Slashdot Mirror
Successful Moonlighting For Geeks?
Lawksamussy writes "Having just bought a really old house that's on the verge of falling down, I'm now trying to find a way to pay to fix it up. I have a great job in software development that pays the bills, but I'm looking to earn some extra cash in my spare time. Whatever I end up doing has to be reasonably lucrative (or at least have the potential to be so), not require any specific time commitment, and be doable equally well from home or from a hotel room. I'm also keen that it should be sufficiently different to my day job to keep my interest up, so the most obvious things like bidding for programming projects on Rentacoder.com, or fixing up neighbors' PCs, aren't really on. Above all, it should appeal to my inner geek, otherwise my low boredom threshold will doom it to failure before I even start! So, I wonder if any of my fellow Slashdotters run little part-time ventures that they find more of an inspiration than a chore... and if they are willing to share what they do and perhaps even how much money they make doing it?"
My wife & I remodeled our previous house: tore off plaster, moved walls, rewired, tiled, etc. We hired out the roof tear off, rough plumbing work and some of the drywalling. Saved a ton of money. Eventually, it made more sense for me quit my low-paying job and become the full-time house repair dude while she worked her good job.
It's not that hard, you learn new skills, have an excuse to aquire tools, and have something to be proud of. It did take seven years, though. YMMV
This time around, we are paying others as much as we can, but we'll probably be left with a weathered-in shell.
It's also a good way to find out you your friends really are. Forget moving day, real friends help you demo and haul.
Good luck.
Build and sell PCs. Not just normal PCs but ones with nifty cut-outs (you DO have a Dremel tool, right) and flashy lights. Call them by some nifty name. When you're not home you can be working on the designs or maybe building some of the smaller bits. As this is "free time" it won't really be that unprofitable if you can build a name and find the market.
Me? I'd like to build some out of exotic woods.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You've got a college degree in math/science, right? Tutoring hopeless college kids or high school kids from middle class families can net something like $50-75 an hour, more depending on your qualifications and neighborhood. Hours are totally flexible. Hell, if ethics aren't a problem, sell term papers and coding assignments while you're at it.
open source modern art: laser taggi
I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 12, running a variety of geeky businesses from BBSes in the 80s, to 3D design studios and rendering farms in the 90s. I've had my consulting business since I incorporated it when I was 15 (with an adult business partner who I bought out at 18).
I still moonlight through a variety of ventures, none of them geek oriented. EVERY moonlighting gig I did that was geek-oriented made my life miserable. Too much geekiness can really break you, honestly.
I run a Christian Printing business that accounts for about 25% of my income, and I run it on the side, maybe 1-2 hours a day. I blog, which accounts for 10% of my income, also very part time. I've owned retail stores which became too full time to manage. I'm starting a digg-like print magazine focused on Chicago (details to come).
Everything I do moonlighting-wise is anti-geek. Much of it is hands on, without programming or thinking about technology or electronics. It keeps me fulfilled.
Stay away from moonlighting in what you do for a living. Find a hobby you can profit from. There's a billion ways to make money, but the most fun ones are the ones that don't cross into the market you're in for a living.
No, sell stuff on Craigslist. I make some good money on the side by scouring local surplus sales/auctions and picking up computers. Then I fix 'em up and sell them on CL for a profit. Get a line on all city/state/county/higher ed surplus sales and you can run around picking up all kinds of goodies.
Geophysical data processing may be what you are looking for. It fits what you are looking for, because you can do it from anywhere you have internet access, and the money is good. I have a few friends doing this kind of work from home during nights and weekends, while working full-time at their day jobs.
Typical work situation: there will be a field crew somewhere in the world, acquiring geophysical measurements from an aircraft-based sensor platform, usually for the purpose of mineral exploration. Every night, they'll FTP the day's data to you. You do the bulk of the quality control, data reduction and processing work, and then upload the processed data back to the FTP. You'd also notify the field guys about any potential problems in the data. After that, the in-house specialists will do any final processing (leveling magnetic grids, fine drift corrections, etc.) and when the fieldwork is completed, they'll also prepare the client deliverables (maps, reports, interpretations, etc.).
Hourly rates for this kind of work range anywhere from $25/hr to $80/hr ($200/day to $500/day). If there are no serious glitches in the data that need troubleshooting, a data processor with some computer skills can usually rip through a day's worth of data in 3 or 4 hours. So if you get your data at 7pm, you can be done before midnight and still get a good night's sleep and be ready for your "real" job the next day. (On the other hand, if you have a girlfriend or wife, you may get into some time sharing conflicts, because the production schedules usually don't tolerate much latency.)
Educational requirements are typically a 4-year university/college Geophysics degree, or something somewhat related, such as Physics, Engineering, Math, etc. In any case, if you have a degree, your chances are good.
Training will probably take a few weeks, for you to get some experience and develop a feel for what good and bad data look like. Essentially you are the first line of quality control, so it's up to you to quickly flag any problems that could be due to operator error, sensor malfunction, or other factors.
You may or may not have to do some selling to potential employers to get them to let you work entirely from home. However, the way the mineral exploration market is these days (base metals such as copper and nickel are expensive), this shouldn't be difficult as there is too much data to process and not enough people.
