How To Actually Make $10k A Month Coding

Summary

This video script candidly addresses the challenges of making a significant income through coding, emphasizing that the 'golden days' of easy success are over. The speaker outlines a five-step strategy for aspiring coders to achieve a monthly income of $10K, advocating specialization in a niche area, building an online presence, offering coaching or tutoring, and eventually freelancing or securing higher-paying contract jobs. The script also promotes a free business startup kit from HubSpot and encourages viewers to think creatively and strategically about their coding careers.

Takeaways

• 😀 The golden days of coding for easy high-paying jobs are over, and the competition is intensifying.
• 💡 To succeed in coding in 2024, one must be creative and adopt a different strategy than in the past.
• 💼 The speaker suggests starting a business or freelancing as a way to earn money through coding.
• 🚀 HubSpot's free business startup kit is recommended for those looking to start their own business.
• 🔑 Specialization in a niche area is advised for beginners to stand out and provide unique value.
• 🎓 The speaker shares personal experience with Pygame to illustrate the benefits of niche expertise.
• 📈 Building credibility and an online presence is crucial for demonstrating skills and attracting clients.
• 📝 Consistently posting content or networking can help establish a professional reputation in the coding community.
• 👨‍🏫 Coaching or tutoring can be a stepping stone to earning money and building a client base.
• 🔍 Freelancing is a scalable way to earn money, but standing out and showcasing professionalism is key.
• 📚 The journey to earning $10K per month involves building blocks such as freelancing, content creation, and eventually higher-paying jobs or business ventures.

Q & A

What is the main message of the video regarding making money through coding?

The main message is that while it's still possible to make a significant income through coding, the 'golden days' of easily landing high-paying jobs are over. It requires a more creative and strategic approach, including specialization, building credibility, and considering entrepreneurship.

What does the speaker suggest as the first step to start making money from coding?

The first step suggested is to specialize and learn something niche. This allows a coder to stand out in a specific area and become an authority, making it easier to get paid for their skills.

How does the speaker describe the current state of the coding job market?

The speaker describes the current job market for coders as competitive, with more money being concentrated at the top and a steeper competition landscape compared to the past.

What is the role of the free business startup kit from HubSpot mentioned in the video?

The free business startup kit from HubSpot provides nine free templates to help with brainstorming a business name, developing a business plan, and pitching ideas to potential investors. It's intended to assist in the early stages of starting a business.

What is the importance of building credibility and an online presence according to the video?

Building credibility and an online presence is crucial because it allows coders to demonstrate their skills and projects to potential employers or clients. It's a way to stand out in a competitive market and prove one's expertise.

Why does the speaker recommend starting with a niche skill when building a coding career?

Starting with a niche skill allows a coder to become an authority in that specific area, making them more valuable and sought after. It's easier to get paid for a specialized skill than to be a generalist with broad but shallow knowledge.

What are some of the ways to get a coder's name out there and build credibility?

Some ways include posting content consistently, networking with others in the field, writing blog posts or medium articles, creating tutorials, sharing projects on LinkedIn, and joining communities to establish a known presence.

How does the speaker suggest moving from tutoring to more lucrative opportunities?

The speaker suggests using the credibility and client base built through tutoring to transition into higher-paying opportunities such as freelancing, contract jobs, or full-time positions.

What is the significance of the speaker's personal experience with Pygame in the context of the video?

The speaker's experience with Pygame serves as an example of how specializing in a niche area can lead to opportunities to make money, even as a beginner, by providing value in a specific skill set.

What are some of the potential income sources for a coder after establishing a strong foundation and credibility?

Potential income sources include making money from content creation, starting a business, selling applications, taking on contract jobs, or securing a full-time position with a satisfactory salary.

Outlines

00:00

😌 The Reality of Earning Through Coding

The speaker addresses the misconception that coding is an easy path to high income, stating that the 'golden days of coding' are over and that achieving a high salary now requires more effort and creativity. They highlight that while there is still significant money to be made, it's increasingly concentrated at the top with growing competition. The speaker emphasizes the importance of having a strategy and suggests starting a business, even a small one, as a way to earn money through coding. They also introduce a free business startup kit from HubSpot, which offers templates for business planning and pitching ideas to investors, as a valuable resource for those starting out.

