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How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

campfirelabs.co

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Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#181

Post by notahacker »

mbrock wrote: post #155
strken wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This point of view compares a marginal improvement with a massive improvement and concludes that bringing about a marginal improvement when you could cause a massive improvement is wrong. This is a false comparison because there's a third option, which is doing nothing. Doing nothing is worse than causing any size of improvement, and almost all of us are doing nothing. If we are to accept that paying Filipino workers…

That’s not the only possible ethical judgment. You’re assuming a kind of utilitarian perspective, but I think most people have at least an implicit virtue ethical perspective, which might come into play when evaluating the morality of a person who lives a life of leisure and freedom funded by maximizing the arbitrage from a third world labor force employed for repetitive and alienated tasks. Especially when the thesi…

I think the developing world considers bosses that provide them with comfortable middle class incomes by local standards doing work which is far more attractive than alternative employment opportunities to be a tad more virtuous than the equally wealthy Westerners clamouring for the elimination of their jobs though...

Nothing could really be more damaging to the development of poorer countries than condemning them to subsistence incomes because we've decided it's only ethical for businesses to employ their workers if they're productive enough after all other hurdles are considered to earn Western wages.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#182

Post by criddell »

growt wrote: post #176
haihaibye wrote: post #169

500 emails for 20 signups = 96% off target. >> By May of 2015 I had sent over 30,000 sales and marketing emails .96 × 30,000 = You just annoyed ~28,800 people. It's only because this immense amount of time lost is borne by strangers that it's a viable business. Let's not glorify spammers.

A 4% signup rate actually signifies really well targeted emails. Not everyone who doesn't sign up is annoyed by the mail (or did even open or read it). I think this is far from beeing spam, where you would see signup rates well below 1%.

> A 4% signup rate actually signifies really well targeted emails.

You're spamming 25 people to get one sign up? That sounds terrible.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#183

Post by menzoic »

kbenson wrote: post #111
yeldarb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was more focused on enjoying life, traveling, backpacking, etc. > In retrospect when you're sitting on a rocket it might make sense to buy more gas and light up that bad boy. I can identify with this. I started a Facebook game in early 2008 that picked up a million users in its first year. Back then all the stars were aligned and if I would have had a bigger vision for it there’s no reason it couldn’t have turned…

The flip side of this is realizing where the path might have lead you. Were I in your position, I suspect my regret might be tinged with relief. Zynga might be an extremely profitable company, but they also epitomize some of what I view as the most egregious offenses in manipulation human nature for monetary gain. So, were I presented with your prior circumstances and had I capitalized on them, would my convictions h…

>For another take, if the Zuckerberg of 2004/2005 was presented with what Facebook would be in 2019, extreme success, billions of dollars, social problems, and increasing questions about what role it does and has played in Democracy and an informed populace, how do we think he might have thought of all that?

If Zuckerberg knew in advance how successful Facebook was going to be and how the product would look today, that could reduce focus and derail everything. The product evolved through multiple stages with different goals in mind. The path would definitely be different.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#184

Post by madeuptempacct »

systematical wrote: post #77

The truth is, there is no 5-10 hour work week for 99% of people. Even if you make something like this person did, if you don't continue investing a lot of time into it, eventually competition will break you to pieces. Why? Because your competitor is hungry and working a lot more than 5-10 hours a week. I know this, because I've built two side income businesses, sat back and collected money only to find competitors ha…

I experience this on a microscopic scale. When crypto was new, there was no way to get price for micro-coins, so I built a site doing that. I got a decent amount of traffic and got actively pursued by exchanges to put up ads for them.

In the end, I didn't really make anything, but saw the aggressive development of similar sites as we tried to outcompete each other, in a "business" where the potential profit was maybe $100/month without growing huge. A lot of similar sites don't make money and survive on donations to this day.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#185

Post by unclebucknasty »

zorga wrote: post #116
unclebucknasty wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your entire comment--including suggestions as to what the OP really wants--is predicated on the belief that the current structure is the result of some static law of nature, rather than completely man-made. If you envision other means of distributing the planet's vast resources, then you'll realize that there are alternatives beyond a) working unfulfilling jobs that produce wealth for others in order to subsist; and…

> If you envision other means of distributing the planet's vast resources Whether you pay for yourself, or others pay for you, is a binary choice. There are no other options that don't fall into those two categories. > is predicated on the belief that the current structure is the result of some static law of nature Nope, just on the nature of boolean logic.

