There are a ton of side income opportunities in the world today.
Especially as web developers, because we have plenty of opportunities to grow an extra income on the side with our unique skillset.
Sure, you may be on the learning journey to work at a top tech company, and that's definitely an awesome path, but it's not the only path. You will be missing out on a chance for a diverse, recurring income stream if you don't at stop to consider how else you can apply your hot skillset. (Or at the very least, get paid while you learn to code).
The thing is, I don't blame you for not stopping and considering the alternative.
As soon as you start your journey in the world of web development, you're inundated with stories of success and how to achieve the same result.
The stories themselves are great because they can serve as a form of inspiration to motivate you when things are tough. They also show you the possibilities of what your skillset can achieve job-wise and even provide you the roadmaps for doing so like so:
Become a Fullstack Web Developer
13 milestones 9 courses
Step-by-step roadmap where you'll learn to code and build a portfolio.
Curated curriculum of courses, workshops, challenges, projects, and action items.
Become a Fullstack Web Developer from scratch and actually get hired.
Earn on average per year:
$115,887
US salary data collected from Indeed, LinkedIn, and Web3.career 2026.
Often though, and where developers get caught up, is that they are so focused on this end-goal of "working an 8 - 5 job at a top tech company" that they miss out on a span of great money-making opportunities that their skillset (even at an early stage) makes available to them.
In some cases, these "alternative" side-income methods can grow to become sources of full time income and, what's more, many of them allow you to be your own boss and that is a fantastic situation to be in.
There's also no reason you can't be working at a top tech company and have side income as well.
In this article, we're going to look at 6 different ways in which you can leverage your web development skillset to earn an extra income on the side.
Side income idea #1. Start a Web Development Blog
As web developers, we are encouraged to learn in public, and there is no better way to do this than to write about your process in a way that can provide some value to others.
Benefits of starting a blog
By writing technical posts, you are forcing yourself to be honest about what you know and don't know. This confrontation with your knowledge-shortcomings is an eye-opening method of relearning a topic you thought you already knew well.
In other words, writing a technical post allows you to improve your mental model about a particular topic to the point where you can put it down in words in a cohesive way.
The result is a piece of writing that not only helps someone else understand a tricky process or way of thinking, but also serves as a very well-rehearsed study note that you can return to later.
It's important to realize that developers are all on a learning journey but each one comes with a different learning background. What this means is that your post on "How to use CSS Overflow" can be hugely beneficial to many people starting with CSS, but irrelevant to others who have been writing CSS for years.
And thanks totally ok!
Remember, not everyone is at the stage you are which means there is someone who will benefit from your writing.
You can also look at trending new topics.
For example
Learning how to use AI tools alongside coding is a HUGE topic right now, and this could be something you could easily write how to guides on, rank, and attract an audience.
Monetizing your blog
Alright, so we've covered why starting a blog if beneficial for your own learning but you're here to learn how you can make a side-income.
Start off by drive traffic to it
Repeat the process of writing relevant and helpful posts in the world of web development consistently and you will start attracting readers who enjoy what you write and gain a tangible benefit from it.
Once you have traffic, there is a wide variety of ways you can start generating revenue from your blog.
Generally speaking 👉 *More posts = more traffic = more money.*
Once you've started creating quality posts, there are many ways you can drive more traffic for *free*.
Here are two ways:
It might sound counter-intuitive but post your same blog posts on sites that already have a massive developer audience (assuming that's who your posts are targeting). Places that you likely already read as well (ex: Medium, Hackernoon, Dev.to, etc). This is a great way to drive traffic for free, especially if you're just getting started
Answer other people's questions on places Reddit, Quora, Stack Overflow and participate in discussions in places like Facebook groups, Twitter threads and other online communities
Note: This doesn't mean you should spam links to your blog posts in these places. Don't do that. Provide a useful answer and if you happen to have a post that goes deeper into a topic, then consider adding the link.
You're playing the long game here. Build a positive reputation. Ensure your blog is linked on your profiles and if you provide good answers and insights, people will go check you out.
Then turn your traffic into income
We're not going to dive into every single way you can monetize your blog but here are two common ways:
Run display ads on your website. If you don't know where to start, then you can always start with Google Adsense
Recommend affiliate offers. You can join affiliate programs such as the Zero To Mastery Ambassador program and get paid for each new customer you send. Many bloggers do this by joining Amazon’s affiliate program and recommending their favourite products.
Side income idea #2. Build an e-commerce site
E-commerce is already huge but it’s going to keep growing and you can be a part of it.
You don't even need to be in web development to create a side income with e-commerce but I've included it here because you can create your store without some of the hassles that non-developers need to face.
Should you build your own online store?
As a developer, you can create your custom own store without needing to rely on any other vendors or platforms.
Think about it, if you know HTML, CSS and JS, you can easily create an online store. In fact, I know that ZTM even teaches you how to build your own full-scale ecommerce store.
If you have some basic design skills then you can even design it yourself.
By leveraging templates on sites like Dribbble for inspiration, you don't need to be an expert in design to get a beautiful site live. You can also leverage the endless amounts of free resources out there as well.
As far as payment processing goes, there are plenty of options like Stripe, that are pretty much plug and play. This way, you don't need to fiddle with setting up complex payment gateways.
Use Shopify, then customize
Or you can simply set it up fast using a platform like Shopify. It has pretty much every feature you need to get a quality store up and running, and the cost definitely pays for itself with the time you save.
