How do you make money on the side?

I don't. I can't see any practical income stream in the little time and the limited energy I have that beats coming home from work and resetting so I can go back and do a decent job and advance that way. Sure, I might get, say, 1k per month, but it would probably cost me a large fraction of my free time (which includes things like reading, my own little projects and experiments and being with family) in exchange for a relatively small percentage bump in income.

Honestly, if you JUST want to optimize for money as a SWE leetcode + getting 3 competing job offers at FAANG is still the best use of your time than any side hustle.

I recommendend asking your self “If I ALREADY had all of the money, what would I do?” and do that on the side instead.

I run a SaaS business (https://onlineornot.com), and run a blog about React (I sell an ebook with condensed information to teach folks useEffect in an afternoon) on just two hours per morning before my workday starts.

I've been spending about two hours each morning on my own projects since 2017, it'll surprise you how much you can get done with consistent effort.

You make money with software skills by identifying and solving business problems: adding value and reducing costs and risks. Every company has such problems. With so many people doing gig work and trying to make passive income on the side, if you don't have the capital for investing you have to sell your time and skills, which means finding businesses willing to pay for those.

I have freelanced for a long time. Word of mouth and reputation generally attract the most quality new work. Since 2014 I have had an agency representing me, and they seem pretty good at finding customers and gigs.

Referral bonuses. The hiring pipeline at my company is tough to get through, but if you get someone through the bonus is very nice. Nice enough to make recruitment my side gig.

Boutique consulting firms sometimes have side work you can do and they don’t always care where you are located.

Just look for a consulting group that doesn’t have 40000 job postings on LinkedIn

I'm interested in making money on the side as a Deaf person, who can't use phones/voip to communicate with potential clients online (speech impediment+hearing loss). If anyone reads this, let me know how I can work around this and still be considered trustworthy.

Still working on a solid product that I'm hoping will bring in some passive income.

Bought two properties and already renting one out... in preps to get the other rented out soon, and then there's my house... already have some interest in that as well.

For SWEs, some combination of good personal finance practices and working towards being able to be hired at higher paying companies are probably your highest ROI activities.

I am thinking to start trying it myself. You can build useful code and put it on sale. Check CodeCanyon for ideas and inspiration.

People might be looking for something on your tech stack.

It's not much but it's something. There are a few relatively-safe strategies/methods that I employ to invest into stock market (only delivery, not intraday or FnO). It's primarily geared towards Indian stock market but it can applied anywhere with some modifications.

I invest $1000 on SPY every paycheck.

OnlyFans?

You serve people. Where is the overlap between what people need and what you can offer?

I spent less.

Dividends

Write a novel?

all im saying is that every time you throw your clothes in the wash you are leaving money on the table