How Do You Make Money With Raspberry Pi? (Top 10 Ideas)

As you may already know, your Raspberry Pi and your expertise with Raspberry Pi can provide you monetary value. When I started thinking about making money with Raspberry Pi, I was stuck on how to do it. Now that I have thoroughly researched this topic and gained experience in a few areas, I can finally answer the question:

“How can you make money with your Raspberry Pi?”

The 10 different ways you can make money with your Raspberry Pi are:

1. Teaching others about Raspberry Pi concepts like programming
2. Making a Raspberry Pi prototype that will resolve an issue
3. Creating a Raspberry Pi project for someone else
4. Making a YouTube channel on Raspberry Pi
5. Writing a Raspberry Pi related book
6. Creating software that helps users with their Raspberry Pi
7. Using your expertise for Raspberry Pi consultation services
8. Utilizing your Raspberry Pi to capture data to sell
9. Using Raspberry Pi to mine cryptocurrency
10. Becoming a freelancer

I will go further into these 10 methods for the rest of this article.

1. Teach Raspberry Pi concepts like programming or electronics to others

Everyone wants to learn a new skill. Many people would love to dive deeper into the STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and learn topics such as programming.

Raspberry Pi is so great because it covers a lot of programming topics (and you can even dabble in circuitry). You can offer in-person classes or online courses teaching others.

When I first started out, I bought online courses about Raspberry Pi instead figuring everything out myself because I wanted access to instant, easy, and digestible information.

I would imagine there are many others like me who would pay for these services, so you can do some tutoring or get people to sign up for your class.

Personally, I would do online courses and prerecord each lesson. It’s much easier because I can fix my mistakes in these recordings and I can reach thousands of people rather than seeking each one out individually.

There are popular platforms with millions (if not tens or hundreds of millions) of users that you can upload your courses to such as:

• Udemy
• Coursera
• Skillshare
• Pluralsight

Here are some ideas you can implement in your course:

Programming Topics

• How to navigate the command line in the terminal
• Best programming practices
• Python
• Scratch
• Downloading games

2. Make a Raspberry Pi prototype that will resolve an issue

This method is one that many users think of when they want to make some money with their Raspberry Pi knowledge. It can be complicated getting started and succeeding with this model.

Not only do you have to find a solution to a legitimate problem that people are willing to pay for, but you also need to create it, find investors to fund this project, locate a manufacturer that can mass produce your product, seek out others for collaboration, advertise, and etc.

Before you get started, you need to answer the following questions:

• Is there any demand for the product?
• Who is your competition?
• What is your financial plan for this project?
• Do you have the necessary financial resources to back it up?
  • If not, are you able to find investors?
• Can it be produced? If so, how hard will it be to produce it?
• How will the product be delivered to the customer?
• How long will it take for the product to be delivered.

If you’re serious about this arduous journey, here are the steps for product development:

1. Ideation and Concept
   1. You’re basically trying to locate the problem and explore the different potential solutions you could take.
2. Market Research
   1. You are determining the size of the demand for your solution in the market. You want there to be a demand so that you know the project is worth it before starting.
3. Business Plan
   1. You’d want to determine all the economic factors such as cost of product, shipping, manufacturing, advertising, etc. You want to make sure your product will be justified in its price so people are more willing to buy it.
4. Prototype
   1. This is the part where you actually create a physical mockup (or prototype) of the solution.
   2. You want to test this repeatedly and then show it to investors and manufacturers, so they can get behind your work.
5. Crowdfunding
   1. This stage is basically a proof-of-concept. Your product isn’t ready yet, but you are trying to get feedback from the market and see if the demand is there in real life.
   2. Moreover, you can raise additional funds (which demonstrates demand), and you can perfect your sales pitch.
   3. There are great crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and GoFundMe.
6. Design and Production
   1. This is like the final draft. You’re perfecting the design from what you’ve learned from the crowdfunding and prototype phase. You’re also writing the technical specifications and getting a patent for your design so no one can steal it.
   2. You can also work on packaging that appeals to consumers.
7. Marketing and Distribution
   1. Now you’re actually mass-producing your product and selling it to as many people as possible.

