Make money with coding.. What you're NOT being told!

so originally i was going to make a video about all the ways that you can make money by learning how to code after i did a little bit of research on the topic i realized that there are a ton of youtubers out there that have already made these videos pretty much all saying the same thing so i want to talk about some of those things that they mention in their videos instead of just selling you the pipe dream that all of this stuff will be really easy just because you learn how to print hello world i'm going to try to keep it real and let you know some of the pitfalls and struggles that you might face with these methods that a lot of people are mentioning that can make you money by learning how to code or becoming a programmer the main reason why a lot of people want to learn how to code is because they want to get a job as a software developer and while it seems like an awesome job where you have kombucha on tap and you get to hang out with your hipster colleagues in your dog friendly office in pakistan dogs are not pets okay they're vicious beasts and they chase you down the street and they bite you and even though you might have an awesome break room with ping pong tables and video games with endless beverages to choose from the other thing that will be endless is the features that you'll be implementing and the bugs you'll be fixing and the code that you'll be pushing on a daily basis and yes it's true there are plenty of software engineering jobs with high paying salaries and great benefits but the truth is that this is a really hard job and burnout is a real thing that many developers go through there's a reason why the average tenure of a developer at a regular company is usually like two years and fan companies developers really only stick around for about three years the fact that finding a new job is usually the best way to get a raise might play into those numbers what are you looking for a raise get out but there's also a lot of other things that go into that and like i mentioned burnout is real and people burn out at this job a lot it can be demanding at times you have deadlines and you have a lot of stuff that people leave out of these day in the life videos that can be very stressful and that's why software developers get paid so much so even though a lot of us tech influencers try to make this job to be super sexy because we have nice offices and we make a ton of money doing it it's not to say that it's an easy job and it's going to be an easy hundred thousand dollars a year and when you're first starting out you're gonna be lucky to make 50 60 maybe 70 000 a year right now i have five years of experience and i won't even consider a job that pays less than 120 a year but the truth is my first job paid me 50 000 a year while getting a programming job is possible and learning how to code can get you there it's going to take you a while to make the big money that everyone always talks about and it's going to be a grind even after you get your first job you're going to have to work your way up to that salary you have to deal with a lot of corporate you have to deal with a lot of nonsense that people don't want to deal with and working a desk job and being told what you need to do all day and having to meet deadlines having to deal with middle management having to deal with business and just everything that goes into being a developer that doesn't have to do with code can kind of wear on you after a while and depending on your office politics and your company culture it can be toxic in most places and from what i've noticed a lot of companies are like that smaller companies and larger companies alike they all have their own level of toxicity and with working from home which is one of the big benefits that many people always highlight about software development jobs that's a little bit easier while this is a great job that you can have remote benefits for or a few work from home days the truth is most companies still want to keep us in the office and many of those perks that they try to highlight aren't that great because really at the end of the day you're sitting in front of your computer you're writing code dealing with office work and it's not as fun and exciting as so many people try to make it out to be on social media there's a lot of stuff that people don't tell you when they're highlighting all the perks and benefits and pay of this job so keep that in mind because even though it looks awesome on social media it doesn't necessarily mean that this job is as cool as so many people make it out to be if you don't like that kind of thing a programming job might not be the best option for you but if you're like i don't want a job that's not why i'm learning how to code i want to learn how to code to be a freelancer i want to make my own schedule i want to be my own boss i want to be a digital nomad and travel the world while i write code and pick up jobs here and there that i want to work and and you know just live that kind of life and be free from the corporate world and just dictate my own success by working on freelance projects with clients that i choose to work with all right let's talk about freelance let's talk about how difficult it actually is to start as a freelancer now if you've got some experience and you've been doing software development for a while now particularly web dev or even mobile apps and stuff like that if you have some experience doing those things then getting freelance work or starting out as a freelancer might be a little bit easier for you because of course people are probably more likely to hire you just because you do have experience you understand the process you know how to deliver stuff and you're probably going to be a better option than someone who doesn't now let's say you're that someone who doesn't have any experience at all and you're just learning how to code now and you want to become a freelancer you can make money as a freelancer the problem is is that becoming a freelancer is really really hard even if you do have a ton of experience as a professional developer like me i have almost five years of experience now as a professional web developer and i have a little bit of freelance experience with that said if i try to go out and start freelancing right now i'm starting from scratch i i don't have any clients i might have a few people that i could reach out to but the truth is that i don't know anyone that will need my services right away so then what do i have to do i have to go out and find clients a lot of people will tell you that the best way to find your first clients is locally you go to your local mom and pop shop you go to the bakery you go to the gym you go you go to all these places in your neighborhood or in your town and you start