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Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

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Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#41

Post by pdelgallego »

dotBen wrote: post #16
nametoremember wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does the money actually come from? Other adult businesses advertising on your site?

Affiliate deals with content sites - which are more than just advertising because they tend to have insane revenue sharing deals for the lifetime of the lead - often 50% split of membership fees for the life of the subscription. So from just a single user signing up for a $30/month subscription, you would make over $180/year. My partner enjoys a healthy secondary income (way way above the monthly figure mentioned in…

Hey Ben, I would like to read more on this topic. Have you written something about it?

What are the needs and the problems that they are facing. How to identify the possible customers. Common affilate scheme in the industry, etc ...

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#42

Post by z303 »

nametoremember wrote: post #13
dotBen wrote: post #11

Applying your startup skills to projects in the adult space will certainly help you wing your way to $1000/m v easily. Big data/machine learning of all the meta data associated on tube sites, repurposing content for tablets, recommendation engines, social layers that are delineated/firewalled from the mainstream social graph, hosting/live streaming services for adult content -- are all opportunity spaces that come to…

Where does the money actually come from? Other adult businesses advertising on your site?

Kuro5hin had a good post way back on making money from thumbnail galleries

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/29/9314/1484

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#43

Post by kahawe »

nicpottier wrote: post #9

I have an eBook for sale for $39.00 that will show you how in ten easy steps, it includes: 1) how to market yourself and use the power of social networking to do the marketing for you 2) how to unlock the power of referrals 3) how you can grow from making $1000 a month, to over $10,000 a month in three more months of work. "I never thought I could own my own business, but it is just so easy" - happy customer

Funnily enough, those ads would be MUCH closer to the truth if they would just state: "1. " 2. ??? 3. profit!"

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#44

Post by gersh »

nicpottier wrote: post #9

I have an eBook for sale for $39.00 that will show you how in ten easy steps, it includes: 1) how to market yourself and use the power of social networking to do the marketing for you 2) how to unlock the power of referrals 3) how you can grow from making $1000 a month, to over $10,000 a month in three more months of work. "I never thought I could own my own business, but it is just so easy" - happy customer

How much do those ebooks make? How hard is it to make $1000/month selling ebooks?

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#46

Post by mechanical_fish »

Mz wrote: post #36
syllogism wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start by being specific. There's no generic answer here. You can't really try to understand "succeeding at businesses" in the abstract. You have to do things on a case-by-case basis. So if you ask about one of your _specific_ sites, people can help you.

Okay. How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. The rest of the world thinks it cannot be done either so it's a hard sell. So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My…

Without even getting into the ethics of selling health advice before the experiments are complete, consider the probability that it's just a terrible idea to try to monetize your personal health site, no matter how you do it.

The point of your health regimen is to get yourself well. The point of your health site should be to help you get yourself well -- by motivating you to stick to your plan, by helping you keep records of your own plans and thinking and data, and by recruiting folks to help encourage and coach you and share advice and conduct experiments along with you.

Don't screw up your own priorities and motivations by introducing an additional profit motive. When your health is at stake, you need to do what you need to do, not what your audience wants to pay for. If, after all your experiments, it turns out that the healthiest path for you is the most boring thing ever, something that nobody wants to read about and that can't be sold for money but that is nonetheless effective for you... great! Mission accomplished, you're healthy. Don't bias your judgement by asking a market to vote with its money. They'll end up (e.g.) steering you to the latest fad, whether it's healthy for you or not.

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#48

Post by fedd »

getsat wrote: post #20
dotBen wrote: post #11

Applying your startup skills to projects in the adult space will certainly help you wing your way to $1000/m v easily. Big data/machine learning of all the meta data associated on tube sites, repurposing content for tablets, recommendation engines, social layers that are delineated/firewalled from the mainstream social graph, hosting/live streaming services for adult content -- are all opportunity spaces that come to…

I've been wanting to build a niche video/picture site for a while (to deal with all the CDN/scaling issues involved myself), and I've also been looking for a project I can use this Programming Collective Intelligence book on. Adult seems to be a good next project for me. The only initial unknown I can think of would be where content would come from unless it's user-supplied. Any other links/info/thoughts?

aren't all the niches filled?

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#49

Post by Vmabuza »

Mz wrote: post #36
syllogism wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start by being specific. There's no generic answer here. You can't really try to understand "succeeding at businesses" in the abstract. You have to do things on a case-by-case basis. So if you ask about one of your _specific_ sites, people can help you.

Okay. How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. The rest of the world thinks it cannot be done either so it's a hard sell. So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My…

Honestly this is like trying to sell pages off your own personal diary. Im going to say from my POV there is no way you can make serious money of of this.Google adsense yes but we all know how that goes if you have low traffic. BUT if you can gather an Audience and after that write a book about this..your blog audience could spread the word about ''the guy who defied the odds''

Re: Is it hard to build a web app that makes at least $1000 a month?

#50

Post by Mz »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #46
Mz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay. How would one get more quality traffic with this specific challenge: It's a health site where I talk about getting myself well when doctors claim it cannot be done. The rest of the world thinks it cannot be done either so it's a hard sell. So far, I have been working on building an audience painfully slowly. Since I am also working on getting myself well, content does not go up as regularly as I would like. My…

Without even getting into the ethics of selling health advice before the experiments are complete, consider the probability that it's just a terrible idea to try to monetize your personal health site, no matter how you do it. The point of your health regimen is to get yourself well. The point of your health site should be to help you get yourself well -- by motivating you to stick to your plan, by helping you keep re…

I'm guessing you didn't look at the site.

A) I am well on my way to being well. Although I continue to learn, the site does not exist to get me well. It exists because I made some off-the-cuff remark on an email list where I was held in high esteem, got attacked for it, was politely asked to "prove" what I had said and I said "give me a day or two to get back to you so I can put together the information". The response to the next email where I backed up my remark was stuff like "Can I forward it to someone I know who has a child with the same condition?". So I began working on putting the information on a website so people can share the links without asking to forward my emails.

B) It turns out that there is actually research that backs up some of what I kind of stumbled across. But it doesn't get much press because it won't make any drug companies rich.

C) I don't mind helping people but 1) I have bills to pay myself 2) if it benefits others and has value, why shouldn't I get something in return? and 3) people don't take it seriously when it isn't "for profit". Just being some nice person who got well and is willing to share what I know is very unconvincing for helping others.

D) I often contemplate just taking the site down. I am okay with just getting on with my life now that I am healthy enough to do that. But other people have made it clear they don't want it to come down. Both this year and in a previous year, donations paid my hosting service renewal when I couldn't afford it (this year: Thank you HN!).

As for the ethics question, I have had that thrown in my face before. People are dying from what I have and doctors can't really help them. Is it possible for people to misuse the information on my site and wind up with a problem because of it? Yes. Is it likely that doing nothing is worse? Very much so. My approach is much more conservative than what doctors do and much safer.

Thanks very much for responding.

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