launching a company doesn't have to take years to take off.

just build a scrappy mvp in a week & find people who are willing to pay for it.

you say you are great with automation & making bots. someone just coded up an nft bot & sold it in 17 days [1]

nft is all the rage so you might be able to cook something similar & sell it on microacquire [2] which helps a lot of saas get a modest exit (< billion-dollar exit)

you can build a bunch of micro-saas & sell it on microacquire. of course, it's harder than i'm making it to be but start. hopefully, you might strike gold!

i think web3/crypto/nfts is a good space to be in for bots so find a problem there or check forums like reddit/discord/twitter where people talk a lot about web3/nfts or acquisition marketplaces like microacquire to get ideas as what people are building

[1]: https://www.ryanckulp.com/buildsell30-hackathon-review/ [2]: https://microacquire.com

Thanks for an interesting idea of building "a bunch of micro-saas", I like that.

> check forums like reddit/discord/twitter where people talk a lot about web3/nfts or acquisition marketplaces

Would you have any recommended links?

ask the guy who i linked to (the buildsell30 guy) but google is your friend. or reddit groups or twitter where people spam discord links. i know one called fractal discord by justin kan (twitch co-founder)

you have to literally do some manual work to get them. it'll be a grind but totally worth it imo.

Appreciated! Found a good starting point here:

https://www.howtoweb3.guide/

Help people solve their problems on codementor.com or similar websites. A lot less commitment than freelancing - just jump on a call and help them with their issue.

What is CodeMentor like? What kind of level of expertise is expected from a mentor? It seems very tempting, but my impostor syndrome is playing games with me.

Try it out, and if you feel you didn't help someone the way you are satisfied with, don't charge them.

Make a product that solves a problem, and then sell that product.

Can be something very simple. Eg. something like joining PDF files, sharing photos with your family, hosting a caldav server, a shopping list app that syncs between android and iOS users...

Then get people to buy your product. Start with selling it to your coworkers or friends and relatives, and anyone else you know who fits the target audience.

Spend a lot of time talking to your users and when folks run into issues change your product to avoid them. Try to understand what they really need (not always the same as what they say they need)

Iterate on the product for a while, and you should have a profitable product.

Teaching classes. It's not worth self-marketing, unless you're a freelancer (in which there's economy of scope). Find people doing classes, offer to teach. If you can teach for certifications, there's plenty of work out there.

Writing books is not worth it. Writing the whole syllabus for a class isn't either. Use an existing one.

Mentoring for hackathons or doing speeches in universities pays pretty well even at a token fee.

I think there's some value in doing and maintaining template code or a recipe book. I've gone through a lot of pain trying to write tests for a certain config, and just forked out money for examples.

Making niche websites and waiting a few years to rank them and then upgrade them to something that makes money. It takes time to rank but you just have to wait, and if you have fun coding building specific websites can be fun.

Every time without fail that I thought about doing a side project, I found that my time was better spent leveling up and gaining skills to prepare for another job that pays more.

true, but you may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to do that, and finding ways of making a side income is not a bad idea (especially if it involves setcing up projets that earn for you while you sleep)

> I tried bounty hunting for a while, but it seems that a lot of companies don't care that much or are dishonest when it comes to paying you

Same experience here. What worked for me is app development with affiliate marketing. But finding a good affiliate program for my users took me a while.

There are plenty of examples of software engineers creating software, getting some customers, and then selling the company in less than 30 days.

Check out #BuildSell30 on Twitter.

Become an instructor. Maintain your skills by teaching others and making money in the process. Almost recession proof, because people go back to school when they don't have work. Start out by teaching a free class somewhere locally, like a public library. Don't say you don't have the social skills to teach. Some of the very best teachers are introverts. Start off as a tutor maybe, but teach. Teaching has this remarkable ability to confer responsibility, whether you want it or not. You can be lazy teaching yourself, but teaching others will light a fire under you. You are now responsible for their well-being, and you have about 10 minutes before they call bullsh-t on you not knowing your stuff. Teaching keeps you on your toes. And yes, you can make a handsome amount of side money. You might like it so much, you become a full-time instructor.

Use your computer skills to help people in disadvantaged communities. I once found myself in San Antonio becoming a de facto employee of Comcast because I was the only person at my apartment complex who had a computer and could speak both Spanish and English. Have you ever tried to figure out your cable bill in English? Try doing that on the phone if English isn't your first language and you can't read English at all. This gave me great satisfaction, to be able to use my computer and language skills to help the disadvantaged.

Here it's important to recognize that the skills you have can seem like magic to people who don't have them. Something as simple as speaking English and knowing how to use a web browser to fill out a cell phone contract (for someone who cannot) is a priceless contribution that, while it might not make the money you seek, will give you far more satisfaction than will code-for-pay.

And when you help people, they help you. The person you help might not make you money, but they might open doors for you that will. That little old lady you helped at the library has tea with the governor's Mom's gardener. That $300,000/year cash-kush job you have now is a indirect result of you having helped her print out a PDF form in the library. And make no mistake! The very best paying job you will ever have will come through someone you know, someone who likes you, someone you've helped. It won't be your favorite job, but it will be the best paying job you will ever have. The world, for all its facets, is still very much an I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine place.

Your professional life really happens in the crevices, those little old ladies, that serendipity, not in the bullet points on your resume, pace dear Tolstoy. If we are brave enough to admit it to ourselves, a resume is a chronology of our "f--k this, i'm outta here" decisions.

I repeat: if you're skilled enough to be reading HN, you have the kinds of skills that are tantamount to magic for others that don't have them.

Go ahead. Try to buy a prepaid mobile phone from AT&T and set it up with a prepaid account on a credit card. You would not believe how ridiculously and stupidly complicated that is, even for very qualified you. There are people that spend days just getting their f---ing prepaid cell phones to work. You can turn that into minutes because you know how to use a computer and a website, and that's very valuable for people, getting rid of their headaches is valuable. It's not a headache for you, it's a simplicity. “Easy for you, difficult for them” is where you make easy money. Don't take that logic too far, please, else you become infected with capitalismus and start believing in that a $300,000 cash-kush is what you want. You do not.

You might not make any money here with the poor, but the tech unsaavy are rich and poor alike and they number in the billions: tech skills have tremendous value for those who don't have them, and they will pay for it.

Isn't becoming an instructor just getting a job?

> I repeat: if you're skilled enough to be reading HN, you have the kinds of skills that are tantamount to magic for others that don't have them.

Sure, but having skills isn't at all the same thing at all as being able to make money with them. The people willing to pay, whether they consider what they're buying "magic" or not, are usually going to find a lot of other people before they ever find you.

Wonderful comment. Thank you!

Hi, made some money with šport bet site crawling and finding sure bets (or bets arbitrage)

Also some Ads money with generated (translate) content.

Gl hf

Writing open source and offering support contracts.

can you automate poker online? pretty sure you can build in strategy to win at microstakes

There's a rich history of poker bots and some sites are already moderating players who exhibit playing patterns that are too consistent/unhuman.

It's possible though.

Consulting :D

The line between freelancer and consultant is quite blurry. Most high level "consultants" I know don't actually code, they outsource it to other "consultants" (AKA freelancers) that do.

Glad to hear the person with no input shared their input.

There are tons of legit use cases for bots like Slack bots, Discord bots, Zapier integrations, bots to automate workflows, front-end testing bots.

Is there one valid reason why? Half the websites you use everyday need some kind of bots to function.

Why, bots are so useful for repetitive and manual tasks.