Ask HN: How to leverage a side project to get out of near poverty
Truth be told it's not like we live in what the average person would describe as "poverty", but we hardly ever have money to get to the end of the month. And living with 2 fast growing kids in a 1 bedroom apartment is unsustainable. This is starting to bring an unbearable strain on the family.
I consider myself an amateur programmer, I routinely do little python scripts, and I have developed and managed some WordPress sites and all sorts of little tech odd jobs for friends and acquaintances. I'm a very fast learner, but I always failed to take the plunge and dedicate myself to making a better living in programming/dev work.
I feel like an idiot for not using these skills I have to boost my income, but at the same time I'm stuck not having the formal qualifications to apply for a legitimate dev job.
Does anyone have any advice on how you would go about making this transition? I thought about doing some side projects that would bring some extra income, but I absolutely must not leave my current 9-5 and I'm failing to see what type of projects would bring in a bit extra money and still not consume a lot of time. Even an extra 300Euros/Dollar a month would make a lot of difference. What sort of dev work do you think would give me the best "income/time-spent" ratio?
Sorry for the somewhat vague question... I guess I'm the typical perfectionist with imposter syndrome frozen in fear of failure...