asking them if they need websites or if they need apps if they need social media stuff if they need anything that you might be technically savvy enough to help them out with now that's a grind all on its own and if you're like me who is kind of an introvert and you hate talking to people and you don't really want to go out and shake hands and kiss babies you can reach out to your network if you have one former colleagues or if you have a little bit of a social media following if you know anyone you can just start spreading the word and building websites and stuff for friends and family and hopefully that will give you a little bit of a freelance portfolio that then you can actually start getting real work from or those people that you help out and work for free or work for you know really cheap they they do a little bit of word of mouth for you and then you start getting some gigs but let's say you don't have that then you're stuck going to sites like upwork fiverr freelancer.com and all those other freelancing websites that there are out there and you are in a sea of applicants you are going to be racing to the bottom for almost every job that you apply for and if you don't have a portfolio and if you're not willing to work for practically free until you build that portfolio you're probably not going to get a call back from someone and then once you do have a portfolio and and you've gotten a little bit of work you're still competing with so many people out there and you're also competing with people from different countries who don't need to make as much money as you do to survive so a lot of the work that you'll find at least early on is gonna be pretty crappy work and it's not gonna pay a lot now let's say you grind it out and you have enough savings to do this for a while or you're in a position where you don't need the money right away and you and you put in the work for six months or a year and you build up your clientele and you have some local business and you've got business online freelancers still live pretty hand the mouth until they're making enough money to where that's not an issue and that can take years just like with the people that learn how to code and get a job in three months there's freelancers out there who do it and in six months are making a ton of money and living the dream life but those aren't the majority those are the minority most people are gonna be working pretty hard i've known a lot of people who have been freelance web developers and have been freelance coders and a lot of them kind of go back to a day job because it can be very stressful living hand-to-mouth like that it can be really hard dealing with clients because that whole dream of being able to pick and choose who you work with yeah you might have that freedom but at the end of the day if you're gonna have someone who's gonna pay you good money to do something and you want that business and you need that business because if you don't take that job you're not gonna be able to pay your bills for that month you're gonna have to eat and you're gonna have to deal with the clients personally because now you're not just dealing with business and middle management now you're dealing with clients directly and anyone who's dealt with clients before directly will tell you that clients can be a big pain in the ass and they can be nitpicky and they can ask you for so much extra stuff and then they try to haggle you on the price and then they try to lowball you or they try not to pay you and it's just it's a lot of trouble being a freelancer and if you come into this hearing people talk about how awesome it is to learn how to code and how you can make money as a freelancer and live the dream life of being your own boss remember that a lot of those people that are telling you that you can be a freelancer doing this have never been freelancers themselves so if your goal is to be a freelancer make sure that you're getting your information from people who have actually done it because there's plenty of people out there on youtube and on social media that will try to sell you that dream and have never done it themselves telling people that they can make money makes you a lot of money on the internet let's move on to the next thing so let's talk about startups sas products mobile apps the next social media platform that's going to take the world by storm those are all things that people tell you that you can build it feels like every single software developer i know has some app that they built or some great idea that they started that they are either working on or are no longer working on because they gave it up the truth about building the next big startup is that startups are highly competitive especially if you're talking about like hyper growth startups of course you can build a small app idea that maybe solves a problem for you and eventually it grows into something and you get a few users or a few hundred or thousand users and it makes you a nice little bit of money but if you think you're gonna build the next big unicorn startup the truth is that there's hundreds of thousands of people out there that are working on those same kind of ideas probably the same exact idea that you already have someone is currently building something for that and when it comes to creating a startup the best approach that you can have is to not really care about making money right away because you probably won't make any money right away it's totally possible but if you go into it thinking like i'm gonna make this awesome application that everyone's gonna want to use the truth is that there's probably not that many people that need whatever you're building and there's more of a chance that someone has already built something better not trying to be discouraging here i just want to keep it real when it comes to these things that so many people are telling you are like cool great easy awesome ways to make money with programming these things aren't easy none of it is easy the truth is that it takes a long time just like with everything else i'm mentioning in this video i'm guilty of making videos where i highlight all the cool stuff you can do by learning how to code and yes it is cool that you can build your own startup but it's also super hard and it's not that easy to make money with a startup let's talk a little bit about gamedev similar to startups a lot of game development starts as a passion project but many people get into software or want to learn how to code because they want to be game developers because who doesn't right i'm a gamer i played so many video games and the thought of building a game has crossed my mind the truth is that building a game on your own is really really difficult and working as a game developer is one of the worst development jobs i've heard of having at