Author: mastashake08
Jyrone Parker is an American software engineer and entrepreneur from Louisville, KY. He is the owner and CEO of J Computer Solutions LLC, a full-scale IT agency that deals with hardware, networking, and software development. He is also a tech rapper and producer that goes by the name Mastashake.
Unlock with PatreonNew Coding Class In Louisville
Want Access To My New Bitcoin Startup And Earn Free BTC?
Want Access To My New Bitcoin Startup And Earn Free BTC? Well all you have to do is pledge to any of the tiers offered and you will get exclusive access to my new Bitcoin invoicing and trading platform 30 days before it is released to the public! Also you will earn free BT C on your first buy proportional to your tier! If you have ever thought about getting into the cryotocurrency space this app is just for you! If you need a point of sales solution that accepts more than just credit and debit cards THIS APP IS FOR YOU! Join the ranks of those riding the crypto wave and generate wealth and buying power while you do it!
My New Startup Is Live
Full Project Livestream
My New Bitcoin App Patron Preview
Choosing An App Acquisition – Cash Flow Vs. Growth
This Might Be My Biggest Success Yet: A MobiSnacks Story!
MobiSnacks Was Conceptualized In 2015
I was working at Sephora in San Fransico working as a senior software engineer. I had a daily routine after coming home after work. I would go to the corner store, get some snacks, then proceed to walk to my condo get blazed then have a munchie feast. During one of my cannabis epiphanies I had an idea. Why not create an app that allows you to order your snacks from local corner stores and have delivery drivers drop off the merch? I went and wrote a demo and showed it to my homie Shay the next day at Sephora. He thought it was a solid concept so I decided to show it to the aforementioned corner store.
Going forward a few months I had a few sales and things were going good….until they weren’t. I moved back to Kentucky and quickly things fell apart and I lost a lot of time and money. It was such a hit actually that I trashed the app, then a couple years later goPuff came out and essentially MobiSnacks was dead in the water. I was so embittered by the experience that I vowed to never touch the source code again.
The 2020 Resurrection
From 2017 – 2020 one of my best friends would occasionally ask me “Hey what’s going on with MobiSnacks?“. I knew he thought it was a good idea but I was done. One day we are chilling at his place and we are talking about startups and his wife cooked for us. While eating I had the thought “man screw UberEats I wish I could just order directly from chefs!”. At that moment a lightning strike hit my brain and MobiSnacks was reborn. I told my homie and asked him if he wanted to come on-board! During this time we were a couple weeks away from the lockdown from COVID-19. In hindsight the timing was perfect. We were approached by another local startup called Quarantine and Eatz; a platform where they cook the food and throw a virtual Instagram live party. They needed logistics and drivers and first day MobiSnacks did over 200 orders on the website! That was all the motivation I needed to go back full swing.
Building The Brand
Over the past year, the app has a little over 200 downloads with a growing social media presence. I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past so I’m taking everything slow. Talking to each driver, talking to each chef, and talking to each customer. It was during this time that I realized things about this platform I created I never considered. The first was that I was serving food deserts. Last May I got a order notification and when reviewing the order I realized I had NO IDEA who this woman is. I decided to give her a call and introduce myself as the CEO of MobiSnacks and ask her how she found out about our platform. She told me Facebook, which made me elated. I told her I would personally deliver the order and I drove out. I arrived to an independent senior citizen complex and met the lady. She told me that since the shutdown she hasn’t been allowed to see her adult children who normally grocery shop for her. The buses weren’t running at the time and she couldn’t drive. She was literally starving and was on a budget that UberEats was too expensive for her. This brought tears to my eyes and was the first time I heard the term “food desert”. I would have never thought that I would build something that literrally made a life-changing difference in someone’s life. I knew at that moment that I had something and I had to keep going.
Going Forward
MobiSnacks has a new feature called MobiSnacks TV, a platform that allows you to view pre-recorded and live-streamed content from chefs all around the world! The content line up comes out June 1st and I couldn’t be more excited. In addition there will be MobiSnacks+ the premium subscription service where you can get the fresh ingridents for the shows sent directly to your door. Also there will be updates including meal prep, 1-1 cooking classes and more! I am often asked what my exit strategy is, do I want to sell or do I want to run it in perpetuity. To be honest I go back and forth between the two options. I would love to sell to a Food Network or UberEats but I also wouldn’t mind running it if the numbers make sense. In either case MobiSnacks is a success and I couldn’t be happier. If you haven’t downloaded the app on iOS or Android then do so and leave feedback!