3. Create a Raspberry Pi project for someone else

This is similar to the method above. However, this way of making money is much easier because you don’t have to come up with a problem to solve: you will be paid at an hourly rate, and you only need to worry about creating a product involving a Raspberry Pi.

Still, you won’t be reaping the rewards of your product if it does succeed in the market.

Moreover, you’ll need to market yourself so that people will pay you for your service. Check out option 10 for more explanation.

4. Mine for cryptocurrency with Raspberry Pi

Mining for cryptocurrency may seem like the easiest, most passive way to make an income, yet the amount you earn over time isn’t too profitable. I included this on the list because it seemed like a fun way to introduce you to the world of cryptocurrency and understanding how blockchains worked.

If you want to give this a try, then you’d need your Raspberry Pi, the accessories that come with it, and a crypto wallet.

If you want to get started with cryptocurrency mining with Raspberry, check out my guide on Raspberry Pi cryptocurrency mining. It contains easy, doable steps you can utilize to make some money. I’ll also explain cryptocurrency basics and why you won’t be making much money with this method.

You could also buy lots of Raspberry Pi to increase the amount of cryptocurrency you’d mine, but it’s not a good ROI (Return On Investment).

5. Make a YouTube channel on Raspberry Pi

Billions of users use YouTube, which means you can talk about a niche topic like Raspberry Pi and still make some pretty decent money. For instance, you can get paid by showing ads or getting sponsorships. However, you’d need a decent-sized audience to have either of those two methods work.

When creating your channel, you can make educational videos, entertaining ones, or both. I’d think it’s strategically better to do both since you can easily obtain a larger audience.

Still, you can definitely make money through informational videos. For instance, Youtuber Descover has over 8,730 subscribers and the Youtube channel RaspberryPiIVBeginners has over 71,500 subscribers, and they both make informational videos.

However, if you want to make more money, you should definitely make entertainment videos like Mark Rober or Stuff Made Here. They’ve created cool, out-of-this-world projects like a glitter bomb or the world’s largest Nerf gun, but they’ve still interjected educational tidbits throughout their videos.

6. Write a Raspberry Pi related book

This is great for those who have lots of expertise and are strong writers. When you’re writing your book, you need to determine whether you’ll pursue self-publishing or traditional publishing.

When you’re self-publishing, you have to financially back your project and handle fees like cover art, printing, binding, shipping, promoting, advertising, etc.

However, if you choose the traditional publishing path, you don’t have to pay for anything other than a traditional publisher. They’ll handle the factors mentioned above in addition to editing, typesetting, proofreading, warehousing, author royalties, etc.

If you want to learn more about the writing and publishing process, check out the following video:

7. Create software that helps users with their Raspberry Pi

This is another option for you to create a product that targets Raspberry Pi users. However, this is a digital product, which means that it’s great for those who are strong in programming.

If you can create an online service or tool that can make the lives of many Raspberry Pi users easier, you will be handsomely compensated for your work.

Here are some general steps to getting started with a digital tool (similar to all the other processes I mentioned before):

1. Determine a problem
   1. You can find some problems in the Raspberry Pi forum.
   2. You can also fix a problem you’ve had when you worked on a Raspberry Pi project
2. Identify a demand for your solution
3. Create a software tool that will provide that solution
4. Test it (repeatedly)
5. Finalize the product
6. Advertise your product
7. Sell or monetize it

Because it’s all digital, there are many different monetization techniques you can subscribe to. Firstly, you can sell access to your tool on a monthly or yearly basis.

For example, the online tool NextCloud is very useful for Raspberry Pi users because it lets you store your project in its cloud.

They have a free version for individual use, but they start charging for companies that use it.

