Lots of people start learning to lawmaking in the hope of getting well-paid programming jobs further down the route. But what if you could actually larn how to brand money coding while you're still a beginner? Is it possible to get paid to acquire to lawmaking?

In this guest mail, Joe Previte tells the states how to brand money coding and how he was able to earn $5,000 in his beginning twelvemonth of learning to lawmaking, despite only spending $30 on his didactics.

If you're ready to learn how to make money coding from home or at in-person programming side jobs, Joe's experience can give y'all some real-world tips and insights about how to get paid to learn code!

Okay — here's Joe! Enjoy :)

Disclosure: I'm a proud affiliate for some of the resources mentioned in this commodity. If you buy a product through my links on this folio, I may get a small-scale committee for referring you. Thank you!

Table of Contents

  1. Commencement Learning to Lawmaking
  2. State Your First Internship or Job
  3. Stay Motivated
  4. Key Takeaways
  5. FAQs

In 2017, I made the decision to leave my graduate school program and pursue a career in coding. My goal was to get paid to learn to code by seeking out freelance coding jobs for beginners along the fashion. While spending less than $30 on online courses and resources, I earned shut to $5,000 in my offset year.

I also recently landed a full-time job as a front-end engineer. I proved that information technology's possible to make coin coding fifty-fifty if you lot're a beginner.

Here'due south a quick breakdown of how I was able to earn money programming in 2017, and how much my rates for part time coding jobs were. These numbers are earlier taxes:

πŸ’» $3,510 – From an internship with a web blueprint agency ($25/60 minutes)

πŸ‘¨‍🏫 $1,338 – From TAing/instructing for a local meetup ($xv/hour for TA'ing and $25/hour for instructing)

πŸ’° Full: $4,848

Working on a laptop

The purpose of sharing these numbers, which are by no means impressive, is to prove you that you can code online and earn coin sooner than you think.

In fact, Laurence landed her first tech side gig in just two weeks subsequently starting to learn! She only knew basic HTML/CSS and had an unrelated degree in history, but she landed a programming side job profitable a web programmer for $xv/hr. Y'all can really make coin while learning to lawmaking.

By the cease of this commodity, you'll know how to start learning to code, how to make coin coding, and how to proceed yourself motivated. Along the way, I'll share everything that helped me to develop my skills and make money while learning to code.

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How to Start Learning to Code

Before yous can start making money coding, you need to begin learning to code! The first question you're going to ask is, "Where practise I start?" I asked myself the same question, but ultimately settled on using freeCodeCamp because it'south free and well-organized, and has a strong community.

freeCodeCamp is a website where you learn to code past completing challenges and projects to get certificates. They organize their curriculum in an like shooting fish in a barrel-to-grasp manner and break everything up into challenges. It feels similar a game and the structure provides a articulate path to the end goal of a certificate.

πŸ’Έ Supplement Gratis Resources With Paid Products

There are then many free resource out in that location, only in that location are likewise resources definitely worth paying for. You'll quickly make it back once you start to code for money!

I bought a few courses, but the only 1 I actually completed was The Web Developer Bootcamp past Filly Steele. If you're looking for a not bad starting point, I recommend that course. Information technology teaches y'all HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery, Node.js, Limited.js, and MongoDB in a short period of time.

Creating projects online

Information technology's important to supplement your gratis coding resources with paid resources, because the free resources volition only have y'all then far. Usually, the costless pieces give y'all an introduction. The advantage to a paid course is that it will go into more depth. They will take yous across the beginner level and help you accelerate more apace.

πŸ’‘ Not sure how to get started? Check out Codecademy'due south Spider web Development Career Path that will have y'all from no-code to an in-demand junior spider web developer.

Other paid platforms that offer more avant-garde coding courses include:

  1. Coursera
  2. edX
  3. Mammoth Interactive
  4. Udacity

Read more virtually the xi best Coursera coding courses for aspiring programmers hither.

🀝 Bring together a Coding Customs (Online or In Person)

Community, customs, and more than community. I can't stress this enough. Learning to code is tough and the best mode to overcome challenges is with the back up of others. Knowing people who are facing the same struggles (or have already worked through them) makes information technology 100x easier for you.

