Signed up to write, was offered new side hustles
A surprise of writing here: readers offering me interesting side hustles
New readers: articles with substantial content seem to be quite well exposed by the platform, reaching people that can then hire you for tailored jobs.
In welcoming new writers, I wanted to share this experience. I started writing on this platform around 5 months ago for fun, to test how it worked, and, being honest, seeking to improve the reach of my blog articles and thus attempt to monetize my content. Opposite to the many meta articles that the platform suggests to me (I still don’t understand why, if they specifically ask for no meta!) I focus on creating actual content: photostories, articles about data science, programming, etc., presentations of interesting new research especially around my main research fields, interesting stories, etc. etc.
Although the revenues are modest, I do see that my content reaches an audience far larger than that of regular blogs, and I’m grateful for that. However, even more gratifying was having in these months three readers who asked me if I could do some specific tasks for them, prompted by articles I had published here. Beyond the obvious hype of getting new side hustles, this all means that the platform does a good job at exposing good work.
Case 1: One of the requests started from this story in TDS Editors about writing simple web apps to retrieve cryptocurrency data:
The reader asked me for a tailored program that could run some specific retrievals of cryptocurrency data for him. That was a win-win: the reader got a tailored web app that facilitated his work with cryptocurrencies, and I got a half-Saturday job.
Case 2: A reader of this story on a neural network for art creation asked me if I could implement a few changes on the Google Colab notebook where the program runs.
It turned out I could not do what the reader asked, so there was no pay here. Yet it could have been an extra weekend income if I had been successful (I didn’t even charge for trying because after a few attempts it was very obvious that I would not be able to do what she asked).
Case 3: Starting from a review of my own recent paper on predicting thermal stability changes of proteins upon mutation, a reader asked if I could do some special predictions for him. It turned out that these predictions were already part of the web app reported in the article, so I just replied how he could consult the requested predictions himself. Hence again there was no pay here; but again similar situations could lead to work that I could potentially bill.
I am a nature, science, technology, programming, and DIY enthusiast. Biotechnologist and chemist, in the wet lab and with computers. I write about everything that lies within my broad sphere of interests. Check out my lists for more stories. Become a Medium member to access all its stories and subscribe to get my new stories by email (original affiliate links of the platform for which I get small revenues without special costs to you). Donate here through various means. Contact me here.
To consult about small jobs (on programming, biotech + bioinf project evaluations, science outreach + communication, molecular data analysis and design, molecular graphics, photography, moleculARweb tutorials, science teaching and tutoring, etc.) check my services page here.