Why Writing About Technology Is Still One of the Best Side Hustles

The Asset Nobody Talks About

Most side hustles trade time for money. You drive, you deliver, you consult—and when you stop, the income stops. The transaction completes, and nothing remains but the bank balance.

Writing about technology works differently. Every article you publish becomes an asset. It sits there, working while you sleep, attracting readers, building reputation, generating opportunities you couldn’t have predicted when you wrote it.

I published an article about keyboard shortcuts three years ago. It took four hours to write. Since then, it has been read by over 200,000 people, earned thousands in advertising revenue, landed me two consulting clients, and gets cited in other people’s work regularly. That four-hour investment continues compounding.

My British lilac cat, Muffin, has a similar relationship with her favorite sleeping spot on the bookshelf. She invested effort once to claim it—climbing, testing, adjusting—and now enjoys returns indefinitely. One investment, ongoing benefits. That’s the tech writing model.

This article explains why writing about technology remains one of the best side hustles available, how to approach it strategically, and what separates writers who build sustainable income from those who burn out chasing viral hits.

The Compounding Knowledge Effect

Tech writing forces learning. You can’t write coherently about something you don’t understand. The research required for quality articles builds knowledge that serves you far beyond the article itself.

Consider what happens when you write an article about a new programming framework. You must understand the framework deeply enough to explain it. That understanding doesn’t disappear after publishing—it becomes part of your professional toolkit.

This creates a virtuous cycle:

Learning Drives Writing: Curiosity about a topic motivates research. Research produces understanding. Understanding enables writing.

Writing Deepens Learning: Explaining concepts to others requires precision that passive consumption doesn’t. Teaching forces you to identify and fill knowledge gaps.

Published Work Attracts Opportunities: Articles demonstrate expertise to potential employers, clients, and collaborators. They’re proof of knowledge that resumes cannot match.

Opportunities Accelerate Learning: Better jobs and clients expose you to more interesting problems. Those problems generate more writing topics. The cycle continues.

Every tech writer I know has received job offers, speaking invitations, or consulting opportunities directly from their published work. The content itself generates income, but the secondary effects often exceed the primary returns.

The Economics of Digital Content

Understanding content economics helps explain why tech writing specifically offers such favorable returns.

Near-Zero Marginal Cost: Once written, an article costs almost nothing to serve to additional readers. Physical products have material costs. Services have time costs. Digital content scales without proportional cost increases.

Infinite Inventory: You can sell the same article to unlimited readers simultaneously. There’s no inventory management, no restocking, no supply constraints.

Time-Shifted Value: Articles published today may find their audience months or years later. Search engines and social sharing create delayed discovery that physical businesses cannot achieve.

Stackable Portfolio: Each article adds to your body of work. Unlike service work that completes and disappears, content accumulates. Your fiftieth article benefits from the reputation established by your first forty-nine.

Multiple Monetization Paths: The same article can generate advertising revenue, affiliate commissions, course sales, consulting leads, and job opportunities. A single asset serves multiple business models.

These economic characteristics favor patient, consistent creators over those seeking quick wins. The writer who publishes weekly for three years typically outearns the writer who burns bright for three months and quits.

How We Evaluated

To assess tech writing as a side hustle opportunity, we analyzed multiple dimensions:

Step 1: Income Data Collection We gathered income reports from tech writers across platforms—Medium, personal blogs, Substack, and freelance clients—tracking earnings progression over time.

Step 2: Time Investment Analysis We documented the time required to produce quality tech content, from research through publication, across different content types and experience levels.

Step 3: Opportunity Mapping We catalogued secondary opportunities (jobs, consulting, speaking) that tech writers attributed directly to their published work.

Step 4: Longevity Assessment We tracked article performance over multi-year periods to understand content decay rates and factors affecting long-term relevance.

Step 5: Barrier Analysis We identified the skills, tools, and conditions required to succeed, assessing accessibility for newcomers versus experienced writers.