Observe a few people or a group with whom you lot can connect. This could also give you connections to beginner programming jobs!

Chingu is one of my favorite online communities. It's a pocket-sized, focused customs that developed from inside the freeCodeCamp community. Afterwards taking a placement survey, you bring together an online cohort of people at a similar skill level.

Thanks to joining this group, I made new friendships with people who held me accountable on my journey. Nosotros built projects together and grew together. Fifty-fifty today, I nonetheless keep in contact with some of them.

πŸ’― My other personal favorite is the #100DaysOfCode community on Twitter, which you tin can larn more about in this interview on the Learn To Code With Me Podcast. I'll talk more nigh this subsequently, but and then many coders utilize Twitter. If yous don't accept information technology, cheque information technology out.

Many online coding courses and bootcamps also have their ain individual communities y'all can join. Launch School, for case, is an online developer bootcamp that gives its students access to a community forum where they share studying tips, assist each other with problems and talk code.

Working at a computer

Meetup is a great place to get-go for in-person groups. If you want 1 on Facebook, check out freeCodeCamp groups. Some are location-specific too.

According to Danny Thompson, who went from gas station fry melt to working at Google, "Through meetup communities through freeCodeCamp and many other websites, I was able to learn how to plan. I was able to create an astonishing network of developers and people that I could tap into in a moment's notice. But the bigger thing is, I was able to have people that I tin can rely on and fall back on."

"I owe everything in my career to meetups […] where the resource and the compounding knowledge just exists in a way that you can absorb it in your ain time and pace."

If you're serious about getting paid to lawmaking, surroundings yourself with other coders. You'll acquire more, you'll progress faster, and you lot'll be happier. It might also aid you earn money programming for connections you lot make through these groups. For example, maybe one of your beau grouping members knows of an opportunity to code online and earn coin, but they're too busy to apply or their skills don't fit. They could pass the details on to you!

🎧 Listen to Coding Podcasts

When you tin can't find time to sit downward and learn at your computer, turn on a podcast. Information technology'southward a unproblematic way to do some off-screen learning. You can also make amend use of your commute time–fifty-fifty if it'south only 10 minutes. You'll at least exist hearing and thinking about lawmaking, even if you can't be writing it.

Hither are a few to help get you started:

  • Larn to Code With Me
  • CodeNewbie
  • SyntaxFM (this one's a little flake more avant-garde simply will assistance you get past the beginner phase)
  • Launch Schoolhouse Podcast

πŸ‘©‍πŸ’» Make Coding a Habit

Habits are difficult to brand and even harder to pause. What if you could make coding a habit you never wanted to interruption? Imagine where information technology would take you lot and the discipline you lot'll take to code for coin in the future.

The all-time style to create a new habit is past doing it every day. This is why Alexander Kallaway created the #100DaysOfCode movement on Twitter.

The basic premise is to code every day for an hour, for 100 days. Sounds impossible, right? You could never detect the time. I thought the aforementioned thing. Then I inverse the rules and simply coded for thirty minutes a twenty-four hour period. You can read more about my beginning #100DaysOfCode feel here.

⏳ Fifty-fifty if you can but do five minutes a day, exercise it. It will be worth it.

Once you're ready to earn money programming, you'll already exist accustomed to sitting downward every day to spend time in a code editor.

woman coding

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How to Make Money Programming: viii Tips to Detect Gigs

Some of you are probably thinking, "Yeah, I can relate to everything you're proverb, merely how do I actually brand money coding?"

When I was asking that question, I decided to seek advice from a well-known programmer. His advice completely changed my entire perspective on getting paid to code.

I asked, "How will I know when I'm prepare to code for money and beginning applying for jobs?"

He said this:

"It's worth applying now instead of waiting for the right moment. Because by the time you experience ready, in reality you were prepare months ago."

The bespeak is, you can start coding online and earning money style sooner than you lot think. My showtime internship started in June 2017. I'd simply been coding for half dozen months. Although I found the right opportunity at the right time, it was the decision to start looking for function fourth dimension coding jobs that helped me get there.