05:02

🎓 Specializing and Building Credibility

The speaker advises viewers to specialize in a niche area of coding to stand out and become an authority in that specific field. They share their personal experience of becoming proficient in Pygame, a Python module for creating 2D games, which allowed them to offer value and charge for their services. The speaker then recommends getting one's name out there by consistently posting content online, networking, and demonstrating skills to build credibility. They suggest writing blog posts, articles, and tutorials, as well as joining communities to share insights and projects. The aim is to create a digital presence that showcases one's abilities and accomplishments.

10:03

📈 Monetizing Skills Through Tutoring and Freelancing

The speaker outlines a step-by-step approach to gradually increase earnings in coding. Initially, they recommend coaching or tutoring as a way to start making money and building a client base. This not only provides income but also serves as a means to gather testimonials and referrals, further enhancing credibility. Once some credibility and client testimonials are established, the speaker suggests moving into freelancing. Freelancing can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per month, depending on how much effort one is willing to invest. The speaker emphasizes the importance of standing out in a crowded market by specializing in a niche and providing exceptional value to clients.

🚀 Scaling Earnings and Achieving Financial Goals

The speaker discusses strategies for scaling earnings beyond the initial stages of freelancing and tutoring. They mention content creation as a viable way to earn significant income, sharing their own experience of achieving this at a young age. Other options include starting a business, developing a SaaS product, or selling an application, although these carry higher risks and require more time. For those seeking more stable income, contract jobs or full-time positions are suggested, with the potential to combine these with freelancing and content creation to surpass the $10,000 per month mark. The speaker concludes by emphasizing that while making $10,000 per month from coding is challenging, it is achievable with the right strategy, hard work, and persistence.

Keywords

💡Coding

Coding is the process of writing computer programs in a specific programming language. In the context of the video, coding is presented as a means to achieve financial success, but it's also emphasized that the 'golden days' of coding for easy high-paying jobs are over. The script mentions that to succeed in coding now requires more creativity and specialization.

💡Ten K per month

This term refers to earning ten thousand dollars per month, which is presented as a significant financial goal in the video. The entire narrative is built around the strategies and steps one can take to achieve this income level through coding, emphasizing that while it's challenging, it's achievable with the right approach.

💡Specialization

Specialization in the video refers to becoming an expert in a specific area within coding, rather than being a generalist who knows a little about many things. The speaker suggests that by becoming a niche authority, one can stand out and offer unique value, which can lead to higher earnings. An example given is becoming proficient in 'pygame' to create 2D games.

💡Freelancing

Freelancing is a form of self-employment where a person offers their services to clients on a flexible and independent basis. The video suggests freelancing as a step towards earning ten K per month by building a reputation and gaining experience in a specialized area of coding.

💡Business Startup Kit

The Business Startup Kit mentioned in the script is a resource provided by HubSpot, which includes templates for business planning, pitching ideas to investors, and calculating startup costs. It's presented as a helpful tool for those looking to start a business, particularly in the context of coding and software development.

💡Credibility

Credibility in this video refers to the recognition and trust one gains in their field, which is crucial for establishing a successful career in coding. The speaker advises building credibility through networking, posting content online, and demonstrating expertise to attract clients and higher-paying jobs.

💡Coaching and Tutoring

Coaching and tutoring are ways to share one's knowledge and skills with others, which can be a stepping stone to earning money and building a reputation. The video suggests these activities as a means to start earning income and gaining testimonials that can later be used to increase one's credibility.

💡Content Creation

Content creation involves producing material such as blog posts, video content, or social media posts to share knowledge and attract an audience. In the video, content creation is highlighted as a way to establish an online presence, demonstrate expertise, and potentially monetize through various means such as ads, sponsorships, or affiliate marketing.

