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Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

johnathanward.com

161–170 of 173 posts

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First you sell the stuff you mine from the ground, then you sell shovels to the miners, then you hire the miners and make them dig stuff out of the ground for you that you sell. The final stage is selling miners to other mining companies.

The final stage is selling stuff that helps people sell miners to other mining companies.

The final stage is actually owning the mines.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#162
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of products do you create?

3D printing accessories like liquid print heads, laser cutters, and continuous production thing that I call a "broom". Android based robotic rovers (we were the first to do one at google i/o 2010, I should do a writeup on how that went). Industrial control systems.

Thats really cool. How are people (the few that do) currently buying your products? How do they find out about them?

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#163
post #63
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think comments like this are OT and misplaced. It adds nothing to our discussion here and assumes that the author will read all of the comments here (though I did note that in this case the author has submitted the post himself). This is direct correspondence to the author, so send him a message.

I think everyone else agreed with you, just found it a bit distracting when reading the article and I rarely comment on grammar or spelling, the post was fresh when I made the comment and the post was made by the blog author. I made an assumption he'd be monitoring the thread and made a friendly note here, or so I thought.

Yes

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#164

I'm not sure I'd regard making 100's of thousands of dollars complete failure. Now, it's obvious that he made money in ways that aren't overly useful to society, and promoted products that were less than stellar in spammy ways, but just having the goal of "Making Money Online" I'd consider that money to be pretty dang successful. The fact that he blew it all after the fact just makes him bad with money. It doesn't me…

Yes, I'd call that successful too. The expectations were too high, tough. I'm not sure why people are focusing so much on the fact that the money was obtained, but nothing useful was created. How different is it from, say, high frequency trading?

HFT is useful, it provides liquidity to buyers and sellers and lowers their spreads to razor thin levels saving them a ton of money in the process. To say HFT isn't creating value and isn't useful is simply wrong.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#165

This is why I don't think in terms of money buying happiness... it clearly doesn't... but it can rent it for a while.

It buys me happiness. I don't want to work for anyone besides myself and I now make enough money to do just this.

And unless you have enough money to last your lifetime, and then some without losing it all, or even most of it, it's temporary... Yes, it can last a lifetime.. just the same, you don't own it.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#166
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3D printing accessories like liquid print heads, laser cutters, and continuous production thing that I call a "broom". Android based robotic rovers (we were the first to do one at google i/o 2010, I should do a writeup on how that went). Industrial control systems.

Thats really cool. How are people (the few that do) currently buying your products? How do they find out about them?

Paypal, and... that's the thing - I don't want to spam. I did an indiegogo last year, but I have no idea how to advertise in a non-spammy way.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#167

I read this earlier in the day, and I've been thinking about it a lot since. In many ways, my story mirrors the one in the blog post. However, I've been fortunate enough to make my living at it. I too started by encountering a lot of "internet marketing" gurus. I was lucky enough to find one idea that let me make a fair amount of money, relatively easily. Back in the day, Google SEO was shockingly easy. Looking back,…

Adding to OP. What pains me in Affiliate Marketing, is that there is never talk about the end customer. The question whether "would you sell this to your grandmother?" is never even considered. All people are talking about is ROI, Campaigns, CTR, AB Testing, Laser targeting ..etc. Nobody cares if the customer is happy.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's funny? You can't talk about your business?

Why would I want to give anyone even a hint of my profitable niche? Many believe that ideas are worthless, but I don't. Especially on a business/startup forum. I really don't want the competition.

To me, This sort of thing doesn't demonstrate their is value in an idea, rather it demonstrates the value of asymmetric information.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#169

I have this idea to use technology and excellent customer service to be a sort of agent in the skilled labor market (painting, landscaping, masonry, etc). My wife is fluent in Spanish and English and I am good with web technologies. I though we could build relationships with some of the lower cost skilled labor providers in our area. They are on craigslist or we know them in other ways. Unfortunately, their English a…

What sort of middleman do you want to be? Customer support for the local guys' clients? Or do you see yourself advertising to the public and contracting others to work the job sites?

In the latter you will be competing with the labour guys for clients using local SEO and ads. In the former you won't rely as much on search engines as the pool of customers is limited to the business owners - more relationship building and outreach.

I've never found useful stuff on a public marketing forum - the good ones are probably unknown and selective entry only. Try reading some of the blogs linked here by other commenters. Hopefully their discerning tastes will filter out the bs :P

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The final stage is selling stuff that helps people sell miners to other mining companies.

The final stage is actually owning the mines.

And then selling the mines when they stop producing so much.
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