Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#41

Post by dantheman » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:28 PM UTC

starkfist wrote: post #31

yummyfajitas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It usually is free if space is available and you don't annoy the professor. I've had several non-paying students; the only time I ever kicked one out of class was because we ran out of seats. MIT is actually well known for making information free, but the credential is expensive. http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

That's interesting because I wanted to sit in on the computational photography course at NYU and the registrar said it was impossible. Maybe I should have avoided talking to the administration? However, I did email the instructor and he did not return any of my email. How do you even get into the buildings without an ID?

At MIT the doors are unlocked. People just walk in and sit in on a class, the speak to the professor before class starts and say "Hey can I sit in on this class" and unless the class is full they can normally sit in.

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#42

Post by antidaily » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:29 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #14

First, a Web service that "meets an unmet need." Back in 2005 I built a "code snippets" site using the then-nascent Rails in just over 24 hours. I then spent a second day making the design more "Web 2.0" a few months later, but otherwise did little except mention it here and there and add my own code into it. It made ~$800 a month from Adsense for a couple of years and then I sold it to DZone for $30,000. Perhaps the…

How many pages do you need for an e-book typically?

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#43

Post by ambiate » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:35 PM UTC

Oh, forgot the most important part. Stay white hat. If you ever venture into the dark side of online ads, you will probably get caught and have a wasted investment.

Offline affiliate marketing is win-win, but in a cheap country it might be hard to pull off.

I know there are some issues with getting accepted for adsense in other countries. If you have problems, email me (profile link) and I'll give you one of the solutions.

1. Find a notepad. 2. Write: "Things I can teach you:" 3. List everything you imagine you can teach a person (This can range from simple math to programming to drawing to singing like an american idol?) 4. Hard part is over! Relax and decide on your mid-range topics (ones you're not a guru at, but with a little research could obviously teach someone) 5. Create little niche sites (google keyword tool -> show CPC -> Arrange by amount of hits (look in the 10k-20k views range -> google "keyword" (yeah quotes) -> if its less than 40k pages, and wikipedia is a top result, you probably just found a $9 investment (domain cost) that would turn into $20/mo. 6. Once you've spent 2 weeks doing this, you should have a feel for the idea and what grasps people's attention etc. Try some of your more guruish topics. Hell, make an ebook and offer it on one of your adsense sites.

There are also tons of sites that pay you to write articles[1] or photoshop!

You said cheap country, but I don't really understand the scope of that... but I'm going to assume you know another language. If so, start a site offering translation services or just scope out people. iPhone apps, etc need translations and shell out serious cash for them.

my experience(I made money, got cocky, and lost too much): http://sanguinity.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/money22.png

xutopia's recent story(6k/ebook) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1159445

One final bit: when you research (blogs/sites) you will probably stumble upon keywords like 'mesothelioma, structured settlements, annuity payments, criminal lawyers, tax attorneys, asbestos, etc,' being the gold mines. Don't waste your time. $40/clk($5-15 your share) sounds amazing, but its another losing game trying to get ranked in search engines.

[1: http://www.associatedcontent.com ]

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#44

Post by switch » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:35 PM UTC

how many hours a month are you willing to work for $300-$400 a month.

Or do you want to do x amount of work and expect to get $400 a month for life?

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#45

Post by eam » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:41 PM UTC

needmoney wrote: post #3

Concours wrote: post #2

try some freelance boards, like elance.com, create a blog(no fast money here) , try meacanical turk...what language do you programm? offer your services for free to build some referals, and set a portfolio with those referals.

Python, ruby, php, scheme, c, c++, java. Any ideas how quickly I could make the money off of something like elance (or how quickly you could, since we don't know our relative coding speeds)? Likewise for Mechanical Turk?

Don't use elance, you have to pay to bid and usually you never get hire for a gig. Instead you might want to try oDesk, I go on there when I have nothing to do and I usually get gigs within hours.

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#46

Post by _bfhp » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:47 PM UTC

You could try Amazon Turk as a side-job. In a few hours you could make 5 to 10 dollars or more..

It wouldn't serve as a main source of income, but at least you'll have money to spend on commodities that you won't have to take out of whatever actual main source you find.

Tip: If you try this, when searching for HITs, only look for 5-cent HITS or above, and don't bother with $5 stuff, which no one ever gets.

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#47

Post by cryptnoob » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

maneesh wrote: post #37

I earned about that much, completely passive, within 2 mos and it's been recurring with no extra work, doing some basic SEO and adsense work, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1merER1zVFg , skip to minute 2:40 to see my business model in work

That was a fun watch! I've bookmarked content authority as well. Can you point us to a finished site, so we can see the end result of the process?

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#48

Post by dkokelley » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

mikeyur wrote: post #32

I used to do a lot of offline marketing of online products and made some good money. What I mean by this is selling sites/hosting/newsletter hosting to small, local businesses. I did this when I was tight on cash, since it can usually be done in a weekend: research a local group of businesses (ie. dentists or furniture stores) using Google Maps and grab all of their info. See which businesses don't have websites - an…

" I can give you the site for $500... (I typically charged them around $800 for the site)."

How did this work? Was the final price after upselling on other services?

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#49

Post by codebaobab » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 5:55 PM UTC

nopassrecover wrote: post #36

patio11 wrote: post #23

If I said "I want the Wordpress theme from http://www.christmasbingocards.com done similarly except for St. Patrick's Day" and you were able to accomplish that without needing too much handholding, I'd be able to give you one project a month for $400 until you either got sick of doing them or decided to move upmarket. If this interests you, email me a link to your portfolio.

I have to say that I am impressed every time I read a comment from you - you manage to be relevant and drop some innovative new idea you're trying for your own business.

I agree. I even have a bookmark: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=patio11

Re: Ask HN: Fastest way to make $300-400 a month online?

#50

Post by tomhogans » Sat, Mar 06, 2010, 6:04 PM UTC

If your English is as good as your post seems and you've got any web development/coding experience at all I could easily find $400/month worth of things for you to do, probably more. My Skype name is the same as my username here, if you're interested.