💡Contract Jobs

Contract jobs are temporary work engagements where a developer is hired for a specific project or a set number of hours. The video mentions contract jobs as a way to earn a higher hourly rate compared to full-time employment and as a stepping stone towards achieving the financial goal of ten K per month.

💡Full-Time Position

A full-time position refers to a regular job where an individual works for an employer with set hours and often benefits. The script suggests that while entry-level full-time positions may not immediately provide ten K per month, they can be combined with other income streams like freelancing or content creation to reach this financial milestone.

💡SaaS Product

SaaS stands for Software as a Service, and a SaaS product is a software application that is delivered over the internet on a subscription basis. The video briefly mentions starting a business by building a SaaS product as a potential way to achieve the ten K per month income, although it acknowledges this as a riskier and longer-term endeavor.

Highlights

The golden days of coding are behind us; it's harder to land high-paying jobs quickly.

Coding still offers significant earning potential, but money is concentrated at the top with increased competition.

To make $10K per month coding in 2024, one must be more creative and strategic.

Running a business or being part of one early on is a key way to make money through coding.

HubSpot's free business startup kit can aid in business planning and pitching to investors.

A five-step approach is introduced to build up to making $10K per month coding.

Specializing in a niche area as a beginner can help stand out and provide value.

Becoming a niche authority allows for higher earning potential in that specific area.

Freelancing in a specific niche can lead to higher earnings and client base.

Building credibility and demonstrating skills online is crucial in today's digital age.

Consistently posting content or networking can help establish a professional presence.

Coaching or teaching can be a stepping stone to earning money and building credibility.

Referrals and testimonials from coaching or tutoring can enhance one's professional reputation.

Freelancing is a scalable way to increase earnings with a unique and credible offering.

Appearing professional and experienced can lead to better success in freelancing.

Combining multiple income streams such as freelancing, tutoring, and content creation can help reach the $10K per month goal.

Contract jobs or full-time positions can supplement income towards the $10K per month target.

The journey to making $10K per month coding involves building blocks, hard work, and strategy.

Transcripts

Everybody wants to teach you how to make ten K per month,

how to achieve your dream life through coding.

When the reality is this is hard.

Most of you will fail, and the strategy to do this

in 2024 is significantly different than it used to be.

The first thing you need to understand

is that the golden days of coding are behind us. No longer

can you learn to code for two months and land a six figure job at Google.

Now there is still an insane amount of money in this space,

but more and more of it's being concentrated at the top

and the competition is getting steeper and steeper.

That said, you can still absolutely make ten K per month coding.

You need to be a little bit more creative, and I'll share with you

what I mean by that.

But first, as we all know, the obvious way to make a lot of money through coding

is by running a business, or at least being a part of one in the early days.

Now, you're probably watching this video because you

want to earn money through coding, and that means starting a business is key,

even if it's just a small one and servicing

something like a few freelancing clients.

Now, that means that you need to check out this

free business startup kit from a good friend of the channel, HubSpot.

This Business startup kit gives you nine free templates that can help

you brainstorm your business's name, develop a business plan,

and even how to pitch your idea to potential investors.

You can even utilize the Business Startup Cost calculator and feasibility

study template to make sure you know what you're getting into before you start.

I've left a link in the description

where you can check this out completely for free.

Now, as someone who's run multiple businesses,

I can say that

this is something I definitely

wish I had, especially during the early days of the business.

Could have saved me a ton of time and thousands of dollars.

I definitely recommend you check it out.

I want to give a big thank you to HubSpot for making this resource,

and tons of others completely free, and for sponsoring today's video.

So now we're going to get into a five step approach

where I talk to you about exactly what you need to do in order

to build up to the point where you can be making ten K per month.

Now, most of us aren't

just going to start a business tomorrow that starts making a ton of money.

We need to have a strategy and we need to have a structured approach.

And that's why the first thing we need to do is actually understand

what it is we're going to be doing to make ten K per month

and start to develop some kind of strategy or plan

so that we can work our way towards that goal.

This isn't something that's

going to happen in a few days, or even most likely a few months.

