5 side hustles every tech professional can consider

The thought of incorporating different ways to leverage your skills and expertise as a side hustle has probably crossed your mind before. The appealing benefits of supplementing your income, enhancing your tech skills, growing your network and increasing your visibility make it an enticing investment of your time. There are many opportunities for tech enthusiasts; here are a few ideas to get you started:

IT Consultation

The majority of companies rely on internal resources to install and operate new technologies. The approach may initially succeed since the majority of professionals have some level of IT training. However, some circumstances need to hire experienced IT consultants to manage a business’s technology.

Companies bring in consultants when they either don't have the right expertise in-house, or their in-house team hits an obstacle. It might be the implementation of an app, cloud migrations, or another challenging project. If you have enough experience to bring to the table, you can make project-based consulting profitable.

Quality Assurance Testing

Quality Assurance (QA) testers are responsible for running tests on websites, applications, and software programs to identify coding flaws and bugs. If you’re new to tech this kind of work might sound out of reach, but it’s actually an ideal platform for learning more about the coding process. QA testers themselves aren’t the ones writing the code (their job is knowing how to run the automated tests that inspect code for problems), meaning you don’t have to be a master coder to do QA work. However, if you start a QA side hustle you’ll be up close and personal with plenty of coding examples to learn from—while also getting paid.

Web Development

Becoming a web developer is a very flexible field, and taking on paying clients through project-based web development is a great way to develop your skills rapidly. Once you know fundamental web skills like HTML and CSS you’ll be able to start building basic websites, and these are skills that can take as little as a few weeks to learn. Add some JavaScript and familiarity with WordPress to your toolkit, and you’ll have an even wider range of sites you can build and clients you can land.

Web Design

Where web development is the building of websites, web design is the process of designing what a website will look like. This includes making sure the site is aesthetically pleasing, while also creating a sensible layout that’s easy for people to use whether they’re on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Web design typically involves tools like Photoshop and Webflow to create mockups of how finished sites will look. Like web development, web design is a field you can start freelancing in and learn as you go. And if you’ve put together some of the web development skills outlined above, all the better—you can earn even more extra cash by combining web development skills with web design skills and providing a full service.

Tech Support

Tech support certification programs like Google’s IT Support Professional Certificate, Amazon’s AWS Certification, and IBM Credentials are an efficient way to both learn more about tech support and be able to demonstrate your knowledge to potential clients. But don’t let the idea that you have to know everything keep you from trying to earn money with a tech support side hustle. The more time you spend with tech, the more you’ll see that “knowing tech” means knowing how to use Google and other resources to solve problems, rather than magically knowing all the answers. As technical support, you need to maintain computer and online functioning according to customer specifications and provide assistance through email, phone, chat, and on-site to organizations needing part-time technical support.

Having a career as an IT professional opens you up to multiple income stream opportunities, in this article we have only skimmed the surface of potential side hustles available. If you are interested in reading more Expertlead articles for IT professionals visit our blog here.