Now, you may be wondering: “If you make your digital product free, how do you make money with it?”. Here are a few ways to do that:

• You can put ads on your site.
  • However, this depends on the number of users using your site, so you’ll need to make a service that many people will use.
  • Use companies like AdSense, Mediavine, Ezoic, etc. to get compensated based on the number of people that view the ads placed by these advertisement companies.
• You can use affiliate links.
  • For example, you can create a project hub containing all the builds containing Raspberry Pi. Users could scroll through the list and choose which project they want to undertake that looks cool. Next, you could list the components the users would need to buy for that project. Then, direct them to Amazon with your affiliate links and get paid!

8. Use your expertise for Raspberry Pi consultation services

There are Raspberry Pi users with custom projects that have problems. You can provide them with help as long as you have a lot of experience.

One way you can obtain customers is by letting them come to you. One way you can do this is by first creating projects and upload them to the Raspberry Pi Project Hub. Other users will see your progress, and if they think your creations are cool enough, they will try to copy them.

Some of them will run into problems, and they’ll try contacting you for help (because you’re the one who created it). You can answer the easy questions for free, but if they require more of your time and their problem is more complicated, you should start charging them a fee.

Personally, I’ve found a lot of requests for personalized feedback in Facebook Raspberry Pi groups. There, you can message these users and work out the fee for your consultation service and the form of payment.

Additionally, you can look for some unresolved questions on the Raspberry Pi forum and try contacting the OP (Original Poster). If these don’t work for you, try freelancing and selling your knowledge and experience on freelance sites such as Upwork or Fiverr (see method 10 for more information).

9. Utilize your Raspberry Pi to capture data to sell

Raspberry Pis can serve many purposes. For this example, you can repurpose one to sense and record valuable data. The data you store should be of value to companies.

For instance, you can work with an electric company and incorporate a Raspberry Pi into a project that measures the electricity usage for a household. That company will find that data to be extremely valuable when charging the homeowners.

I’ve also read somewhere about a company that tracked and stored information about the location and movements of airplanes for an airport.

10. Become a freelancer

Becoming a freelancer is great for many reasons. Firstly, you can choose the clients you want to work with, the projects you like, the hours you want to work, etc. More importantly, you can determine your own price at which others can hire you for.

However, when you’re determining your own worth, you need to consider your level of expertise surrounding the Raspberry Pi. Moreover, you should consider your competitors and how much they’re charging. That way, you don’t get too greedy and overvalue yourself.

In the end, you want others to hire you instead of them finding someone else that’s equally (or even more) qualified than you are at a lower price point.

A good way to demonstrate your worth is by showing previous successful projects, strong testimonials from previous customers, and other skillsets you can bring to the table.

You can see from the picture below that freelancers are listing themselves around $60-$65 dollars an hour. You can see they justify their price with the 100% Job Success feature, a great description, and skills they possess. It’s apparent that they can do more than just tackle Raspberry Pi problems.

Here are some good websites to advertise yourself as a freelancer:

• Upwork
• Fiverr
• FlexJobs
• SolidGigs
• Freeup
• Toptal
• GURU
• Freelancer
• PeoplePerHour
• Hubstaff Talent
• Creto
• Outsourcely

Summary – tl;dr (Too Long; Didn’t Read)

Once again, the 10 different ways you can make money with Raspberry Pi are by:

• Teaching others about Raspberry Pi concepts like programming
• Making a Raspberry Pi prototype that will resolve an issue
• Creating a Raspberry Pi project for someone else
• Making a YouTube channel on Raspberry Pi
• Writing a Raspberry Pi related book
• Creating software that helps users with their Raspberry Pi
• Using your expertise for Raspberry Pi consultation services
• Utilizing your Raspberry Pi to capture data to sell
• Using Raspberry Pi to mine cryptocurrency
• Becoming a freelancer

In the end, I hope one or more of these tips will pay off for you!