collaboration with other developers thereby growing his network and Twitter following to over 50k followers at the time of writing this article.
Now, there has been a global surge in the use of AI. He noticed this and transitioned from building just regular tools to AI tools to make life easier. He did make life easier for designers and developers alike by building a tool called IconifyAI which enables users to generate extremely unique yet very beautiful icons for their apps resulting in inexpensive icon design. With proper marketing of his SaaS product, here is what he has to say:
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So if this is something you’re interested in, whether you are a dev, designer or entrepreneur, feel free to give it a go.
Hackathons: Hackathons are simply events where people come together to build, design or prototype innovative solutions within a specified timeframe often ranging from a few hours to a few days. The event can either happen in a particular place, might be remote, or hybrid and there is usually a grand prize to be won by the people who build the most innovative solution or product.
Usually, the first, second and third teams are recognized but there are also certain sidequests with monetary rewards and other benefits; like building products using the APIs of their sponsors. Building things like these encourages collaboration and creativity while enhancing connections across the tech industry. A good example of a hackathon is the GenZtechies hackathon.
Competitions: Another way to earn money is through competitions like Google Summer of Code where you can apply and if you are selected, you get to solve real-life coding challenges with experienced developers and mentors. You can also seek out paid design competitions if you’re a designer (such as Microsoft Design Challenge). However, it is not as sustainable as having a job but you get to improve and learn. It is also another valuable experience you can add to your CV. To practice for coding competitions you can use sites like Codewars, leetCode & AlgoExpert. When seeking out competitions make sure they are those related to your stack!
Social Media Influencing: This is a very powerful way of making money in the tech industry and the key is to provide real value. While social media is a great way of showing off your work for potential employers to see, what counts in the long run is the value that you provide for followers.
Take for example David Herbert he had a rough past but on discovering tech due to his need to buy games during the lockdown, he stuck to it and practiced consistently sharing his work on Twitter/X which included a Twitter clone and other clones of popular websites that he built from scratch which was largely accepted by tech Twitter community and he made good use of his new found popularity by offering continuous value on Twitter & LinkedIn showing people how to make money in tech through technical writing, keywords to use in search engines for job search and so many other posts and currently his Twitter followers is over 51k from a shocking 2K at the start of this year. Here is a collection of his helpful threads.
Social media influencing also opens a wide range of earning potential. such as:
Content creation: Your content like technical writing & YouTube videos can be promoted better
Advertising for brands and people.
Promotion of SaaS products and Courses.
Community Building: such as the design community (DesignWithRooks) that Rukayat is building.
Conclusion
With all those ways to make money in tech, what else are you waiting for? Give one of them a try. But if you are a beginner or you don’t feel that your skills are at the level where you need them to be, that’s perfectly fine, Invest your time into getting good, knowing that the time spent would be worth it.
References
Cover photo by Roberto Nickson on Pexels