It does take time to get to that income level,

but once you're able to hit a threshold like ten K per month,

it really can become quite exponential

and you can start to realize how much more money there is in this field

and how you can capture just a little piece of it.

So the first thing I recommend doing, and what I personally did

to start making money from coding, even when I was more of a beginner,

was specialize and learn something that's niche.

Now a lot of people will disagree with me.

They'll say, hey, you should be a generalist.

You should know everything.

Now, as much as that's great, the issue with that is if you know

everything, you don't stand out in one specific area.

If you're a senior developer and you have 20 years of experience, that's fantastic.

You can just go get a job and you can make $300,000 per year.

But for those of us that are just starting out,

we need to make sure that we become a niche authority that we actually

are really good in one certain area, and we can provide enough value

in that area that we can get paid.

If we just know a little bit of Python, a little bit of JavaScript,

we can build some basic applications.

Well, so can everybody else.

We need to be good in one area so that people specifically looking for

that skill set will find us and are willing to pay

us, rather than someone who just knows a little bit.

Now, to give you the exact way

that I did this when I was younger, I got really, really good at pygame.

Pygame is a Python module for making simple 2D games.

I got so good at this

that a lot of other students in my class and from other schools,

actually wanted to pay me money to complete their homework assignments.

Not the most ethical thing in the world, but since I was a really good at Pi game,

I actually had enough value in that area where I could sell my skillset.

Students needed Pi game projects completed.

They needed it specifically in that framework.

I knew exactly what the professors and teachers were looking for,

and I could get all of them A's really easily.

Beyond that, I also set up some freelancing gigs online.

Same thing specifically for Pi Game,

and I started making a few hundred dollars a month doing Pi game projects.

And this isn't what was going to lead me to ten K per month.

But it started to show me that if I knew an individual skill

and I was really good in one area,

even if I wasn't a professional software developer and I wasn't at that point,

I could still make money and I could still monetize my skill.

So the first thing that you need to do here is pick a field to specialize in.

It doesn't need to be as niche or something like Pi game, but

it should be a specific framework or a specific library.

Or maybe you're really good at building characters in unity, or you're really,

really good at developing fast API APIs in Python, right?

It doesn't matter what it is, but you need to pick one area.

You can broaden the scope eventually,

but you need to start where you can penetrate as deep as possible,

rather than trying to have this whole broad scope and do everything.

Now, once you've picked your niche

and you actually have a bit of a strategy here,

the next thing you need to do is get your name out there.

You need to start building

credibility and demonstrating that you actually have skills.

Having a resume today, it's just not enough to put on a resume.

All your skills, all your projects, everything you know, it just doesn't

matter.

Employers don't care about that as much as they used to.

And in this digital age, you really need to be presenting your skills online.

I know a lot of you didn't want to hear that,

but my recommendation here is to post content consistently,

or at least to be networking with other individuals in this space

so that you can start building a group of people

that actually know what you do and what you're capable of.

And when I say post content, that doesn't mean you need to become a vlogger,

doesn't mean you need to be a professional medium post writer.

It just means that you need to start

putting something out there so that people can actually find you.

Or when they do eventually find you, they have something to look at.

They have something to see.

They can actually have proof

that you know what you're doing and you've built something.

You have credibility.

That is where content comes in handy.

It's something you can point to

and that people can find when they look up your name.

That's why you're posting content,

not because you're going to be making money from the content you're posting.

Now. That could happen eventually.

And that's actually exactly what ended up happening to me.

But the point is, you need to put your name out there in some way or another.

So I typically recommend for people that maybe don't want to be on

camera or film something, write some different blog posts, write

some medium articles, do basic tutorials in the niche that you're really good at.

Share some of the projects you built on LinkedIn.

Make a little story about how you actually develop that.

Start just sharing insight.

Join some different communities.

Make sure that people know who you are

and they know what skills that you have to offer.

And this will be slow.

But if you can do this consistently and keep building up proof

of what you've actually done, it's only going to help you in the future.

Whether you do decide to get a job, whether you move more into freelancing,

or do some of the other methods, I'm going to talk about in this video.

