Written by Helen Ryles‍Even if you’re just starting out with no-code I’m sure that it has crossed your mind that with these new skills you have gifted yourself the potential to increase your income. Lots of no-coders decide they would love to make some extra money and set out on a path to build a no-code SaaS or a feature rich custom app.

When you think of making more money you might imagine a complex business. Or perhaps you’d need to come up with an original idea, an unsolved problem and an intricate solution. These things can feel overwhelming and unachievable when you first start out. It can seem that the goal of earning more is quite far away, with months of learning needed before you can get to that.

You can make money from no-code sooner than you think. You can earn additional income through small products and services that cost little to set up and are efficient to run. It can be entertaining, fun or useful but it doesn’t always have to be exceptionally original. It just needs a spin of your own and a unique twist.

Thankfully no-code offers you three things that make your dreams of earning a little bit of side-cash much more possible.

Free Resources

There is a wealth of templates, mock-ups, designs, branding generators, tools, fonts and illustrations available at no cost to other creatives out there. You should find them and use them to build something at low cost.‍

‍Rapid Development

You can release a MVP in just a few hours, it’s impressive how you can go from idea to product so quickly. Most no-code tools have a short learning curve that builds upon existing technology skills you have already gained. That means you aren’t trapped into building every project of yours using the same skill set each time.

You’re free to think up a new idea in a niche you’ve never tried before and pick up a new no-code tool that has the features that you need and you can still get started right away. You can jump into new environments and be immediately productive and create your next product.

The Community 

One of the superpowers that no-code brings is that it puts you within a supportive community where you can express your ideas in their earliest stages, get feedback, get thought provoking questions and even get your first sales and find your early customers. You can pitch out a simple idea with a price on it and see if there’s early interest before you even start building anything.

Try it with your next tweet, explain your simple idea in a couple of lines and add the hashtags #1st$ #no-code. See if you can validate the need for what you are making before you even start creating it from no-code tools. Your post might just get amplified by influential people in the space to help accelerate your small idea further than you thought it could go. Putting something out there is the key to making the magic happen - fast.

Starting small

Making a little extra money with no-code should be simple. A big problem can be solved with a small solution and starting small here is the key. You need an idea that feels both achievable and also interesting enough to challenge your skills, so that you learn from the experience.

Putting small products out there increases the likelihood of success. You won’t ever get the excitement of waking up to a handful of sales unless you start to make it known how people can pay you. Even if it is $5 here and there, having paying customers is one of the most motivating things you can get.‍

Use the snowball effect

Your first sales will accelerate your desire to learn more and to ship products on a regular basis. The more products you have out there, the more you increase your surface area to attract luck, opportunity and income. Having a range of small products that people can buy at any time of day means that you are snowballing your income that could easily build up to substantial numbers.

Building many small products is getting more popular. Both LaunchMBA and 12 startups in 12 months follow this approach. Even Ali Abdal’s Part-Time YouTuber Academy recommends you consistently put your videos out there on a regular basis so that you can learn from them and get compounding returns.  It’s a lot of fun to test out many of your ideas for free and double down on those that work. Use the feedback you get from the community to improve your ideas. Build your skills up to a point where you can spot an opportunity and know how to make the most of it even with a tiny product.

10 simple ways to earn from no-code 

• Start a Patreon 
• Start a podcast
• Build a job board 
• Create a community
• Create a paid newsletter on Substack 
• Live stream your no-code builds on Twitch 
• Make templates and sell them using Gumroad or Paddle
• Create no-code tutorials and become a paid Makerpad Creator in Residence
• Share valuable content and post your Buy-Me-A-Coffee or Flattr links in your bio
• Build a productized service with a Carrd landing page and Stripe for recurring subscriptions,

3 key takeaways

1. One thing is clear, you can’t earn anything until you put something out there.

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2. Use the #1st$ and #no-code hashtags on Twitter to share early ideas so the no-code community can help. 

3. Keep iterating on new skills & ideas. Build a small product empire and remember it all starts with your first dollar! 

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