Side Hustles For Tech Workers In 2021
Side Hustles In Tech Are Abundant
If you have a skill, then there is always someone willing to pay for that skill. Most of the time for us tech workers we take our skills to a job and work for 40+ hours a week for one company at a time. While tech salaries can be ridiculously high, that is still only ONE stream of income. If 2020 showed us anything, it is that job security is a myth. The only job that is secured is one that you make for yourself! I’m not telling everyone to quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs who work solely for themselves. That wouldn’t be feasible. What is feasible however is for everyone to add multiple streams of income into their lives with some side hustles. Here are five side hustles in tech that can bring you extra money in 2021 right now!
Create & Host Websites
Did you know that less than 2/3 of U.S. small businesses have a website? A lot of business owners are not tech savvy and honestly the thought of creating a website scares them. This is where you can come in and make money two ways. First you can make money upfront by offering to create their website and then you make passive income by charging them for hosting their website. Let’s do some quick math. Let’s say you have a small business website package for $1000 and a hosting package of $30 per month. Let’s say you do 1 website a month:
- 12 * $1000 = $12,000
- 12 * $30 per month = $360 per month = $4320 per year
After your first year you made an extra $16320 on top of your regular job pay. If you provide reliable and quality service then your clients will stay with you for hosting. That extra monthly income is infinitely scalable and is worth more than than the $1000 in the long run.
Tutor CS Students
This is a pretty self explanatory side hustle. As more and more people go to university and boot camps to become software engineers and developers, there has opened up a niche for tech tutoring. Get paid to help others by signing up for websites like CodeMentor or advertise your services solo. Tutors easily can make $40-$60 per hour tutoring and while it’s not much when you only do a couple hours, that’s still extra money. Go to your local community college or university and find the CS department and offer your services or some flyers, trust me you will get calls soon.
Sell A Course/E-Book
This one is definitely more involved but can easily be one of your most lucrative passive income side hustles in tech. By creating a course or an e-book in your niche and selling them you are creating evergreen content that can last well beyond the time of creation. A good portion of my website sales come from my courses such as PWA To APK course and once the hard work of actually creating the content is done, it’s a relatively hands off process going forward.
Create A PWA & Android App In 30 Minutes!
Progressive web applications (PWAs) are a type of web application that can run on any browser compatible device that brings mobile and desktop functionality to the web, such as offline functionality, push notifications and more. This new format for web applications is quickly becoming the standard for web development. In this course I will show you how to quickly and effectively create the scripts necessary to turn any web application into a progressive web application.
WebAPK and TWA are Google technologies that allow you to convert your PWA into Android applications. In this course you will learn how to turn any existing web application into a PWA and subsequently convert it into an APK to upload to the Android Play Store!
$19.99
You still need to do marketing if you want consistent growth but you should be reinvesting your sales into ads anyway! Courses can sell for years after they are created, however depending on the context of the course, it may want to be updated from time to time to stay relavent!
Flip Apps
Going on two years ago I wrote a Twitter thread on app flipping using websites such as Flippa. Essentially it works like flipping anything else. You find an app that is undervalued and being sold whether by auction or direct sale. Once you find the app, you can either keep it, enhance it and profit; or you can polish it up and resell it for a higher price. I personally prefer keeping the apps and riding the passive income train.
Create An App
This is the holy grail of passive income in my opinion. The majority of my side hustles are in the form of apps that make me money. This obviously will require the most time and if you are working a full time job you will have to juggle both which is easier said than done. However the reward has the highest potential of all the tech side hustles. Web apps, mobile apps, it doesn’t matter (I do both).
Conclusion
Nothing worth while will happen fast. If you decide to pursue a tech side hustle in 2021 then the first thing you must understand that living a #CodeLife takes time. Be patient, stay focused and HUSTLE. If you enjoyed this article then share it on social media and consider joining the Code Life Newsletter. Every week get fresh updates and inside looks in the world of tech and entrepreneurship with special content only for subscribers!