>Whether you pay for yourself, or others pay for you, is a binary choice.

You're still speaking in terms of our current system being the product of some immutable natural law of the universe.

What I am talking about is more fundamental. The very idea of someone "paying for you" is built on the premise that some group of people is entitled to own and control such vast quantities of the planet's resources that they enjoy access to many orders of magnitude beyond what they need to subsist; while, that same ownership leaves precious little resources for some other groups, such that they cannot even subsist. Now, we have this manufactured "dilemma" and only here enters the construct of the first group "paying" for the second.

The entire premise is asinine when you really think about it. And, it's even more so when you add the fact that the "accepted solution" to avoiding the dilemma is for vast numbers of the second group to dedicate a majority of their waking hours in the prime of their lives engaging in frequently unfulfilling activities merely to survive. It's yet further asinine when you also add that the product of that labor further concentrates resources in the hands of the first group.

If you're still not seeing it, then consider the simple phrase that is applied literally: "earn a living". I mean, really think about what that means. Start with the fact that to earn something implies that one is not otherwise entitled to it; thus owes something in order to receive it. To whom do they owe this and why?

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#186

Post by growt »

smohare wrote: post #179
growt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 4% signup rate actually signifies really well targeted emails. Not everyone who doesn't sign up is annoyed by the mail (or did even open or read it). I think this is far from beeing spam, where you would see signup rates well below 1%.

Spam generally includes unsolicited and unwanted emails, targeted or not.

Sure, but it also generally means large quantities of those (regarding email I don't think 30k qualifies as large quantities). My personal definition would be that the messages were sent without any thought if the audience might be interested in the content and that does not appear to be the case here. If your personal definition is that every email you receive ,that you did not ask for in some way yourself, is spam then thats ok. But as a general definition thats a bit strict.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#187

Post by tootahe45 »

systematical wrote: post #79
kokokokoko wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on when this product was created, I can almost guarantee they are just manually scraping LinkedIn (plus a few other places - Facebook, twitter, Bloomberg, maybe even Pitchbook). There are custom Google search portals you can use to search LinkedIn via keyword that not everyone knows about. From there one can use a bunch of services that will provide you (mostly)valid emails at various companies. I imagine he ma…

This is the problem with articles like this, they never really go into specifics. Generally fluff. Look at me I did this, but I won't give any specifics how except for vague self-help pamphlet jargon like "Monetize your brain".

I just skip over them unless they provided proof of their xK/month revenue. There are so many people willing to lie to sell you something or just to get e-rep.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#188

Post by scotty79 »

kokokokoko wrote: post #110
hawkice wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, ya see, it's wrong to pay people in poorer countries less because now you're talking to a poor person. If you hire an American, you never even spoke to a poor person, so it isn't your fault. If that sounds like a fever dream, you aren't alone, but it's my best guess at understanding what's happening. Obviously, my complete lack of employing people in central Africa is why they are all middle class Americans now,…

Or, maybe pay people a living wage no matter what country they are from? Doesn't seem that unreasonable.

As a business, paying more for something that you can have (exactly the same) for less is totally unreasonable.

Re: How I Built a $5K a Month Side Project

#190

Post by Cthulhu_ »

close04 wrote: post #157
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

considering known statements at the time I think probably Zuckerberg would think it sounded ideal.

Everything I have read about Zuckerberg's history makes him look like a despicable and abject human being both on the surface and deep down. Of course I have a superficial view based on movies, articles, word of mouth, etc. But it feels backed by his actions.

He's not exactly going out of his way to disprove it; any public appearances he makes look heavily scripted and rehearsed, and performed robotically.

And for good reasons; on the one side he's the CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world, and any slip-up he makes will cost the company billions in lost stockmarket value. On the other side he has a family who are at constant risk of abduction and / or murder by people that want ransom or who he or his company have pissed off.

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