what do my fellow engineers suggest I do to make a little coin in addition to my 9 to 5?
I'd personally avoid that unless you're ready to pay for insurance. People do it all the time but I don't think most of it do it right and very often end up getting sued.
That said, there are a number of things you can do. You can post your resume on a freelance site or a non-profit board. You can search those sites as well. Back on the East Coast, whenever people heard I'm an engineer, they wanted me to stamp their drawings and work with their real estate/development deals. Those are mostly smaller investors and real estate/development firms who buy buildings in New England and convert them to condos. They often need someone to get property boundaries sorted, parking areas designed/re-designed, unit conversion layouts sorted etc... I have a friend who did some of those but always with people he knew like his father and his partners who are contractors.
You can also lookup small contractors and offer your services. They can often design something but can't always retain an engineer to do review and stamp. Sometimes they have to pass up certain work. Oh... and how about the Solar energy industry. There are a number of them out in California right now going around forcing clients to get their own engineers to build a structure for their panels and they can't even tell the client what the specifications have to be. So client has to hire a structural or civil engineer to put a carport to code etc... to receive the panels. It's probably better if they had their own contracted engineer to do that. I'd call businesses like that up, or at least research them, to see what they need.
Lastly, there are a number of small city/county/municipal agencies that are not able to have a full-time engineer. Same goes for small colleges and universities, even schools. I know a number of people who get business that way. They're usually smaller towns though. It helps if you're from the community. I know this woman in Illinois who quit her job and started a new company after building up enough projects and rapport with the city where she lives. Now she's basically their engineering branch.
So yeah... loads of possibilities.