The worst that can happen is someone says you're not the right candidate for their job, in which case you keep coding and effort applying to other coding jobs for beginners later.

Here are 8 tips to help you find your first internship or beginner programming job while you're still learning to lawmaking.

🏒 Reach Out to Local/Family Businesses

As a beginner trying to make money coding for the first time, information technology'southward nice to find low-force per unit area gigs that assist your community. Ask your friends, family, or business organization owners in your local area if they need help building a website or revamping their current 1. Or find businesses with terrible websites and offer to build them a website for cheap. For example, outset by checking out your local coffee shop, hair salon or mom and popular eatery's website to see if there are whatsoever opportunities there.

This tin be a great way to gain feel, beef up your portfolio, brand connections in your community and get paid to learn to code!

women working on laptop

For example, Danny Thompson earned $1,800 for revamping a local Mexican eatery's website. How did he country this gig? He simply talked to the director spur-of-the-moment i evening when he was eating in that location. That's how easy it can exist to detect freelance programming jobs for beginners!

πŸ“± Share Your Progress With Friends and on Social Media

Forth with reaching out to local/family businesses direct, y'all can also share what you're doing; it'll benefit your job search and ability to find work. It shows your friends and family unit that you know how to code, and they'll think of you when they demand assist or know someone who has an opportunity to earn coin programming.

4 friends have reached out to me for assist with websites. Two offered to pay me. Voila: more programming side jobs helping me get paid to learn to code!

This wouldn't have happened if I'd kept my coding journey to myself. They knew because I shared my progress on Twitter and Facebook. I recommend doing the same. Even if y'all help someone out for free, information technology'll get you exposure and a potential reference to aid you lot find your commencement paid coding gig!

social media apps on phone

For example, Sarah Greer, a homeschooling mom turned freelance developer, made her get-go by telling her friends nearly her progress. "I was telling all of my friends, hey, I'm doing this affair," she says, "And I had one friend who said, 'Well, I actually know this guy. He's got this local business, and he wants a website, merely he doesn't know anything about it.' And I was like, 'Okay, permit'south just exercise that. Let's go far touch with this guy.' Then I ended upwardly building his website."

She goes on to say, "I also had a fellow student in [my] grade, and she had landed a job doing a landing folio for a client. She contacted me and she's like, 'I don't feel comfortable with this JavaScript stuff.' Can you lot exercise that part? And I was like, admittedly, which is hilarious because I was still learning it at the fourth dimension."

For even so some other example, Adda Birnir says: "[My friend] had a friend who needed a website built. She told her, 'Oh, I know somebody who is smart and hardworking and is trying to learn this and therefore is not going to charge you a lot to do information technology.' So, she put me in touch with this adult female. She wanted a WordPress blog and I was like, 'Alright, I'grand going to effigy this out.' I probably charged her $500 or something. And I took my little HTML and CSS skills and started playing around with WordPress and just figured it out!"

When you decide yous want to get paid to learn code, that means you lot don't have to be an expert to accept a gig. It means the gig is like your homework; it but comes with a check!

πŸ’» Join a Freelancing Site

Another fashion to observe paid beginner programming jobs as you lot're learning to lawmaking is past using freelancing sites that connect you to coding projects and clients, such every bit Fiverr, Upwork and Freelancer.

Start with simpler coding jobs and keep your bids low in the kickoff. On Upwork, y'all tin can filter by Experience Level to notice entry-level/freelance coding jobs for beginners. As you learn, yous'll be able to make money coding with more circuitous, higher-paid coding projects.

In the beginning, taking on freelance jobs like building unproblematic websites or working on existing sites or applications is best. Here'south more about how to land your first freelance client. A quick glance at entry-level web development gigs on Upwork shows that you'll probably be able to earn $20-40 / hr with freelance programming jobs for beginners.

To stand up out from other freelancers on these platforms, avoid these freelancer mistakes and learn how to write the perfect freelance proposal and you'll exist on the right track to making coin while learning to lawmaking.

