Making additional income streams
In this hard times, while we are in the worlds worse financial crisis, having additional income streams is a very welcome respite from the crunch.
I found a good article on 10 ways techs can make extra cash on Tech Republic. I’ll give some of my inputs on some items I have experience with as well as some ideas I think will help IT professionals have other income streams. These are hard times and additional income streams will surely help.
Subcontracting, I have done some subcontracting work for local individuals and companies and these can be financially rewarding. Although it is mostly one time income but the pay-out can be substantial for the rainy day savings. I also took some work from Elance and Odesk and I personally like Odesk as the quality of clients are better.
Whenever an opportunity for subcontracting is available, do take advantage of it, give your best output as word of mouth will be very good for your next possible project.
Database consulting, I have not personally tried this but I think this will be a good avenue to develop. Corporations are not as focused on their Databases as they should me, maintenance, optimizations, security as well as data and table structures are not focused on. As not all corporations can afford to have DB experts on a regular position for one reason or another, this could be a niche market for freelancers.
Teaching, Most instructors do not posses or are not equipped with the required real world experience, this could be a plus on our side and learning institutions will be jumping the gun to have expert instructors. I also read somewhere that during hard economic times, most individuals tend to undertake further educational opportunities.
Software training and instruction, Just like teaching, being an expert on a specific process or software can be advantageous.
The digital living space, this can be another stream, as the home becomes ever more digital specially entertainment, getting all devices to work seamlessly and as they should can be very daunting for the ordinary Joe, our technical acumen can be of help to the ordinary Joe.
These are just some, I do suggest you read the article.