The findings support the thesis strongly. Tech writing offers favorable economics for patient practitioners willing to invest in quality over quick returns.

The AI Question

“Won’t AI replace tech writers?” This question appears in every discussion of content creation futures. The answer is more nuanced than the question implies.

AI can generate coherent text about technical topics. It can summarize documentation, explain concepts, and produce passable tutorials. This capability is real and improving.

But AI struggles with several dimensions that define valuable tech writing:

Original Experience: AI cannot use products, encounter bugs, discover workarounds, or form opinions through actual practice. Experience-based writing retains human advantage.

Novel Synthesis: Combining ideas from different domains, identifying non-obvious connections, and generating genuine insight requires creativity AI systems don’t reliably produce.

Voice and Perspective: Readers follow writers, not topics. The distinctive voice, humor, and perspective that build audience loyalty remain human strengths.

Trust and Accountability: When accuracy matters, readers want human accountability. AI-generated content lacks the trust that comes from knowing a real person stands behind the words.

Current Events: AI knowledge has training cutoffs. Writers covering rapidly evolving technology maintain advantages in timeliness and relevance.

The realistic assessment: AI raises the floor for acceptable content while potentially lowering the ceiling for exceptional content. Generic explanatory content becomes commoditized. Distinctive, experience-based, voice-driven content becomes more valuable by contrast.

Writers who compete on information alone face AI pressure. Writers who compete on perspective, experience, and relationship face less immediate threat—and may actually benefit as AI-generated content floods commodity categories.

The Platform Landscape

Tech writers in 2026 face more platform choices than ever. Each platform offers different tradeoffs:

Personal Blogs: Maximum control, ownership of audience relationships, but requires building distribution from scratch. Technical overhead varies with chosen tools.

Medium: Built-in discovery, partner program revenue share, but algorithm dependence and limited audience ownership. Good for initial visibility.

Substack: Direct audience relationships through email, subscription revenue potential, but requires building audience before monetization becomes meaningful.

Dev.to/Hashnode: Developer-focused communities with strong technical audiences. Lower monetization but high-quality professional networking.

LinkedIn: Professional audience, article features, but limited long-form support and algorithm-driven visibility.

YouTube: Video format demands different skills but offers strong monetization and discovery. Higher production overhead than writing.

The optimal strategy often involves multiple platforms. Publish on your own site for ownership and SEO. Cross-post to platforms for discovery. Build email lists for direct relationships. This distributed approach reduces platform dependence while maximizing reach.

Muffin maintains a similar multi-location strategy. She has preferred spots throughout the apartment—bookshelf, bed corner, desk chair, window ledge—and rotates based on sunlight, temperature, and mysterious feline calculations. Depending on a single location would leave her vulnerable to disruption. Platform diversification follows the same logic.

The Topic Selection Strategy

Not all tech topics reward writers equally. Strategic topic selection significantly affects outcomes.

Evergreen Versus Trending: Evergreen topics (programming fundamentals, career advice, productivity methods) maintain relevance for years. Trending topics (new framework launches, product updates, industry news) spike quickly but decay fast.

The optimal mix combines both. Evergreen content builds sustainable traffic foundations. Trending content captures spikes that can introduce new readers to your evergreen catalog.

Competition Analysis: Highly competitive topics require exceptional content to rank and attract attention. Less competitive niches allow adequate content to succeed. The best opportunities often lie in underserved intersections—topics too specific for major publications but valuable to dedicated audiences.

Personal Advantage: Topics where you have genuine experience, unique access, or distinctive perspective offer advantages competitors cannot replicate. Writing about what you actually do professionally often beats writing about what sounds impressive.

Monetization Alignment: Some topics attract readers who spend money; others attract readers who don’t. Enterprise software articles attract bigger-budget readers than articles about free tools. Consider monetization paths when selecting focus areas.

Energy Sustainability: You’ll write better about topics that genuinely interest you. Forcing yourself to cover topics purely for traffic eventually produces burnout or declining quality. Sustainable success requires topics you can write about consistently over years.