Computer mouse

Chris Misterek used Upwork to double his previous full-fourth dimension salary. He says "Once I had asked everybody that I knew personally to build a website, and they either said yes, and the bulk of those who said no, I had to figure out some other way to find people to put projects in my pipeline and have a consistent amount of work to be able to, you lot know, have income from my family unit. And then, and then that's when I started looking into Upwork."

So I made my profile, I went crazy, just applying to anything that I could notice. And sure plenty, I got naught for the first three months. But I just kept at it, kept applying and then lo and behold, finally, somebody reached out to me and wanted to hire me for a really small project." Within but eighteen months, he had doubled his bacon.

Some other example: After two years, Kyle Prinsloo's freelancing side gig matched his full-fourth dimension salary.

➡️ Here's how to make your start $ane,000 through freelancing.

πŸ’¬ Join Local Slack Groups

Networking is key when information technology comes to earning money while learning to code. Some other fashion to network yourself into a paid gig? I of the best places to find paid programming jobs is in your local Slack groups. If you do a Google search for tech organizations in your surface area, the chances are good that they accept a Slack grouping where you can potentially find opportunities to code for money.

Since I'm based out of Arizona in the US, these are the groups I found:

  • ArizonaWP – local WordPress community
  • #yesphx – local startup customs

I plant ii jobs through Slack. One was my first internship as a web developer in the Arizona WordPress Slack group. They had a #jobs channel where I saw a posting for an internship. Afterward messaging the person who posted it, introducing myself, and sharing my portfolio, I landed the internship and officially started to earn money programming.

Two men on laptops

The second paid coding gig I found was a Meetup TA/Instructor position through the #yesphx Slack group. I did the aforementioned matter as before–messaged the person request if the opportunity was available, sent my portfolio, and and so was hired!

In that location are lots of opportunities on Slack channels out there to code online and earn money! Practice some research on the tech customs where y'all want to observe a task, join them, and become chatting.

πŸ’­ Exist Open to Coding Hybrid Roles to Make Money

My first full-time job in tech was in digital marketing. How did I get it if I didn't take previous experience or a degree in the field? Simple: they hired me because I knew how to code.

When offering me the job, my boss wanted me to serve in a hybrid part of marketing and web evolution. I fifty-fifty negotiated a higher salary because of my self-taught tech skills.

When you lot're looking to brand money coding, be open to opportunities that aren't only coding-related. Y'all might notice something y'all weren't fifty-fifty looking for because of your new skills.

Consider taking on hybrid or "tech adjacent" roles that aren't all near coding (but can assistance you learn to code faster in some cases) when you're offset learning to lawmaking and desire to brand coin. Examples of this include πŸ‘‡

  • Technical writing : Write content like technical guides, which can help yous empathize the concepts amend yourself. Avg. salary: $34.14/60 minutes
  • Tech support: Remote client service positions are often available. Avg. salary: $17.47/hour
  • Website theme edifice: Can be washed on a CMS like WordPress, or even custom themes from scratch. $45-100+ per 60 minutes
  • QA or software testing: Run tests to find flaws in developers' coding. $27.87/hour
  • Data entry: Move data from one format to some other. Potential earnings: $16.02/60 minutes
  • Social media management: Manage social pages on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or a blog. You tin earn an avg. of $18.37/hour

Having a foot in the door in the tech world tin can be powerful, fifty-fifty if coding isn't your primary duty in that outset role! Logan Tran, for instance, started out with a job in quality assurance and became a junior software engineer two years later.

✍️ Start a Blog

Constitute your personal make, build trust, and attract more than clients past starting a blog. You can write about your coding journeying, share industry news and write near other topics that involvement you. In one case yous've built up your audience, a blog can also earn yous money through monetization strategies similar advertisements, sponsored ads, and chapter marketing. Yous can also create a Services/Contact page to let clients know yous're open up to paid coding gigs.

If y'all go around 1,000 folio views per month, y'all could make around $10-$25 per month in advertizing revenue. That'southward not a huge amount, simply if you manage to build your audience and get more viewers, you could earn a whole lot more! Ryan Robinson, for example, started a blog that earns over $327,000 annually.

