How to earn money online as a Programmer?

Being a Programmer is one of the most rewarding career today. There are several (over 14) ways to earn money as a Programmer while staying at home and working online. You can earn from $100 to $50,000 per month as a Programming working remotely.

The ways to earn money online as a Programmer are:

  1. Start a Tech YouTube channel
  2. Start a Tech Podcast
  3. Write e-books and sell on Amazon
  4. Accept a writing contract with a Publisher
  5. Create an online course and sell on Udemy
  6. Find bugs in websites as a bounty hunter
  7. Create and sell website templates
  8. Create a mobile app and monetize it
  9. Create a website and monetize it
  10. Create a chrome extension and sell it
  11. Participate and win Coding contests
  12. Land an online Programming job
  13. Freelance as a Programmer
  14. Create an online business as a Programmer

How to earn money online as a Programmer?

1. Start a Tech YouTube channel

Starting a YouTube channel on various tech topics like Programming jobs, Learning a specific Programming skill like Algorithms, Interview Preparation and others is one of the most common and easiest way to earn money online as a Programmer.

Your content will not be monetized right from day one. You need to work on your channel and increase your subscribers and watch time. When you hit the goal of 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of watch time, then you can apply from your channel to be monetized. YouTube will review your application and monetize it within 2 months. It may take you 1 month to reach the minimum goal.

Once your channel is monetized, you will start earn with every video you will upload. The amount of money you will earn will depend on your audience and the amount of views you get.

  • If your audience is from USA, then you can earn up to $4 per 1000 views
  • If your major audience is from India, then you can earn up to $0.5 per 1000 views.

That being said, if you can manage to get 1M views every month, you can earn $500 to $4000 per month. Additionally, once you are old enough (6 months+) in the space, you can land sponsorships and from it, you can expect $1000 per sponsorship.

In summary:

  • Idea: Start a Tech YouTube channel
  • Time to start earning: 3 months
  • Difficulty rating: 3.5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $500 to $4000 per month

Start a Tech YouTube channel

2. Start a Tech Podcast

You can start a Tech podcast and talk about various topics like Tech jobs, Interview preparation and many others.

You can upload your podcast to Spotify and start earning from day one. This makes it one of the easiest way to earn and readily available if you are working on your YouTube channel. You can use audio snippets from your YouTube videos as your Podcast. This will increase your earnings.

Programming podcasts are not so common as YouTube channel at the moment. You can expect to earn $2 per 1000 views. If everything goes good, you can expect 250K views per month. Similar to YouTube, you can land sponsorship and can expect $500 per sponsorship.

In summary:

  • Idea: Start a Tech Podcast
  • Time to start earning: Instant
  • Difficulty rating: 3 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $500 to $1000

3. Write e-books and sell on Amazon

You can write an e-book on Programming topics and start selling it on different platforms like Amazon KDP, Google Play and Apple Books.

You can earn upto 70% of the profits from the book. For example, if a book is priced $10, then $2 may be deducted as transfer costs in the platform and you will earn 70% of $8 that is $5.6 per book.

Usually, books are priced between $2 to $5 and you can expect $3 per book on average. If everything goes good, you can expect to sell 100 copies every month.

In summary:

  • Idea: Write e-books and sell on Amazon
  • Time to start earning: Instant
  • Difficulty rating: 5.5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $300 per month per book

4. Accept a writing contract with a Publisher

You can propose a Technical book to a Publisher like O'Reilly Media. OpenGenus and Wiley. If your proposal passes the review, the Publisher will contact you with a possible contract.

The contract will mention the terms and conditions. Usually, you need to write the book within 4 to 6 months and the advance money will be given in 3 parts over the writing period. The advance money is usually $1000 to $1500 per book.

If your book sells well, you will earn beyond the advance.

In summary:

  • Idea: Accept a writing contract with a Publisher
  • Time to start earning: Within 4 months
  • Difficulty rating: 5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1500 per book

5. Create an online course and sell on Udemy

You can create a video course on a Tech topic like a Programming language (like Java) and start selling on different platforms like Udemy or Pluralsight.

If you are earning through a Tech YouTube channel, then you must opt for this way as well and promote your courses on your YouTube channel. Profits from a single sale is low due to high competition but you can expect $500 per course per month if your course sells good.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create an online course and sell on Udemy
  • Time to start earning: Instant
  • Difficulty rating: 4 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $500 per month

6. Find bugs in websites as a bounty hunter

Bounty hunting is rising and becoming a common source of income for many programmers. You need to have a good hold on testing and security issues of websites to be able to spot bugs and report them.