The Quality Threshold

Content quality matters more than content quantity. This seems obvious but contradicts advice many new writers receive about “just shipping” and “consistency over perfection.”

The nuance: consistency matters, but each piece must clear a quality threshold to serve your long-term interests.

Minimum Viable Quality: Every published piece should be useful to readers, clearly written, and accurate. Below this threshold, publishing harms more than helps.

Threshold Raises Over Time: As your reputation grows, reader expectations increase. Early-career adequate becomes established-career disappointing.

Quality Signals Compound: High-quality pieces get shared, linked, and remembered. These signals improve search rankings, platform recommendations, and word-of-mouth discovery. Low-quality pieces drag down your entire catalog.

Recovery Is Difficult: Poor content can be deleted but not unfound. Screenshots persist. Reputational damage from consistently low-quality work is hard to reverse.

The practical guidance: write less frequently if necessary to maintain quality. Two excellent articles per month outperform eight mediocre articles in long-term value creation.

The Skill Stack

Successful tech writing requires skills beyond writing itself:

Technical Understanding: You must understand what you write about. This doesn’t require being an expert in everything—curiosity and research capability can compensate—but you cannot fake technical competence convincingly.

Writing Craft: Clear sentences, logical structure, appropriate tone, and engaging style all improve with practice. Reading excellent writers and analyzing their techniques accelerates learning.

SEO Fundamentals: Understanding how search engines work, what makes content discoverable, and how to optimize without compromising quality affects whether your work finds readers.

Platform Mechanics: Each platform has algorithms, features, and best practices. Understanding how Medium’s recommendation system works, how Substack’s growth mechanics operate, or how YouTube SEO differs from blog SEO improves outcomes.

Audience Understanding: Knowing who reads tech content, what problems they face, and how they consume information shapes effective content strategy.

Visual Communication: Screenshots, diagrams, and formatting affect comprehension and engagement. Basic visual skills improve content quality without requiring design expertise.

Self-Promotion: Quality content isn’t self-distributing. Understanding social media, community engagement, and relationship building helps content reach appropriate audiences.

This skill stack seems intimidating but develops naturally through practice. Most successful tech writers started with one or two strengths and developed others over time.

The Time Investment Reality

Realistic time expectations help aspiring tech writers plan appropriately.

Article Creation: A thorough, well-researched tech article requires 4-12 hours depending on topic complexity, existing knowledge, and quality standards. Tutorials with screenshots take longer than opinion pieces.

Skill Development: Improving writing, learning platforms, and building technical knowledge requires ongoing investment beyond article production.

Distribution: Promoting articles through social media, community engagement, and relationship building adds time beyond writing itself.

Business Operations: For monetized writers, administrative tasks—invoicing, tax documentation, platform management—consume time that doesn’t feel like “writing.”

Initial Investment Versus Maintenance: Starting requires heavy investment in learning. Established writers produce content faster and maintain systems more efficiently.

A realistic expectation: 5-10 hours weekly produces meaningful progress over time. Less than this struggles to build momentum. More than this exceeds typical side hustle capacity.

The good news: unlike service-based side hustles, the time investment decreases relative to returns over time. Your hundredth article takes less time than your first while generating more value.

The Monetization Paths

Tech writing offers multiple monetization approaches that can operate simultaneously:

Advertising Revenue: Platform ad programs (Medium Partner Program) and direct advertising on personal sites generate revenue proportional to traffic.

Affiliate Marketing: Recommending products and services with affiliate links generates commissions. Tech products often have favorable commission structures.

Sponsored Content: Brands pay writers to cover their products. This requires established audiences and careful disclosure to maintain trust.

Course Sales: Teaching what you know through structured courses monetizes expertise beyond article-level content.

Consulting Leads: Articles demonstrating expertise attract consulting opportunities. A well-placed article can generate leads worth more than direct monetization.

Job Opportunities: Published work functions as an extended resume, attracting employers who value demonstrated communication skills and technical knowledge.

