Coding Projects as my Side Hustle

I did some thinking over the weekend, after I wrote the post about my learning plan. I looked at my project pipeline. I looked at what people were hiring me to do, and I reviewed the next few personal projects I’m working on. You know what I saw? No coding projects. Honestly, I shouldn’t. That’s no longer my core business. I turn down freelance jobs 90% of the time. But I still want to write code. I will have to for some of the online courses I’m taking. Luckily, there’s the whole idea of a “side hustle,” and since I made my side hustle my main gig last year, my side hustle has an opening.

Coding as my Side Hustle

So I’m doing a little bit of a switch. At this time last year, coding was my full time gig; courses and the podcast were my side hustle. Now that coding isn’t part of my day-to-day, I’m going to do coding projects on the side.

I’ve taken the approach up until this point that 100% of my non-family time should go to my core business. But you know what? When my wife is at work on night shift, and the baby is down for the night, I don’t really feel like doing that stuff. So if I feel like working, I’m going to do small coding projects.

I recognize that this make it sound like I work all the time. I assure you, I don’t. Check out my instagram for proof through cigars, books, and Lego.

I Have Lots of Ideas

Luckily, I have a lot of ideas. I can fix my podcasting plugin to automate more of my process. I can start my theme for How I Built It from scratch (which I desperately need to do). I can resurrect my Star Tours project. And I’m probably going to do all of that.

It Depends on What I Want to Learn

Here’s a shortlist of stuff I want to code, potentially in the order I’m going to do them:

1. Cigar Shop Theme & Plugin : I’ve had this idea for so long that I now feel I need to do it. And I want to learn the Genesis Framework, so I’ll build the theme on top of that. The plugin will be pretty simple, and is designed to reinforce stuff I already know but haven’t used in a while.
2. Star Tours Tracker: This was an app I built to learn Angular.js. It tracks which combination of sequences you’ve seen at the Star Tours ride in Walt Disney World and Disneyland. I’m going to take Laravel and Vue.js courses in the coming months, so this will be the perfect project to apply what I’m learning.
3. New How I Built It Theme: This one has to get done. I’m undecided on if I want to use Genesis again, or just something simple like Bootstrap. I do plan on integrating Gutenberg stuff into it. It will style Gutenberg blocks that need it, and maybe even have some of its own.
4. My Podcasting Plugin: This one needs some work. There are bugs and technical debt. There’s also a lot of stuff I want to add to it. Maybe I’ll even commercialize it (maybe…maybe).

No Timelines

Since these should be fun side projects, I’m not setting timelines. I will likely release some of this work commercially though. I think the Cigar Shop Theme and Plugin have the best market (and I can do a course using them), so I’ll definitely try selling those.

One caveat to that is I’m going to Disney World with my family in April. Having at-least a beta of the Star Tours app would be pretty neat, as several of us could test it.

What about you? What’s your site hustle? Is there something you wish you did more often? Let me know in the comments.