You can find bug finding opportunities at HoackerOne and Bugcrowd. All major companies like GitHub, Micorsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla and others have bug hunting programs. Keep updated and work on it.

Many bugs are awarded small amount of $50 but on finding big bugs on prominent platforms, you can earn $1000. The best bug bounty hunter earn upto $10,000 per month.

In summary:

  • Idea: Find bugs in websites as a bounty hunter
  • Time to start earning: Instant
  • Difficulty rating: 4 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $100 per month

7. Create and sell website templates

You can create website templates for Wordpress, Shopify and Ghost and sell them on marketplace. The price of templates are usually $50 and you can earn $25 from each sale.

If your template is suited for a particular niche and does well to solve a major problem, you can expect to sell upto 200 templates.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create and sell website templates
  • Time to start earning: Instant
  • Difficulty rating: 5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $500 to $5000

8. Create a mobile app and monetize it

You can create mobile app and deploy it to Google Play store, Apple store and Microsoft Store. Your app can be:

  • Helping with Interview tips
  • For a specific task like convert PDF to image
  • and other ideas.

You can add ads and sponsorships in your mobile app and depending on the number of users/ views, you will earn around $2 per 1000 views. If your mobile app does well, you can expect $500 per month.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create a mobile app and monetize it
  • Time to start earning: Instant (around 2 months to build the app)
  • Difficulty rating: 5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $500 to $5000 per month

9. Create a website and monetize it

Similar to a mobile app, you can create a website on technical topics and monetize it. As this is a common path, earning is very competitive and it may take upto 2 years before you start earning significant and consistent amount.

In the first two years, you can expect upto $100 per month which will go upto $1000 in later years.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create a website and monetize it
  • Time to start earning: 2 years
  • Difficulty rating: 7 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1000 to $5000 per month

10. Create a chrome extension and sell it

Creating a chrome extension and selling it is an under rated technique. Similar to a mobile app, you can create a chrome extension for any technical task and gather users.

You cannot use ads and the only way to monetize it is to sell it. You can sell it when you have a strong user base (at least 30,000 active users). You can earn $1000 to $5000 per extension.

You can deploy your extension on other browsers like Firefox as well.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create a chrome extension and sell it
  • Time to start earning: 2 months
  • Difficulty rating: 5.5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1000

11. Participate and win Coding contests

Some coding contents keep monetary award for winners and skills for such contents vary from Algorithms to Machine Learning. If you are good in your field, you must participate in such contests.

In general, earning through this way is highly competitive and very difficult for many.

In summary:

  • Idea: Participate and win Coding contests
  • Time to start earning: 6 months
  • Difficulty rating: 9 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1000 to $10,000

12. Land an online Programming job

Several companies hire full time developers for remote work. Pay is decent for many companies like Wikipedia, GitHub, Spotify and others. Look out for remote jobs.

For smaller companies, you may earn around $1000 per month which can range to $20,000 per month for top companies like GitHub.

In summary:

  • Idea: Land an online Programming job
  • Time to start earning: 6 months
  • Difficulty rating: 7 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1000 to $20,000

13. Freelance as a Programmer

Being a Freelance instead of a Full time remote developer is more flexible as it will allow you to take on tasks you want to work on and from multiple clients.

You can take up tasks that you can complete quickly and earn more. The issue is to find good clients and despite the security offered by freelancing platform, disputes arise and often, it is the developers who face penalty. It is a difficult task in some situations.

In summary:

  • Idea: Freelance as a Programmer
  • Time to start earning: 6 months
  • Difficulty rating: 6.5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $2000 per month

14. Create an online business as a Programmer

The best way for long term is to create an online business as a Programmer. Business can range from:

  • Freelancing platform for other developers
  • Social media platform for developers
  • Helping developers launch their websites
  • A payment processing system like Stripe
  • Hosting company like DigitalOcean
  • and many others

If your business run well, you can earn a significant amount of profits and this will help you earn passively in some cases for a long time.

In summary:

  • Idea: Create an online business as a Programmer
  • Time to start earning: 6 months
  • Difficulty rating: 9.5 out of 10
  • Expected earnings: $1000 to $50,000 per month

With this article at OpenGenus, you must have the complete idea of how you can earn as a Programmer while staying at home and working online. The potential is big and you must not miss it. Choose a path and start working on it today.

If you need any advice, comment and get in touch with us. We will help you out.