Gone are the days when you had to be a degree holder or an adult to earn money. In this digital era, earning money through the internet has made it so accessible and easy for anyone that having just a phone and internet can help you land a good amount of money. In this blog, we will analyze and talk about how you can easily make money through coding even if you are just a teenager or student.
Coding or programming is one of the most demanding and lucrative skill industries. It is currently one of the few industries where the employee is getting highly paid and has endless options too. For a person, programming opens up a plethora of options to choose from, you can choose to be a web or app developer, you can make mobile or desktop applications, or be a system engineer.
Here in this blog, we will discuss various ways you can make money as a student programmer and also a few things you have to keep in mind before landing your first gig.
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Few things to do to get your first project
Ok, you are now charged up !! Ready to learn how to make money through coding but do you know how will you be able to get your first project, here are some tips you can use to grow your reach,
Identify your skills as a service
First thing first, you need to identify your skillset so that you can be clear about what type of service you going to provide to your clients. Be explicit on type of service you will provide like,
- Web Development
- App Development
- WordPress Sites
- Data Analysis
Your plan or service structure should look something like this:-
- Can build a high-performance end-to-end web app, using MERN stack (or whatever stack you have good knowledge of).
- Can create a beautifully designed and attractive mobile-optimized landing web page for the company.
- Can build a fully optimized and beautiful mobile app with smooth transition according to your need.
- We create and implement custom APIs for all kinds of applications, helping to add functionality to your software systems.
- Can analyze and optimize data to make an accurate report for you to make an informed decision.
Grow your Social Media for Networking
It is very important to have very good networking with people so that you can grow your chance to get your first gig. Having connections with agencies, development managers, and especially large audiences where your share your projects or skills can easily get you projects as people following you will already know about your skill and want to collaborate with you.
Twitter has the most wonderful community developers, managers, and various agencies.
— Aaquib 👽🧑💻 (@thedevnextdoor) February 1, 2022
Few Tips to grow your audience on Twitter:-
😎 Optimize your Twitter profile
👋 Network and follow right people
✍️ Use hashtags and right keywords
🙋 Comment, Retweet, and engage with people
Build Your Portfolio and Domain
Being a developer it is necessary to have your own portfolio website with your name domain published on the internet so that clients can visit your profile and look directly at your portfolio website design, sample projects, and can get an idea about your skillset thus increasing your chances in getting your projects.
Your portfolio website serves as the identity and upfront resume for your client. You can design your portfolio website to tell your developer story. Thus it is important to understand what are the things you should have on your profile and what not, lot of people mistakes portfolio website as their online résumé.
Things you should have in your portfolio:-
- First and foremost, try to have a complete focus on your website design, keep a minimalistic design with smooth animations and use standard images and colors. If you have an attractive design, your client will stick to the end of your portfolio.
- Write a few lines about yourself, your skills and mention your social media links, so that he can also connect you there.
- Display your skills, and work samples with live demo and their code source so that your client can get an idea about skill set, display your projects and highly increase your chances to get projects.
- It would be more helpful if you can add some genuine testimonials or recommendations from your former clients or colleagues.
Tip:- If you don’t have any testimonials try to do some free small projects for your colleagues or clients so that you can get pre hand experience and you can ask them to write recommendations too.
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Freelancing platforms
You can also use many freelancing platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, or freelancer, to get clients from there but you also need to know that on these platforms, you have very high competition, and mostly only high rated freelancer who has done a large number of projects usually get pitched by the client for projects, it is difficult for newcomers, but as you get little old and have only a few but awesome projects you will also get contacted with clients too.
Directly pitch to clients
Now finally comes a time where you have to directly meet your client and pitch your work to get the project. If you are able to sell your service which fitted into the client’s budget and timeline you can very well get the opportunity.
Few methods by you can directly reach your client:-
- You directly cold mail or message them on LinkedIn with a well-presented idea of the project. Remember, before you pitch your idea, I would recommend you to do your detailed research on the company’s condition and their need.
- You can also use Facebook or Google ads to target your potential clients.
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Top 5 ways to make money through coding as a student
Ok, now you know all the checkpoints you have to check so that you can land for your job, and now let us discuss a number of options you can take to make money through coding as a kid or teenager.
Become a Freelancer
One of the biggest and most popular ways to learn to make money through coding is to become a web developer or app developer. Freelancer is like no string attached job where you land a project on a contract where you might have to make some landing page for a company, some e-commerce site, or anything according to the client.
The more fascinating and easy does the job looks but it is not as easy a piece of cake. Being a freelancer you have to wear a number of caps, in which you are a salesperson, manager, you yourself have to negotiate on prices and most importantly you have to be ready with all the resources client going to use.
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Start Teaching Online
One of the popular and easy ways to start earning is by start teaching coding. If you have a great command of the subject and if you are good at making other people understand the concepts then teaching would be a great option you can look for.
You can start your youtube channel, you can create a course and sell it on Udemy or SkillShare like platform, you can join an academy where you can go and teach or you can gain your students and start teaching from home through zoom or Google meet too.
Become a bug bounty hunter
There are a lot of companies like Facebook or Google that pay people significant amounts of money for finding the glitches and bugs on their apps that could be exploited by hackers.
You can even earn around 10000$ on a single bounty but it is one of the hardest options as finding a bug is not very easy and you also have to research and read a lot to understand the concept of cyber security.
Do paid open-source coding projects
Contributing and working on open-source projects is a great way to learn and make your resume attractive. There are a lot of popular open-source project programs where you are paid for your contribution.
Few programs like GSoC, Outreachy, or MLH Fellowship aim to promote open-source development among university students. You might face high competition as students all over the world apply to these programs but at the same time, the exposure and stipend you get are very valuable.
Become a Part-time Employee
And finally, you can apply to some companies where they allow you to work as a part-time employee. As we are currently living in a pandemic time, a lot of companies have shifted their work to home, where it now becomes flexible for people to stay at their home or anyplace and work on projects.
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