Hey all,
After getting into online business back in my senior year of high school (ran a HIGHLY profitable and popular incentivized site aka free ipod-type stuff), I am getting that itch to be milking the internet for money, again.
Now, its the summer and I havent started working yet so cash is at a minimum. I see the cash I have now as disposable and a learning tool. Say its around $100-200. Id like to get started in some kind of blogging/ad/domaining/internet marketing business of some kind.
Now, I am willing to use my little money to throw away and learn a few things because, in a few months, Im considering taking some big risk and sinking $1000+ into whatever I learn to do in order to make a real meaty business.
I want it to generate long term, passive income. Im willing to invest plenty of hours on it to get it up and going and a little less to keep it maintained. Id prefer the bulk of the money making/maintaining operations to be automated in nature or, mainly, require few hours should I be particularly busy that week. Id like to break even in, oh, 2-3 months and have this income last a year or longer. I can invest lots of time to it for about 1-2 months but, after that, Id like to slowly have required time investment decrease. Im willing to reinvest profits into whatever I do to either grow it or spawn new, similar operations. Id like an operation that I can feel comfortable knowing that Ill eventually make my money back but, if not, Ill atleast be able to salvage 60-70% of it should it fail.
Can someone suggest some things to look into? Places to go to read up and get good guru information and ask questions?
Im an intelligent dude (successful both personally and academically) with experience in online business. Im an old school web designer who knows HTML (no CSS, XML, whathaveyou). I can do things with Photoshop but none of this super amazing, creative, web 2.0 razzle and dazzle shit. Im comfortable reading and modifying PHP. I can do a bit of SQL and ASP. Ive got no probs handling anything very technical, been at this shit for years. Im creative but I dont want to depend on that to make money, I want to use that to enhance the money I make. I cant write, I have nothing to blog about, my life is pretty boring and hectic so any blogging would have to be scraped content. Im somewhat decent at thinking out of the box in terms of keywords.
i think if u plan to invest in domains then u should start reading through past posts at this forum.
also, go through the past sales and see what domains are being sold for how much so that u have a fairly good idea.
when u have spent about 1 week reading reading past posts then i suggest you should start making some purchases, selling them quickly (flipping them as they call it) and then reinvesting them
u do not really require a investment of 100-200$ for the starts until u know a lot abt the business. i started with 10$
also, invest low and sell in the beginning. if u cannot sell the domain that means that there is some problem and u need to revise ur strategy. do not keep on purchasing more and more domains until u have cleared ur past lots.
if u need some help regarding any particular domain then u can always contact me by PM
1st : Your budget is $100 - $200 which not helping with most of online business ... at max you can start mini-site plan or invest them in some domains for resale.
2nd : You are not happy with "check the link in my signature" .. While the end of most advices (according to your starting budget) will be list of some websites to start specific business .. and this is why i told you about the link.
Anyway .. here is some online business you can go with :
- FreeLance ( if you have a talent or enough experience with design , SEO , Coding , Programing , etc.. )
I second Zachary0611's suggestion for a niche site about something you're interested in.
If you don't have a lot of time to maintain the site, you want to stay away from topics that go "stale" if you can't pay them a lot of attention. For example, gaming, technology ... OTOH, sites on things like "playing the piano" or "Italian cooking" never get old.
Niche sites can do well because there's usually much less competition for the paying customers. Take some time to learn about online sales and find a good, related merchant with an affiliate program. If you can't find a good affiliate program, use adsense. Write some content, add and revise pages and build links when you have the time, let it coast when you don't.
Stay away from "get rich quick" schemes - Put in the time and effort up-front and you'll have a site that brings in money with little to no work on your part for a long, long time.
Judging by your first post, it sounds like you have friends that are close to or still in the teen group. There's a lot of money to be made off the "myspace" generation. I think you have to harness that group and if you get them to spread the word to their friends, you are in good shape.
How do I mess up and lose money? 