So once you've started to develop a little bit of credibility online,

or you least have something that people can go

and look at when they look up your name,

the next thing I recommend you do is some coaching or teaching.

Now keep in mind this is not what's going to make you ten K per month.

These are the slow building blocks.

And personally what I did to eventually reach that milestone.

So we want to start by making a little bit of money online,

and then work our way up slowly so that we build credibility along the way

so we can eventually then land those really high paying clients

or those high paying jobs.

So that's why I'm suggesting at this stage, we want to start coaching.

We want to start tutoring.

We want to start sharing our knowledge with individuals.

This is where you can actually start making some real money.

For example, when I was as young as 16 years

old, I was doing tutoring for 20 or $30 per hour.

I was tutoring in computer science.

I was actually tutoring in things like math and regular science,

and I was tutoring and pretty much anything that someone would pay me for

that got me my first client, because one of my teachers knew that

I was really good in computer science, recommended me to one of the parents

or one of the students who was struggling in one of his other classes.

And there we go.

I tutored him from there.

I got recommendations and referrals, and I started to build up a really small

tutoring business

where people in the school knew that if they needed computer science help,

I could help them with it.

Now the same thing happened as I moved to university.

I started getting a few gigs online because I had a little bit of content.

People would find me or if I would post listings

and like the university hallway, people

could actually go and see my name and go, okay,

this guy actually is good at computer science.

He has a few articles. He knows what he's talking about.

I'll go to him and I'll pay him $40 per hour for coaching.

And you get the idea. Here.

You can really slowly start to build up a bit of a tutoring business.

You can build a bit of a client base,

and then you can start getting referrals and testimonials, which again

only prove your credibility and provide you with assets that you can monetize

later on. You're not going to do this overnight.

It's not something that's going to happen extremely quickly.

So these are the easiest steps that I can think of

to start building up towards that skill.

So once you've made a little bit of money from tutoring and coaching,

you have some clients, you have some credibility.

You now have a great thing to add to your resume, to add to your portfolio,

and now we can move on to the next step.

We can start really moving into the area where we make some real money.

So now at this point we've built some building blocks.

We've developed a bit of a strategy, we've networked, we put some content out there

and we've done a little bit of coaching and tutoring.

So we have real people that can back up our skills.

It's now time to actually start making some real money.

And what I recommend here is to start freelancing now.

Freelancing is something that can make you as little

as a few hundred dollars per month

to as much as tens of thousands of dollars per month.

It's really up to where you want to take it.

But the natural next step

before we start talking about something like landing a full time job.

So in order to start freelancing, we need to start letting people know

that we actually do freelance work.

And that can start from your social media accounts changing even something

like your Instagram bio to say, hey, I do software freelancing, contact me here.

Making a post on LinkedIn, making a post on the different content platforms

you've been using,

and just starting to make people aware that you do freelance work.

Beyond that, posting on sites like Upwork and Fiverr

that can give you some organic discoverability.

Make a really good listing in a really niche area

that's not being covered by a lot of other developers, and I guarantee

you will see some success and you will see some people coming to you.

This is exactly what I did.

Again, I actually posted a bunch of listings on Fiverr.

I have an entire video of how I did this.

I made my first $500 freelancing.

You can check it out here.

And I have another video talking

about how to price freelancing projects, so I'll put that on the screen as well.

The point is, you absolutely can make money with freelancing,

but only if you're not another freelance developer.

What I mean by that is you need to stand out.

You need to have credibility.

You need to have something backing you up.

There needs to be a reason someone would pick you over

picking one of the other 10,000 people that are doing the same thing now.

That's why we built those building blocks up.

We got our testimonial, we had proof, and now we're specializing in an area

where we're actually really, really good and people want our skill set.

We're not begging people to pay us.

They're begging us to do work for them because they really need what it is

that we're offering.

That is the key here.

You need to provide more value than you're getting from the person.

A lot of people think, hey, I can learn coding for 1 or 2 months.

I can go on a freelancing side immediately.

I'm going to make a ton of money. It doesn't work that way.