You can get started with a web hosting service similar Bluehost, DreamHost, WP Engine, or HostGator.

man blogging

πŸ† Enter Coding Competitions

While you lot'll accept to take a bit more experience for this one, entering online coding competitions can actually win you lot greenbacks prizes if you lot rank among the superlative participants. This is a fun, unique way to get paid to code!

CodeChef, for example, is a coding contest site that holds competitions called Cook-Off and LunchTime. If you lot score in the height x globally you could win $100. HackerEarth is some other coding challenge site that offers a range of cash prizes for winning various coding challenges. Prizes are frequently in the thousands of dollars.

Entering these competitions is a great fashion to do your skills, build up your portfolio, and potentially win absurd cash prizes. You may not exist able to earn a ton from this method, especially if you're just starting out, only it can be a great way to motivate yourself to take on new challenges and earn a petty extra cash along the way.

πŸ“±Create your ain apps

Obviously you'll need to be a scrap farther forth than learning HTML/CSS to do this, but if yous're learning mobile app development, you could put together gratuitous apps with ads or paid ads.

With a scrap of luck, you might be able to make money programming mobile apps. To make a decent corporeality, you'll need to really dedicate time to marketing and treat it like a business. If y'all're still learning coding skills, you could fifty-fifty use a no-code or low-code tool to build it. Or, instead of an app, lawmaking a plugin or WordPress theme or other online tool you could list on a marketplace to kickoff earning money.

The apps that are in the meridian 200 apps on the app shop earn effectually $82,500 every day. The top 800 apps earn around $3,500 daily. Of course, you'll need to manage your expectations here, but there's a lot of potential if y'all discover the right niche and build a great app.

app store

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How to Not Requite Up While Coding and Looking for Work

Whether your intention is to change careers or figure out how to make money coding from home on the side, it can be frustrating when y'all don't hit your goal as soon every bit you lot'd similar. But don't give up! Here are a few ways to go on pushing through.

πŸ€“ Proceed a Growth Mindset

This field of programming is one where you'll e'er be learning. Keep a growth mindset. Remember, intelligence is not fixed. You are not born smart or dumb. You can ever acquire more and grow. The book Dust: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth goes into more depth about how the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent only passion and persistence.

Always go along an middle out for something new to larn, and remember the words of Gandhi:

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn every bit if you were to live forever."

It can also be helpful to remember that all successful developers started somewhere. Look at old blog posts or social media posts of people you admire or who are where you desire to be to see where they started.

For example, married couple Maxence Henneron & Oxana Ivanchenko built a successful app for keeping homes clean and organized. They are earning $40K in monthly recurring revenue. But it didn't necessarily come easy. Oxana didn't accept a tech background and learned to code merely before they built the app.

If you look back at her older tweets, y'all'll see how far she'southward come. In 2019, for example, she tweeted "Went to my first meetup today nearly #reactjs. I was so scared to go, even cried, because I thought that I was not experienced plenty in programming. But actually everything went well! Thanks to @MaxenceHenneron who brought me there even though I was really scared."

Compare that to what she achieved in 2021:

sweepy.app tweet

You can also join forums/communities like freeCodeCamp's Y'all Tin Practise This! forum, where developers share their victories and struggles.

⏰ Wake upwardly Early to Brand More than Time for Coding

If you're not progressing as fast as you'd like, see if you lot can brand more than time to study by waking upwards early.

When I didn't take plenty time, I started waking up at five:30 am to go far a half hr before my twenty-four hours started. I don't do this anymore, but it was a key slice in helping me progress faster.

It wasn't fun, only it was worth it.

According to Kazumi Karbowski (@Kaziski_) on Twitter, "I recently switched from late dark coding to early morn coding (I'yard a mom of ii lil ones at domicile and a office time chore). I've been loving it so much."

Check out The 5AM Society: Own Your Morning. Drag Your Life for even more tips nearly maximizing your productivity in the morning.

πŸ–₯️ Do Another #100DaysOfCode

I was close to finishing my second round of #100DaysOfCode and my friend asked, "What are yous going to practice one time you cease?"

