Seems like most side projects I've considered to earn money outside of work are deceptively difficult, like yeah you can build an app but the likelihood of it getting any attention is abysmally low because the market is saturated with apps better than you could ever build with full marketing and development teams behind them, etc.

Anyone have any coding side hustles that don't require 80 hours of work a week and $10,000 + your first born child as an investment? Not looking to get rich quick, but would like to learn and build a steady source of passive pocket change

I'm a UI dev for what it's worth, but can do some back end. I've tinkered with building websites, apps, affiliate marketing blogs, etc. in the past but never got very far.

Typically I'll get into an idea and want to build something, put a week or so into it and realize I have no fuckin clue what I'm doing and the market is saturated with far better things that are built by teams with marketing and development experts behind them. So I get overwhelmed and fail.

Anything uh... Not like that?

I’ve been looking for pretty much the same thing with no luck

Read "show your work"
I've read it and it has some great insights on how actual, non-intrusive marketing work.

I've had a lot of ideas, but no idea how to really go about them. Not even all of them are tech related. I thought of an idea for a product after reading about some people doing business with FBA to reduce shipping costs... Get an item made in china, order 500-1000 of them in bulk for like $3 each, pay a little overhead and sell on Amazon for $12-15 a piece and churn money

Sound's amazing but whoops getting a manufacturer to make something that doesn't exist is timely and expensive, and your listings won't get any attention so you have to artificially fluff them, and hey you better set up an LLC to protect yourself, what's an LLC and what does it protect against? Fuck if I know but you're gonna need a lawyer and accountant, so on and so forth

Every business idea seems to follow this path of simple concept to overwhelmingly huge requirements to reach reality

@molaram that has always been like that actually. Examples : Greek slaves, feodal times, coal mines...

Today with tech, it is easier to *try*, but still as hard to succeed.

I think if you want to go for the result and only that, you missed the point. It's the journey that matters, not the destination.

@react-guy That's a fair point. I've picked my affiliate marketing website back up. Spent some time writing for it, took some good pictures, etc. I got a few more unique visitors, and that was fun to see. I guess I just need to recognize that progress comes in waves, and that nothing starts off successful. I just need to have fun with it and appreciate small progress here and there.

@CoffeeSnake I launched 4 products so far.
1. The first was a paid service. 0 traction. No one knew about it and those who found it weren't going to pay.

2. The second I made, I made it totally free for comparison. Few traction, good retention, but I had no idea how to make a paid version.

3. I tried to make the website and the value proposition before coding (it's really hard). Didn't raise much interest, abandoned.

4. My last one so far : open source tool for keyboard shortcuts. Still a bit early-stage, but a few stars per month.

Each one was more ore less an experiment for when I really get excited by an idea that takes more than a week to make. I learned a lot doing them.