Edit: a commute of about 2 hours (roundtrip) per day, driving my car.
Cycling will save you more money because you don't need a gym subscription and you don't have to pay car registration, parking, fuel, repairs, license fees, accidents or mass transit tickets.
On top of that you can zone out which is healthy and gets you in the mode for thinking (assuming you are programming at work), you don't need to sell your bike when you move cities/continents (staying geographically flexible = massive opportunity for profit), and you don't need an apartment or job with a parking space.
Winter temperatures are no biggie. You just do what you'd do anyway: put on more layers of clothes. Now, snow and ice on the other hand...
Another commenter worried that your advice might not be universally applicable because of weather, but I'm worried because of traffic. Whether you can zone out on a bike commute probably depends on what country you're in, and hence whether your bike commute involves a protected cycle path vs. dodging heavy car traffic. I've seen cyclists commuting in Utrecht and in São Paulo, and the former could probably zone out, while the latter would be taking a major risk if they did.
I often do this when I find my base stress level rising. You just watch the road in front of you while you turn things over in your head the whole time.
We're well into idle speculation territory here, but I think this sort of mental garbage collection is a necessary and underrated exercise. It's something that people are unknowingly depriving themselves of when they insist on constantly signal jamming their brains with Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Feedly.
You certainly still can get hit while riding your bike. The cost to repair your body (hospital bills) is often much high than to repair a car (body shop). Regardless, I still enjoy cycling to work.
It might work out in the end, but its a lot of pain and uncertainty.
Then you give your account later.
Drivers aren't in a good position to discuss particulars when they're strapped to a gurney in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Arguably living close enough to bike to work, and not take a freeway, means you spend a lot more on rent / mortgage.
Edit: be sure to view Q&A and reviews at bottom before use - very helpful.
It's not a direct path to a financial gain, but it does improve your personal value, which should in turn improve your income streams.
I used to, in my late 20s, car pool with people to work. We'd flip on a podcast -- every day it was someone's job to pick one out. Then talk about it a bit... made the time go by quickly and we all ended up learning something. Harder to do as careers became more serious... stopped being viable to schedule my arrival and departure times around others.
If you have friends in the same time-zone you can schedule a commute call to catch up and bitch about things. Some of my buddies and I used to have a conference line open at a set hour, anyone who wanted to dial in on their drive in could. Was nice, until everyone started having kids and it was viable to talk openly in the car.
Lastly... just sort of thinking about your goals and things you want to accomplish that day... I tend to do this quite a bit. Got in the habit of using my first 30 minutes at work for day planning / preparation... but always helps to have it all queued up in my head before I write it down in my journal.
At my current company I can clock in via VPN and book time on whatever I'd work on, wherever I am. As long as I tell my superior that I won't be at the office, and as long as I don't have any meetings during that time, he's fine with it. I've committed to deadlines already, and if I don't meet them, he's in trouble, but so am I, so he trusts me.
I'm assuming you're driving, but if you had the option of train you could have that time to sit and work on freelance work on the laptop.
If you had to drive, one option is to indirectly make money by perhaps working on your skills. If you're a coder, download some podcasts or audiobooks about new languages or techniques. Perhaps even study a different subject like soft skills or sales or something that could broaden your value in the marketplace?
Besides, if it was me trying to do a podcast: "And that's why you should watch out for that code smell... Oh, that f*cking idiot, use your turn signal jacka$$!!!"
The premise of this question seems to be related to that. Not that I'm pitching entrepreneurship so much as reframing the question. Maybe there is a middle ground where the commute time is used for business...phone calls and so forth. And maybe those phone calls are invested in looking for a better paying job or freelance work or something that increases income.
Once you have the idea for your business, which may take years, the ROI will have been much higher than anything else you could have possibly spent the same time doing. Think.
(If this gets downvoted too heavily, I'll delete it. But it's a genuine comment.)
Or take the long game and work on classes and skills that will get you a higher paying job.
If you recorded your thoughts about politics, social issues, current events, etc. on the way to work and published those videos on YouTube, over time (give yourself likely 3-6 months to start making any significant income) you'll develop a subscriber base, your view counts for each video will continue to climb, and you'll be in a position to monetize your YouTube traffic.
You obviously should be very careful about doing any kind of video recording or anything else that might distract you from driving. This may be a better idea if you're taking public transit.
And follow it up by reading something like: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Path-Wealth-financial-independ...
Move closer to work, and ideally walk there. Or bike or take transit. (If transit, you can work while you ride.) If housing costs too much to do that, move to a metro area where it's possible. Now you're what maybe $500/month richer? Now sell the car - voila, making money!
If you have to drive, another strategy is to think about work and plan out your day while you drive, so you're more productive once you arrive at the office.
You can also make hands-free phone calls from the car.
The rest of the suggestions are fine, but I think you asked for ideas on how to make money, not how to save money. And I don't know of any other way that wouldn't require your full attention.
This is just a dumb thing to do and the answer to to stop doing it, not optimize it.