Side Hustle Simplified: Two Marketing Terms Engineers Need for Extra Earnings
Marketing is powerful.
That’s what brought you here.
Some of the Call-to-Actions, such as “retire early,” “make money on the side,” and “small bets,” made themselves a comfy little nest in your brain.
But as an engineer, once you wander into the realm of side income, you immediately notice that your Vim movements ain’t gonna help here.
You can be a great problem solver, a spectacular manager, or a CTO. In this new meta-game, you start fresh.
And just as in software engineering, you can spend a lifetime learning marketing and still feel you’re just getting started.
But it’ll take me 5 minutes to tell you about the two terms that made all the difference in how I approach my side hustles.
⭐ In this post, you’ll learn
Two simple concepts. Inbound and Outbound marketing. They were incredibly helpful when considering diversifying my income and creating alternative income streams.
As a self-taught marketing fan, I tell you the difference between the two in my own words.
Inbound is when you find the client; outbound is when the client finds you.
Let’s see the pros and cons for each.
🧙 Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is what I’ve been building all this time without even noticing it. My Twitter following and the blog that’s been around since 2016 were all inbound marketing.
I was writing stuff, and clients found me.
What difference does it make to who finds who?
Inbound Marketing puts you in a different position compared to Outbound marketing.
Think about Tesla, famous for not spending a fortune on ads.
What they do is a form of inbound marketing strategy that relies on the fact that people interested in buying EVs likely hear of Tesla because they’re good.
So you’re dreaming of buying a Tesla one day (I’m reflecting on you, sorry) because you heard good things about it.
Imagine someone running into your blog posts several times and thinking, “They know their stuff.”
When they reach out to You, out of all the millions of software developers who build browser extensions, you know it is on.
You likely have the upper hand (even if they misspell your name) in negotiating terms.
Cons
I’ve been actively publishing blog posts on my blog since 2021. Last year, I averaged more than 3 articles a month.
Inbound marketing needs authority, but building authority in a domain needs time.
However, once it starts working for you, it feels terrific.
Should You Do It Now?
If you need a reliable side income right now, no.
The good thing is, if you show up in your domain, it’ll increase your credibility and the chances of being found through inbound marketing over time.
📧 Outbound Marketing
My first real encounter with outbound marketing happened in September.
As I wrote in Goals in Focus, Paths Amiss: The Year of Choices in the 2023 Abyss, I gave myself a last chance to scale my web development agency.
I failed.
But this was the thing that showed me the difference (and the effectiveness) between the two marketing approaches.
Outbound marketing often gets a bad rep.
It’s your unwanted email.
The final price drop on some luxury cutlery from a mailing list you never subscribed to.
I’m sure you know the feeling and asking, why would anyone do Outbound Marketing then?
The Best in Outbound Marketing
Three reasons:
you can start now
straightforward and scalable
almost step-by-step execution
Suppose you’re a software developer targeting small construction businesses in the UK, between 10 and 20 people who still work in spreadsheets and would probably benefit from jumping ahead 20 years in technology.
You can find those companies easily through LinkedIn search.
The other thing is scalability.
You only offer a handful of services, and 70% of the outbound messages will be the same. The remaining?
That’s where you must do the work for every company to be effective – research their website, understand their problems, and finally present a way to solve them.
If you invest time into your research, you have fewer prospects to message, and you’ll most likely get a response.
Cons
If done incorrectly, it’s super ineffective. You need to spend some time learning your tools, like the LinkedIn search, then spending some more time reading through company websites. Without these, don’t even start.
Should You Do It Now?
If you need something ASAP, yes. I spent 5 days sending outbound sales messages, 5 each day – my targeting improved over time – and got 3 responses back, so if you want to get something going now, by all means!
🎯 Conclusion
There’s a lot more to both types of marketing. I summarized here how it was relevant to a software engineer trying to make money on the side.
Do you think it’s essential for engineers looking to diversify to be familiar with marketing basics?
Have you ever thought about how you are marketing yourself as a developer? If you're interested, I’d like to share some notes on this topic.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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This is a clear reminder to start marketing ourselves when we don't need it.
Once we need it, we'll be a few steps ahead and even the outbound marketing will go with a decent level of authority.
Thanks for the mention of my post, Akos.
Marketing is an incredibly useful skill to learn, even if you just use it to improve your resume and job hunting.