A few geophysics companies are always hiring data processors:
Just sell off some of your daytime data to the highest bidder.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Consider astrology/divination/psychic readings sort of thing.
Minimal learning required, reasonable money.
Can be done online too.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
That Bangalorese, if he's in northern India, it'd be: "Do the needful, run a software company."
This guy poses a legit question, and one that often poses ethical issues. Not only have I done a bit of moonlighting in my past, but I've always encouraged my best programmers to do a bit on the side. Without sampling that grass on the other side of the fence, those talented programmers I train are likely to hop over.
As an old programmer (I'm 44), I've got a few stories. When I worked for David Burns at HP, my previous company, National Semiconductor, needed my help badly. The work David assigned was mind-numbingly boring, and the LM628/LM629 (motor controllers) I'd worked on at National were in serious trouble without me, and frankly they were fun (my old boss, David Squires, was about the best ever). I asked Mr Burns if I could do the project as a favor to old friends at National, and he said it was up for the HP *Board of Directors* to decide! So, if HP/Burns was going to be a PITA, without any pangs of lack of integrity, I stopped asking Burns what I could or could not do.
I helped National push the LM628/LM629 into the market. Then, I quit working for Burns. As a consultant for a while, I wrote the original Simple Switcher design code (National did most of the work - bench validation). If you haven't heard of this line of products, you obviously aren't in power electronics. I enjoyed the consulting, but basically I sucked. I have this terrible desire to call stupid people stupid. It's *really* bad for consultants. So, now I'm CTO of a small company I founded, and I can't complain. Again, when my programmers feel the need for some moonlighting, I'm fully supportive. I've never lost a good one because of it.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
Or possibly just as good (in parallel) - post on CL looking for a roommate. Take your time finding a good one and Voila! it's almost like free money.
Granted you have to tone your living habits just a touch (ie, no more walking around the house in your underware, no more crazy sex in the kitchen) but honestly - $700 a month net (that's rent and 1/2 the bills) is the same as a $12,000 raise at work (before taxes). You can buy a LOT of stuff for that $8,400 per year, and honestly you don't have to do anything even remotely resembling work to do it.
I'm not saying it's for everybody - but if you have room in your house, well $8,400 a year net is a pretty good chunk of change with which to finance home upgrades (or toys.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
For a few years I made my living doing a very geeky sort of eldercare. There are an awful lot of people, mostly women over the age of seventy-five, who need a hell of a lot of skilled help that a broadly skilled geek can provide. They are usually still managing three or four bank accounts, two to ten investment accounts, about twenty to fifty annual contributions, and various other expenses. And usually dealing with one or more personal aides, who almost never speak good English and even if they do, do a lot better with somebody young, firm, and capable who keeps them on target. And they are usually slowing dispersing their possessions, which frequently involves psychologically complex claims of interest in donating things but with dozens of conditions, most of which they can't even articulate. And all with families who want all of this dealt with but aren't going to make the time to be there enough to do this and would be hobbled by family dynamics if they even tried.
Once you learn to see it that way, almost all of it is systems problems. Things that can be hacked.
Add all of this up, and, especially when you added in the families who were in the process of moving from standalone homes to senior residences, I had far more work than I was willing to take on. And since I underpriced the market by charging thirty to fifty dollars an hour, I really got to pick and choose. Flexibility mattered far more to me than the marginal income. Just think of it as consulting work. The kind where the ability to keep a good timesheet is crucial, as is the ability to bill regularly, and then get the client to pay, which, when it goes wrong, is usually just another problem you can, ironically, bill to fix.
The trick to all of this? Being capable enough that whether the problem is about bookkeeping or logistics or finding and managing a contractor, your answer can be "don't worry; I'll take care of it." If you can make that promise and keep it, you're golden. You'll probably, like me, end up needing to find one or more assistants to help out if you're not willing to commit to doing this full time. I tried to keep it all at about fifteen hours a week and while peak load (say, moves of large houses or medical crises) was quite a bit higher, on average I did just fine. Fwiw, I peaked at five assistants on a couple of big jobs. Finding and managing them was, of course, much of what I was being paid for.
There are hundreds of thousands of affluent households who are just now moving from private homes into senior residences of one sort or another and the bottom line is that these residences are institutions. And from the food to the visual esthetics to the available services and schedules, these places are just not up to the job of satisfying these people who have had decades to get used to a higher standard. The person who can fill in that gap can write their own ticket.
What I'm describing is a boom industry and will be for years to come and it uses most of the skills I learned as an IT director and consultant. Financial management, crisis management, learning to live the "pager lifestyle", handling subcontractors, and so on. Things like explaining the limitations of servers to PHBs and routing installs around union b.s. apply, too. Not to mention being able to switch from being "a suit" talking to a lawyer (or a doctor, or both at once) to climbing under a desk to see if a new outlet was done properly. But since you're working for a family, you've got waaay more flexibility than you do at a corporate job. And if you're good the word of mouth will get you as many clients as you're willing to take on.
As for the "work from home" issue, like many kinds of consulting, for every hour you spend onsite, you spend half an hour to three hours offsite. Doing research, coordinating subcontractors, and so on. If you are online and can be on the phone for a while now and then, it doesn't matter if you're home, at work, or in the middle of a bro
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.