Becoming an expert in backend development could take a significant period of time in your career journey and making money as a junior backend developer is also a nightmare.
For instance, mastering the hard skills, and the soft skills to enable you to become successful as a backend developer—learning to sit in front of a computer coding for hours, creativity, versatility, flexibility, and problem-solving skills among others—could take years of practice and experience.
As a junior backend developer, this could pose a challenge and could be a source of anxiety especially when you have to compete with expert backend developers—better experienced than you are—in the job market for the same job roles.
But the reality is, you don’t have to start high in your job search.
Your current knowledge of backend technologies and your portfolio of personal projects is enough to get you your first job—that would pay enough for you to live comfortably.
If there is any better time to start making money from your knowledge, it is now.
Taking up a paying job increases your exposure and brings you face-up with real-world problems that would challenge you to utilize your skills to solve complex problems and meet deadlines.
This adds value to you by helping you learn new technologies, enhance your skill repertoire, build your portfolio, build up the soft skills that would enable you to thrive in a work environment, while also helping you establish valuable connections with significant others within the industry.
In this article, I will be sharing with you four ways to grow and make money as a junior backend developer.
- Blogging/Vlogging
- Become a Freelancer
- Build and sell Digital Products
- A Full-time job as a junior developer
Blogging/Vlogging
Becoming a go-to resource for different questions and problems people have as regard backend development establishes you as an authority in the field.
This opens up a wide range of opportunities for monetizing your skills, ranging from getting direct hires from blog visitors to monetizing your content through platforms like Medium and YouTube.
From building up an audience of loyal customers for your digital solutions to their digital problems to affiliate marketing for SaaS companies and other digital service providers.
Wondering where to begin your blogging journey?
One way is to reflect on the challenges you encountered when you started out on your career journey as a backend developer.
For instance, think about the problems you faced while learning a particular technology—defining user roles or session tokens for instance.
These constitute rich mines from which to dig up questions and topics to build content. Sharing how you tackled those challenges and what you learned in the process is valuable.
Also, you can browse through popular social media sites like Quora and Facebook—Facebook groups—to discover trending topics and discussions in backend development.
Quora could be a very resourceful tool in this area as it helps you uncover not only questions relating to backend development but also keywords that you can use to optimize your blog post for SEO—then, don’t forget to join online communities relating to backend development too!
Build and Sell Digital Products
If being a blogger doesn’t interest you, then build WordPress plugins for bloggers!
As bloggers seek to build their website to attain better functionality—with ease—you can expect the need for plugins to grow, so your skills are needed to help bloggers build better websites, and brands.
Another lucrative area is the small-medium enterprises (SMEs)—their adoption of mobile apps for offering and showcasing their services and products is on the rise.
So building mobile apps with interactive and beautiful designs that allow them to enlist their products so they can reach out more easily to their customers would be a valuable addition to their businesses.
Become a Freelancer
Covid-19 and the consequent global lockdown have only made the freelance market grow in size—the freelance market grew by over 25% between April to June 2020!
The market is expected to continue expanding as more companies look towards the freelance space for innovative solutions to their problems; also as it becomes a more efficient means for SMEs to bootstrap and saves cost.
This makes it the best time for you to monetize your skills by offering your services on freelance platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer among others.
From broadening the range of hirers, companies, and employers you get to work with—which develops your knowledge in the different applications of your backend development skills—to boost your employability.
The freelance space offers opportunities for you to grow as a backend developer; and of course, achieve the ultimate goal of earning cool bucks off your skills.
Full-time Job as a Junior Developer
Lastly, you can consider taking up a junior backend developer role in a company.
Full-time junior backend development roles typically have competitive yearly base salaries—with other compensation plans including health insurance, and even vacation plans.
According to ZipRecruiter, you can earn up to $68,388 annually as a junior backend developer.
Platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Masteringbackend have job boards where you can find full-time backend development jobs for your preferred stack.
Some companies even have remote working options that enable you to work from the comfort of your home—which allows you the opportunity to supplement your income.
As discussed above, with other ways of monetizing your skills as a junior backend developer and the ultimate guide to Freelancing for Backend Developer, you’re definitely ready to make extra bucks.
Conclusion
In this article, I’ve shown you four ways you can get off the ground and start making money from your skills as a junior backend developer.
Whether you’re a self-starter or you’re looking for other ways to diversify your income, these tips are practical and can significantly help you grow roundly as you go further in your career journey.