My respond? "Celebrate, take a calendar week off, then start the next circular."

Coding

The dazzler of the field of programming is that there will always be a new framework, tool, or technology for you to acquire in the about future. Information technology is a forever-irresolute manufacture. At that place will always exist more than to learn, more than ways to improve, and more ways to grow. Remember, you don't have to know everything to earn money programming.

How to Make Money Coding: Central Takeaways

Later reading my article, I promise you can leave knowing these three things:

  1. You can learn to code on your own. I spent $30 on Udemy courses (and only actually finished 1 of them) and however launched my career. Anyone can learn to lawmaking–at any historic period, with any amount of fourth dimension. All you demand is motivation and a desire to challenge yourself.
  2. You can figure out how to make money coding sooner than you lot think. You're probably set now. If you lot tin can solve a programming issue or build something for someone, y'all can larn how to earn money by coding the same things. Don't be agape to offer your skills upward and see how you tin can help someone.
  3. You tin can't give up. Coding is tough, and finding your beginning paid tech gig can feel incommunicable. But information technology'due south not. Stick with it and keep learning every day. The more than dedicated you are, the sooner yous'll get there.

How to Make Money Coding FAQs

What type of coding makes the most money?

Co-ordinate to Stack Overflow's 2021 survey of 46K+ developers, the tiptop 10 highest-paying programming languages in the United states of america are: Clojure, F#, Elixir, Erlang, Perl, Scarlet, Scala, Rust, Go, and LISP.

Proceed in mind, yet, that the amount of money you can make while learning to lawmaking will as well depend on other factors like the type of projects you work on, their difficulty and calibration, your area's cost of living, how many projects/clients you tin can take on, etc.

How practice I find my first paid freelancing client?

Finding your first paid freelancing customer can exist challenging, especially when you lot don't accept referrals, a portfolio of work, or testimonials — but with a little try, it's definitely possible. Leverage your networks and offline relationships, allow people know you're available for freelance work, create a portfolio of your own cocky-congenital projects to evidence potential clients, and use freelancing platforms like Upwork to get your name and services out there.

πŸ‘‰ Observe more tips on how to land your first freelance coding client.

How much coin can y'all make coding as a beginner?

As Joe Previte proves, you tin make $5,000 (or more) in your beginning yr learning to lawmaking. From paid internships to TAing/instructing to freelancing and creating websites for people and businesses in your customs, information technology'south possible to make thousands in your first twelvemonth lone (and plenty more than once y'all've gained experience).

How tin I overcome imposter syndrome when making coin coding?

Getting paid while y'all're notwithstanding learning to lawmaking tin can make yous experience imposter syndrome — like you're not skilful enough to be charging for your services withal. You lot might experience like a fake or a phony. But these feelings are completely normal — fifty-fifty programmers with decades of experience may feel similar this from fourth dimension to time. Hither are a few tips to assistance you overcome imposter syndrome while you make money coding every bit a beginner:

  • Visualize success
  • Write out your feelings in a journal
  • Focus on your accomplishments
  • Engage in positive self-talk
  • Learn from your mistakes
  • Establish a support network/community
  • Know that your fourth dimension is valuable

Don't underestimate yourself; everyone starts somewhere and you don't take to be a perfect programmer/web developer to make coin coding! So, what next? Annals for LTCWM'southward complimentary technical side gig training to learn virtually a proven 4-step framework for landing technical side gigs.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and it helped you learn more about how to make money programming! Please reach out to me on Twitter @jsjoeio if yous'd like to stay connected, share your story, or say hello. I dearest meeting others who are on a similar journeying. And if there's whatever fashion I tin support you on yours, please allow me know.

Well-nigh the Author

Joe Previte

Joe Previte is cocky-taught and works as a full-time front-end programmer. An avid traveler, he'south visited eleven countries and has studied four foreign languages. In the summer of 2016, he rode his bicycle downward the coast from Seattle to San Diego raising coin for a nonprofit. In his spare time, he does freelance work, teaches basic coding skills at a local meetup, and leads an online meditation study group.