Everybody tries to do that. You need to be different.

You need to stand out.

And most of all, you need to act like a professional

and someone who's not doing this for the first time,

even if it's your first time.

I hate to say it, but fake it until you make it.

The more professional

you seem, the more experienced you are, the better success you're going to have.

And I can say that from experience, as someone who's done this for a very,

very long time and taught a lot of people how to do this as well.

So ideally, at this point

you've done some freelancing, you've made a little bit of money,

you've worked on some projects, and you've continued to build that network

and that credibility and to provide proof of what you actually know.

You are actually a developer.

You can do work, you can build out projects,

and you can point people to examples of exactly where you've done that.

It's only once you've built that up which only comes through hard work

and experience.

You can actually start making a lot of money.

Now, at this point, we're probably not making ten K per month.

Most of you, if you're doing freelancing, I'm

probably making a few hundred dollars for a month.

If you're lucky, maybe a few thousand dollars for a month.

Now. You can definitely scale freelancing up and make, well,

more than $10,000 for a month.

But that is a full time business, and that does take a lot of time.

So what I'm going to give you here is a few different ideas

for how you can hit the ten K per month goal

after you've kind of built those different building blocks.

Now the first thing you could do is you can continue with content.

It's actually fairly simple to make ten K per month from content.

I've been doing that now for over five years,

and I started making ten K per month when I was just 19 years old.

The reason from that is that there's so many different ways

to monetize your content, and at minimum, you can drive people

from your content to your freelancing and get paid that way.

Obviously, if you have a lot of viewership, you can do ad revenue.

If you have a decent kind of niche of people

that are watching your content, you can get paid through sponsors,

you can do affiliate deals.

There's so much in the content world and it's very exponential.

Once you get into it.

But I also understand

most of you don't want to do that, or it's not something that you're going

to excel at.

Now, beyond that, if we move past content, you could start your own business.

You could build your own SaaS product, you could sell an application.

Those are the riskier of the few.

They take a lot longer to do and much more susceptible to failure.

But it is obviously an option

and something if you're willing to take the risk,

you could try and could pay off massively beyond that.

What I would look for, for

most of you is either contract jobs or full time positions.

A lot of companies don't need developers year round.

They don't want to hire a full time dev,

but they're happy to hire developers on contract

that they'll be paying for maybe ten hours per week, 15 hours per week.

I've done that quite a bit,

and typically

the contract will have a higher hourly rate than if you were a full time employee

because you don't have benefits, you're doing minimum hours, etc.

for example, right now I currently have a contract for $100 per hour freelancing.

I don't do it too often.

It's maybe five hours per week,

but it is something that I do have and it's written up.

Any hours you work for us, when we tell you

we will pay you this amount of money,

and obviously the next step beyond that will be to land a full time job

that's paying you a salary you're happy with.

Now, most entry level positions

are not going to be paying $120,000 per year, or ten K per month,

but you might be making 60, 70, 80 K if you're lucky, maybe 90 to $100,000.

And then combining that with a little bit of freelancing, a little bit of tutoring,

maybe content on the side, you can easily surpass ten K per month.

Personally, my first ten K per month came from a variety of different sources.

I did a little bit of freelancing.

I was making some money from content.

I made a little bit of money from jobs.

I was working kind of part time contract jobs weren't even related to coding,

but I did eventually hit ten K per month.

From there, I started to realize what I was

really good at and where I could actually grow

and scale the business that ended up being content and teaching.

So I went down that avenue, and now I've made $50,000 months, $100,000 a month.

But it all started from those building blocks that I walked you through.

It took me many years to even make my first $1,000 per month from coding.

Now, I hope it doesn't take you that long

because you have guidance like these videos,

but that's what I wanted to share here.

Making ten K per month is by no means easy, but it's also not impossible.

You have the willpower if you have the right strategy,

and if you're willing to follow along with the hard work

and go through those steps, it's definitely something achievable.

With that said, I will wrap up the video here.

I hope you enjoyed.

If you did leave a like subscribe and I will see you in the next one.

Maybe.