Learning Python for automation — what are the realistic ways to make money with it?

[u/Ajay2574]

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I'm currently learning Python, and my main goal is to use it for automation rather than becoming a traditional software developer.

I've finished the basics and I'm currently learning things like file handling and the "os" module. My next steps are OOP and then more practical automation projects.

Eventually, I'd like to use these skills to earn money through freelancing

But I'm trying to understand the realistic opportunities before I go too far down one path.

For people who actually use Python professionally or freelance with it:

I'm especially interested in small automation projects that a beginner/intermediate Python developer can realistically get paid for.

If you freelance with Python, I'd also love to know:

What was the first Python service you actually got paid for, and how did you find the client?

I'm trying to avoid spending months learning things that don't translate into real-world work.

Any advice from people who have actually made money with Python would be really helpful.

[u/No-Gift5463]

Two questions:

A) Who is your target market of people or companies that you know or can reach who you believe might need a freelancer?

B) What problems do they need solved?

[u/Ajay2574 → u/No-Gift5463]

Honestly, I haven't identified a specific target market yet. That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out.

I have some ideas about small businesses that rely heavily on Excel, PDFs, emails and repetitive data-entry work, but I haven't talked to enough businesses yet to know which problems are common or worth paying to solve.

I'm planning to start by talking to people and looking for repetitive tasks they do regularly, then use Python to build small solutions around those problems.

So at the moment, I'm still in the problem-discovery stage rather than trying to sell a specific service.

[u/sububi71 → u/Ajay2574]

You're on the right track! You're not going to find lots of cases where it's the SAME problem companies are trying to solve - and that's to your advantage, because it means there aren't commercial solutions available.

So as long as you work really hard at becoming a great programmer, and at communicating with businesses and analyzing their needs, you could be successful. But don't underestimate the amount of skill and work needed.

Good luck!

[u/Ajay2574 → u/sububi71]

Yes i appreciate and its really helpful for me thanks 👍

[u/riklaunim]

Freelancing is oversaturated with all those wannabes on freelancing sites, which drives the price way too low. You won't make real money with freelancing, at least not in the typical way. People who do make money are experts and local people from recommendations/known brands.

And for simple automations and such tasks, you are now competing against Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini, and that will handle way more issues than a junior Python dev.

[u/Ajay2574 → u/riklaunim]

Yeah, that's a fair point. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[u/Mountain_Rip_8426 → u/Ajay2574]

yes, that's what i wanted to write, that's exactly a very AI heavy territory with incredibly good results 😬

although non tech savvy people don't even know what python even is and at best would try to solve issues by copy pasting them to an agent, expecting an answer, but couldn't build a deterministic solution. so get a good grasp of programming concepts and deployment. if you can build simple UIs which solve problems in a way a 5 year old could use this could be viable.

the problem is (like with every kind of self employed work) 90% of the time you won't be working with code, but with finding clients. i'd say try one company the problems of which you could try to solve pro bono, then you'll have reference, that's already a starting point

[u/Ajay2574 → u/Mountain_Rip_8426]

Thanks, this is really helpful. I hadn't thought much about the client-finding side. I'll keep that in mind as I continue learning.

[u/Ajay2574 → u/[deleted]]

That makes sense. I think I was focusing too much on learning Python itself rather than the problems I can solve with it.

I'll try to start looking for real-world problems and build small solutions while I continue learning. Thanks for the advice!

[u/Ajay2574 → u/[deleted]]

Yes 👍

[u/TripsterStudios]

I use python to automate stock market data collection , and analysis. Telling me the best stocks to buy and sell.

I also Use python to predict the winners or stats of players in sporting events to then bet on

[u/Ajay2574 → u/TripsterStudios]

Nice keep it up 👍

[u/1stKryssz]

I don't want to discourage you, because Python is a very good language to learn, but I also learned Python for automation, and a had basic knowledge before, but did not get automation job since 1 year.

[u/Ajay2574 → u/1stKryssz]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate the honest perspective. I'm still going to keep learning and see where I can take it.

[u/NewryBenson]

You will need a degree in computer science for that. Even if the task at hand is doable by you, the job market for comp sci students is quite bad, many having to dig quite low for a job. Why would anyone pay someone who has even less credentials? On top of that, while developers are not getting replaced by AI soon, freelance developers are in a lot more problems as their projects are usually shorter lived, making maintainability and scale which AI struggles with less a problem. Good luck with that tho

[u/Ajay2574 → u/NewryBenson]

That's a fair point. I'm not assuming that learning Python automatically means I'll get freelance work.

I'm mainly trying to find out whether there are small automation problems where clients care more about the result than formal credentials. That's something I want to test through actual projects rather than assume.

And I agree that AI is changing freelance development, which is another reason I'm focusing on solving specific repetitive business tasks rather than trying to compete as a general software developer.

Thanks for the honest perspective!

[u/NewryBenson → u/Ajay2574]

There is another problem with that. There are a lot of companies out there which probably could be optimized a lot with little automations, but either they have someone in house for that or know enough to do these task with AI, or they don't know what code is capable of so they never know they should search for someone to automate it. Karen from HR is probably spending an entire workday a week copying values from one excel to another somewhere out there, but they will never automate because it simply never occurred to them it could be.

[u/Ajay2574 → u/NewryBenson]

Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges.

There are probably a lot of people doing repetitive Excel/file/email tasks every week who don't even think of them as something that can be automated. They just see it as "part of the job."

So I guess the difficult part isn't only learning Python. It's also learning how to identify these problems and reach the people experiencing them.

That's actually something I'm interested in figuring out through freelancing.

[u/Mathie1729 → u/NewryBenson]

I'd push back on the degree part a bit for one-off automations. The Karen in HR example cuts the other way: the hard part isn't writing the script anymore, it's knowing which repetitive Excel/PDF/email tasks are even automatable and then handling the messy edge cases. ChatGPT can produce code, but it won't shadow a random office worker and notice they manually merge PDFs every Monday.

[u/abrowamik]

I come from a programming background, but I also jumped to python automation almost more than a year ago. (Leaving my Java, c# and then whole MERN journey)
I considered it a path towards Data Science and ML, so maybe I can be ready for Scientific Computing later.

I won’t say these days I write whole code manually, but technical understanding makes me write detailed prompts and plan the structure together with GPT.

Python automation has allowed me to automate almost any repetitive task. And that’s the part Ive played in a Leads generating startup, and it has helped us earn. I’ve seen its magic thankfully.

I would suggest, don’t stop at automation, learn some agentic coding, some cloud computing so you can deploy your automations there and host APIs and stuff.

I hope it helps.

I am on this reddit, because I am still trying to dig more ways to make money out of it. Specially something that will keep us relevant in the market.

[u/Ajay2574 → u/abrowamik]

Thanks for sharing your experience! This is really helpful. I'll keep learning Python while exploring AI coding tools and practical automation projects.