Newsletter Subscriptions: Direct reader payments through platforms like Substack create recurring revenue from dedicated audiences.

Speaking Opportunities: Established writers receive invitations to conferences, podcasts, and webinars, often with compensation.

Most successful tech writers combine multiple streams. Advertising alone rarely provides substantial income, but advertising plus affiliate marketing plus occasional sponsored content plus consulting leads can create meaningful revenue.

The Realistic Timeline

Setting appropriate expectations prevents discouragement when results don’t appear immediately.

Months 1-6: Learning phase. You’re figuring out platforms, developing writing habits, discovering topics, and publishing content that may get minimal attention. Focus on skill development, not revenue.

Months 6-12: Traction phase. Some content starts finding audiences. You’re beginning to understand what works. Revenue exists but remains modest—perhaps covering hosting costs and coffee.

Year 2: Growth phase. Accumulated content generates meaningful traffic. Some pieces perform well. Secondary opportunities begin appearing. Revenue might reach a few hundred dollars monthly.

Year 3+: Compounding phase. Your content portfolio generates consistent traffic. Reputation opens doors. Multiple revenue streams combine. Full side-hustle income becomes achievable—potentially $1,000-3,000+ monthly for dedicated writers.

This timeline assumes consistent effort and continuous improvement. Writers who approach tech writing as a sprint typically quit during the learning phase before reaching meaningful returns.

The Failure Modes

Understanding how tech writers fail helps avoid common pitfalls:

Inconsistency: Publishing sporadically prevents momentum building. Readers, algorithms, and search engines all favor consistent publishers.

Quality Neglect: Publishing low-quality content to maintain quantity damages reputation faster than silence does.

Platform Dependence: Building entirely on a single platform creates vulnerability to algorithm changes, policy shifts, or platform decline.

Topic Scatter: Writing about everything prevents expertise recognition. Focused writers build stronger audiences than generalists in most cases.

Monetization Impatience: Pushing monetization before building audience creates off-putting content. Value creation must precede value extraction.

Comparison Despair: Comparing early-stage progress to established writers’ results creates discouragement. Everyone started at zero.

Burnout: Unsustainable pace leads to abandoned blogs and broken publishing schedules. Moderate, maintainable effort beats intense, temporary bursts.

Ignoring Feedback: Reader comments, traffic data, and engagement metrics provide guidance that stubborn writers often ignore.

Avoiding these failure modes doesn’t guarantee success, but falling into them reliably prevents it.

Generative Engine Optimization

The relationship between tech writing and modern search systems creates both challenges and opportunities worth understanding.

Generative AI systems increasingly mediate between users and content. When someone asks an AI assistant about a technical topic, the system synthesizes information from multiple sources—potentially including your articles.

This shift has implications for tech writers:

Citation Potential: AI systems that cite sources create new discovery channels. Content that AI systems reference reaches audiences who never directly searched for it.

Answer Completeness: AI systems favor comprehensive content that fully addresses queries. Articles answering questions completely may receive preferential treatment over partial answers.

Expertise Signals: AI systems are learning to recognize and prioritize expert-written content. Demonstrable expertise in your writing becomes more valuable as AI evaluates content quality.

Query Evolution: User queries are becoming more conversational and specific. Writing that addresses natural language questions serves both human readers and AI systems.

Update Importance: AI systems may track content freshness. Regularly updated content signals ongoing relevance that static content lacks.

For tech writers, GEO suggests several strategies:

• Write comprehensive pieces that fully address topics rather than shallow overviews
• Demonstrate expertise through specific examples, original research, and detailed explanations
• Structure content to answer specific questions readers might ask
• Update evergreen content to maintain accuracy and relevance
• Build topical authority by covering related topics coherently

The tech writers who thrive in an AI-mediated world will be those whose content AI systems recognize as authoritative and worth citing.

The Differentiation Imperative

As content creation tools become more accessible and AI lowers barriers to adequate content, differentiation becomes essential.

