Finding a tech geek who can put together a coherent sentence is hard, and there are always manuals to write, tutorials to create and deep blog posts to make -- many of which need the kind of in-depth understanding that only a tech geek can bring.
It doesn't always need a technical background -- a friend of mine found a job writing drug trial instructions even though she had no background in medicine or biology. But she was pretty exceptional, and very quick on the up-take so she probably absorbed a couple of years of medtech education in the first few months she was there.
So yes, you can make a career out of that. Apply for jobs and say "I want a role where I can program 50% of the time and write all your public-facing words the other 50% of your time". There are many employers who would pay a premium for that unique combination of skills which you have already demonstrated.
These are rather small niches, but in most of these areas I'm one of the leading experts in the field -- usually because there's no-one else writing anything.
Based on what I'm getting from my work so far, I'd estimate that I would need to get to 50-100 books written before I could stop relying on other sources of income. I live in an expensive city and have a family, so you might be able to do slightly more easily than me. Also, if I wrote something less niche, I might have a bigger market (but probably face more competition).
In other words, I might be able to write full-time in 10-15 years' time if I keep up the current output. That is something I am aiming to do, but it's obviously not a short-term goal.
Small niches are almost the rule. With apologies to Emo Phillips, you may find that if you're preaching Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region (Council of 1912) and your audience is Northern Conservative Baptist, Great Lakes Region (Council of 1879), you'll be metaphorically pushed off the bridge (you heretic).
It doesn't always need a technical background -- a friend of mine found a job writing drug trial instructions even though she had no background in medicine or biology. But she was pretty exceptional, and very quick on the up-take so she probably absorbed a couple of years of medtech education in the first few months she was there.
So yes, you can make a career out of that. Apply for jobs and say "I want a role where I can program 50% of the time and write all your public-facing words the other 50% of your time". There are many employers who would pay a premium for that unique combination of skills which you have already demonstrated.
As for freelance authoring... I'm writing book #8 now. The first 6 are all deeply technical books on backup and managing IT (http://www.ifost.org.au/books/ ); the seventh was a collection of mathematics/computing/physics poetry ( http://www.ifost.org.au/books/outlinks/medusa ).
These are rather small niches, but in most of these areas I'm one of the leading experts in the field -- usually because there's no-one else writing anything.
Based on what I'm getting from my work so far, I'd estimate that I would need to get to 50-100 books written before I could stop relying on other sources of income. I live in an expensive city and have a family, so you might be able to do slightly more easily than me. Also, if I wrote something less niche, I might have a bigger market (but probably face more competition).
In other words, I might be able to write full-time in 10-15 years' time if I keep up the current output. That is something I am aiming to do, but it's obviously not a short-term goal.