least if you're working for like a big company corporations and companies kind of exploit your passion because they know that a lot of game developers are passionate and they want to exploit that because if you work for your passion you're more likely to work longer hours for less pay so if you want to get a job as a game developer i would consider maybe another area of software development i know there's going to be some people that aren't going to want to hear that but it's kind of the truth if you want to create your own video game or your own mobile game or a mod for a video game that you already play like those things are all great as hobbies and side projects but if you want to get into this because you want to create your own game that's going to make you a ton of money man it's hard it's harder than building a startup it's it's probably the hardest path that you can take is to try to become like an indie game developer or the next wordle or you know flappy bird developer there's just so many people doing that stuff there's just so much crap out there and if you're coming into this because you really think that you're gonna be that much better than everyone out there then then don't let me stop you like i i will never want to be the person that steps in the way of your dreams but if you go into it to make money from creating a video game it's probably not gonna happen you're gonna have to put hours and hours and hours of work into it and if you're doing it on your own the chances of you getting that game off the ground and getting it released and making money off of it and try something else do work on it as a side project and build it up just like you would a startup and hopefully maybe one day it gets enough players to where you can focus on it full time and maybe get funding and hire more people to help you grow it but don't think that you're gonna make a ton of money being a game developer because it just might not happen the last thing i want to talk about is content creation which is a path that i have taken just like i learned to code i went down the path of creating content based around software development although i am not doing tutorials i am more of a motivational programming life coach i couldn't have given myself a cringier title than that but the truth is that you can make money with content and i i'm living proof of it i i share my numbers i am as transparent as i can be with my audience i enjoy doing that and i like to show people that you can do these things just how i share my story about how i became a software developer i like sharing my numbers on the stuff i'm doing with content you can make money with content in january i made almost five grand that doesn't include my blog that doesn't include my affiliate sales just off of youtube ads alone i made like 4 800 bucks i think it was that was my biggest month ever i mean the last few months have been the biggest months i've ever had on youtube and it's the most money i've made with content ever i have almost 200 videos uploaded on youtube and i've been making content for the last two years now if you're approaching learning how to code and you're getting into content then a blog that you talk about coding in which would be content that you can create from learning how to code would be an approach that you can take and that's why i mentioned it in this video even though my blog doesn't have to do with programming well my second blog does but my first blog that's actually making me money doesn't it's it's an off-topic blog but you know it's on the web so it requires some knowledge of web development and i have the hosted i set everything up myself and and all of that stuff is is technical skill while it is a wordpress site and you know it doesn't really require any coding knowledge it still i think falls in into the same category that it would if if you learn how to code because it is something that would come easier to you if you understand how to set up a website and all that stuff and my youtube channel has been pretty much all about programming until i went through my midlife crisis a few months ago and started talking about all kinds of different stuff most of the content on this channel has been about programming and it has made me money but if you want to use your coding experience to make money by creating content then i just want to say that after two years of uploading on youtube and now i'm currently like trying to build up my instagram a little bit and i'm trying to build up my twitter a little bit and i'm really like going further and further down the rabbit hole of content creation i am starting to realize that yes it is possible to make money with content and if you know how to code or if you're learning how to code you can document your journey you can create tutorials you can sell courses you can write books you can do so much stuff with the knowledge that you have from coding and it can make you money but man it's a grind it's it's a grind just like everything else i've mentioned in this video and really that's the main point i'm trying to get across in this video all the things that can make you money with learning how to code won't come easy no matter how many videos you see that say easy fun exciting ways of making money with programming blah blah blah there's always going to be somebody out there that's trying to sell you something that's trying to get you to click on their video that's trying to get a view so they can get some ad revenue i'm one of them i'm making money off this video right but i'm trying to be honest and i'm trying to let people know that none of this stuff is going to be as easy as a lot of people try to make it seem it's a grind and it's a lot of work but it's worth it and it's doable and if you take anything from this video just know that if you put in the work and if you put in the time you can make money from all of these things that i mentioned but none of it's to be fast none of it's going to be easy it's not really going to be exciting either and when the grind starts and when you want to continue down the path because you're determined to do it you could eventually make money from it one day all right with all that said thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Dorian Develops

Views: 845,757

Keywords: self taught programmer, self taught web developer, self taught developer, self taught software engineer, programmer, web developer, developer, software engineer, programming, web development, development, software engineering, learn to code, how to code, code, coding, web dev, self taught, web, engineer, engineering, self-taught software developer, make money coding, make money with code, make money as a programmer, make money with coding

Id: CX0V_hspEZU

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022