Are You A Front End Web Developer? Congrats, You Are Also An Android Developer.
Mobile Development and Web Development Are Merging
Progressive web apps (PWAs) are pretty mainstream now and most web developers are aware of their existence. The Android platform and the Google Play store has been around for going on 13 years and developers are aware of its existence. What many are unaware of is how much the two platforms have been merging in the background. Last year I had the most wonderful epiphany. If you are a front end web developer, then by default you can publish Android applications, making you an Android developer as well.
What Are The Benefits?
You might be wondering what the benefits of turning your PWA into an installable Android application. Some of the main ones include:
- Increased visibility
- Increased revenue
- Better brand reputation
Increased Visibility
When you turn your progressive web application into an Android application and upload it to the Google Play Store, you are opening yourself to a new realm of SEO called App Store Optimization. This is the search engine that powers the Google Play Store search. Your app will now be available to all Android users (unless otherwise specified). Your app store listing is the gateway to all of these new potential users.
Increased Revenue
When you upload an Android application you can set it to be paid or free. In addition to increased ad revenue (if that is your monetization model) that will grow proportionally with app download and usage; but what about apps that don’t make any money on the web? Those could be one-time paid downloads on the Google Play Store.
Better Brand Reputation
Just by turning your PWA into an Android app, you are increasing your brand reputation! Users trust brands that are on multiple platforms and see it as more established, whether or not this is true for that brand is debatable. Definitely worth the $25 to get a Google developer license.
PWAs and WebAPKs
When Google added PWA support to Chrome on Android they added this cool feature called WebAPK. When a user clicks the “Add To Homescreen” button on the mobile browser, the Android operating system actually creates a special APK on the fly, sign and install it. This feature is powerful and can lead to easy accessibility for web apps now and in the future. When I first heard of this, I immediately went to work converting all of my web applications into progressive web applications. Thinking this is the pinnacle I told myself I bought my Android developer license for nothing I will just push installs this way; but then I found something better.
Android Trusted Web Activities
Android now has this cool new way of working with your PWA inside of your app called Trusted Web Activities. TWAs have a lot of benefits but my top two are:
- Content in a Trusted Web activity is trusted — the app and the site it opens are expected to come from the same developer. (This is verified using Digital Asset Links.)
- The content rendered in a Trusted Web Activity comes from the web: they’re rendered by the user’s browser, in exactly the same way as a user would see it in their browser except they are run fullscreen. Web content should be accessible and useful in the browser first.
Let’s say you already built your PWA and you need an Android application but you need to do some extra things that are beyond the current scope of web apis but everything else is in the PWA. Using Trusted Web Activites you can interact with your application and the native APIs provided by Android. The PWA has to come from the same developer who is creating the Android application and is done using Digital Asset Links. This is a file proves you are the owner and once you upload this file to your server, Google will verify. This ensures security and that you aren’t ripping off someone eles’s PWA for your own profit. Also by uploading an Android app that is based on your PWA you don’t have to worry about updates (as much). Once you update the PWA, your application will reflect those updates, thus reducing code time.
But wait….doesn’t that require me to first write an Android app that calls the TWA?
Yes however AUTOMATION BABY! There are tools that I use that make generate the source code and the APK so all I have to do is upload it to the Google Play Console as a new app. I never touch any Java/Kotlin code. I created a course that shows you how to take ANY non PWA web application and turn it into a PWA and APK in under 30 minutes! Expand your visibility and earn more income by diversfying your platforms!
Create A PWA & Android App In 30 Minutes!
Progressive web applications (PWAs) are a type of web application that can run on any browser compatible device that brings mobile and desktop functionality to the web, such as offline functionality, push notifications and more. This new format for web applications is quickly becoming the standard for web development. In this course I will show you how to quickly and effectively create the scripts necessary to turn any web application into a progressive web application.
WebAPK and TWA are Google technologies that allow you to convert your PWA into Android applications. In this course you will learn how to turn any existing web application into a PWA and subsequently convert it into an APK to upload to the Android Play Store!
$19.99