You can then focus on leveraging your skills on customization's vs. "re-inventing the wheel".
Being a developer gives you an edge because you'll be able to tweak and edit your site and its setup to your heart’s content without paying someone to do it for you.
If you want an approach that is kind of in the middle, you can use WordPress, which powers almost 40% of the world's websites. It has free plugins such as Woocommerce which can also make setting up a store an absolute breeze.
There is an important learning here. There is no point spending weeks on setting up something custom when a tool can allow you to get the same result in days.
It's important not to be inefficient because you think this is not "The Developer Way." If a tool exists for your use-case, don't let a toxic pride culture get in the way.
Be efficient, use the tool, and reap the benefits.
Don’t want to create and manage your own store?
An even easier approach to ecommerce than creating your own store, is to make money by helping to maintain, update, or build one for someone else that doesn’t have the skills you do. Things that will be simple for you (even minor updates to Shopify and Wordpress) will still feel hard and complex for 95% of people.
Make money by coming to their rescue.
Speaking of consulting...
Side income idea #3. Get paid on Freelancing Platforms
Getting clients through your own website is the best way to get freelance work.
But if you don’t have a website or have little experience with marketing or driving traffic, this may not be possible when you’re just starting out. That's why I recommend listing yourself on freelance platforms like Upwork and Fivver.
Sure, they may have a bad reputation among some but there is method to the madness of being paid $5 for a job that is valued at way more. It provides you with the opportunity to prove yourself and build your reputations so that you can get more valuable follow-up projects.
I was able to turn one of my early $5 clients into a recurring consulting client who I still have today.
I'm not saying that you should do work for $5 forever because once you've proven yourself, you'll be able to start charging more. There is also a way to set yourself apart from others on these platforms.
The way to do this?
It's simple. Do your research:
Check out your competition on these platforms, scrutinize their profiles, see what you can improve upon - maybe it's the lackluster profile description or their shady looking profile picture
Review the profiles that have the best ratings and make the most money as well. What is common amongst those profiles?
Use all this information to craft a profile for yourself that shouts "You can trust me to do the job professionally and on time."
Blow your customers away and over deliver
When you get that first job, you absolutely need to over deliver on the client's expectations.
You need to:
Communicate quickly and clearly and go above and beyond to show the client what would possible by hiring your for additional, higher value projects.
Take advantage of the opportunity to build a relationship with this client. If you do, you will earn more work from them.
If you've over delivered, you will also be able to get them to give you a positive review and use this review to improve your personal website.
Then simply rinse and repeat and soon you'll also be getting clients from your own website as well and you'll be on your way to financial freedom.
Side income idea #4. Create a course or product
Creating something like a coding course that other people will actually buy takes a lot of work, but it is definitely possible. Everyone already doing it has had to start from zero at some point as well, which means you can too.
Of all the side income ideas so far, this is one is likely going to take the most amount of time. The main reason for this is that you can't just create a high quality piece of content (that's step 1).
You also need to find people to buy it...
How do you get people to buy your course?
The best long-term way is to build an audience. Ideally, you want to own that audience (like an email subscriber list) but to start you'll need to establish yourself on another platform, like Twitter or Facebook or YouTube.
Focus on 1-2 channels max and post consistently.
You need to establish credibility among your targeted audience such that they trust you and know that you create high quality content to the point that they would be willing to spend money on a paid product (ebook, course, service) that you release.
Side income idea #5. Create niche websites to sell
This one is a bit less known than some others in this post.
Basically, you build a site in an area then sell it on.
Editor's note: I knew a web developer who saw the the fidget spinner rush years back. Spent a weekend building a website and connected dropshipping. Made $10k that weekend, then sold the site for $20k a week later before the trend died off.
Easy right?
Purchase a domain in your selected niche
Build a simple website for this niche
Start creating relevant posts and content to get traffic to your site and to rank on Google
Once the site is ranking on Google to the point where it's getting some organic decent traffic, you can then start approaching businesses in this particular niche you have chosen and offer to rent or sell the website to them.
A business which rents or buys the site from you will now be able to advertise their services to this highly targeted, relevant audience you've built.
There are also marketplaces, like Investors Club, for buying and selling websites. Check out these marketplaces to get ideas for the types of websites that are for sale and how much they are being sold for to give you an idea of how much you could make.
Side income idea #6. SEO Consulting
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) know-how is another skill that you should add to your arsenal as a web developer, especially if you're considering going freelance full time.
It's the practice of improving a website's ranking on search engines like Google and Yahoo.
This is absolute gold for businesses and they pay a lot for people to improve the ranking of their sites. Higher rankings means more organic search traffic which as you know by now, means more sales.
Some of the work and skill of an SEO is non-technical. This includes things like researching keywords, analyzing website traffic and trends, competitor analysis and building backlinks.
ZTM even has their own SEO Fundamentals course for developers. This is a good place to start to learn these fundamentals.
By learning SEO, you will have yet another service to offer when a client comes your way which means you add more value to them and allows you to charge a higher price. And if you want to specifically use your SEO skills to earn a side-income, then you can advertise your services on the various freelancing platforms that you're a part of.
You can also leverage the experience on your own site to get your even more clients!
Conclusion
As a web developer, you do not need to be confined by one career path because there are many options out there for you to make money, whether full-time or on the side.
Don’t get me wrong, it will take some work and initiative but there is so much room for growth and opportunity to build a diverse income stream. Many others have done it and are still doing it with great success, you can too.
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