Original Experience: Share what you’ve actually done, not what you’ve read about. Real experience is harder to replicate than research summaries.

Strong Perspective: Take positions. Argue for approaches. Disagree with conventional wisdom when you believe differently. Bland neutrality doesn’t build audiences.

Distinctive Voice: Write like yourself. The unique combination of your personality, humor, and communication style cannot be copied exactly.

Depth Over Breadth: Go deeper on topics than others bother to go. Comprehensive treatment of narrow topics serves audiences better than superficial treatment of broad topics.

Community Connection: Engage with readers. Respond to comments. Build relationships. The human connection between writer and reader remains valuable.

Consistent Presence: Show up reliably. Readers follow writers they can count on. Consistent quality over time builds trust that newcomers cannot instantly achieve.

Muffin has extremely distinctive behavior patterns—her morning routine, her preferred petting protocols, her complicated relationship with the vacuum cleaner. These idiosyncrasies make her specifically Muffin rather than generic cat. Your writing should similarly be specifically yours rather than generic tech content.

The Long View

The best argument for tech writing as a side hustle is the long view perspective.

Consider where you’ll be in five years:

Without Writing: Your professional development happens through job experience alone. Your visibility is limited to your workplace. Your income depends entirely on employment.

With Consistent Writing: You’ve published 200+ articles covering your professional expertise. Those articles have been read by hundreds of thousands of people. Some have gone viral. Most generate steady, modest traffic. The portfolio demonstrates expertise to anyone who searches your name. You’ve received job offers, consulting requests, and speaking invitations directly from your writing. Multiple income streams supplement your employment. You have options you wouldn’t otherwise have.

The five-year difference isn’t marginal—it’s transformational.

This transformation requires patience. The compounding effects that make tech writing valuable don’t appear immediately. Month three looks discouraging. Year three looks different. Year five looks better still.

The Getting Started Framework

For those ready to begin, a practical starting framework:

Week 1: Choose your primary platform. Set up basic infrastructure. Write your first article on a topic you already understand well.

Month 1: Publish 2-4 articles. Focus on quality over quantity. Learn basic platform mechanics. Don’t worry about monetization.

Month 3: Evaluate what’s working. Adjust topics based on reader response. Establish sustainable publishing rhythm. Join communities where your readers gather.

Month 6: Consider diversifying platforms. Experiment with different content types. Begin exploring monetization if traffic supports it.

Year 1: Assess progress. Refine strategy based on data. Invest in skill development for weak areas. Set goals for year two.

The specific tactics will evolve as you learn what works for you specifically. But the framework—start small, learn continuously, stay patient—applies universally.

The Final Calculation

Tech writing as a side hustle offers unusual characteristics:

Asset Creation: Unlike most side hustles, you build lasting assets rather than completing transactions.

Skill Development: The work itself improves capabilities that serve your primary career.

Multiple Returns: The same effort generates income, opportunities, learning, and professional visibility.

Flexibility: Write when and where you choose. No schedules, no commutes, no bosses.

Scalability: Returns can grow without proportional time increases once content catalogs mature.

Alignment With Interests: If you already engage with technology professionally or personally, writing about it leverages existing knowledge and interests.

The tradeoffs are real: delayed gratification, uncertain outcomes, required consistency, and ongoing effort. Not everyone should pursue tech writing as a side hustle.

But for those with technical curiosity, communication ability, and patience for compounding returns, few side hustles offer comparable long-term value creation.

Muffin has just jumped onto my desk, walked across the keyboard (adding “ffffffffffffff” to this paragraph, now deleted), and settled into her supervisory position behind my monitor. She’s been doing this for years—same behavior, same spot, same routine. Consistency over time produces results.

Write about technology. Write consistently. Write quality. Give the compounding time to work. In a few years, you’ll have built something that most side hustles never produce: assets that continue working long after you’ve stopped.

That’s why writing about technology is still one of the best side hustles available—and will remain so regardless of how the tools and platforms evolve.