Living Off The Net!

[Billy!]

Hey Everyone!

I would love to be able to work from home one day! I am leaving my job in 6 months, and then will be working away for a while earning big money hopefully in the Australian Mining Industry.

Anyhow eventually I would love to be able to develop some great sites.

Can anyone offer the pros and cons of working at work from the Internet.

Any advice would be great.

And if you have done this, your stories would be fantastic!

 

[-Adam-]

One great resource I refer to ALL THE TIME because I have a secondary income is http://www.entraprenuer.com/ This site is great and especially if your looking to into business for yourself.

 

[iNod]

Working at home from home is alot easier than it seems.

First I strongly suggest you stockpile (save) up alot of cash. In order to go full tilt into the web business you will need some investing money. Second I recommand you look around at articles on the new about starting a successful internet business. Third I suggest you figure out what area you wish to go into to. Alot of websites (minis) or one or two HUGE websites (communities). Each of those can make the same amount, some take alot longer to develop than others. But they all take money and time. So if you don't have lots of each I suggest maybe finding a business partner. They will offer financial support aswell as lead to creation of ideas, as 2 heads are better than one.

These are only suggestions from what I have learned. You don't need business partners, but most if not all BIG time websites started out either with the (idea dude) and a programmer (make happen dude) if you can do both, than disregard this.

A few tips.

- Steve

 

[Billy!]

Do you think there is much to be made from forums? That is where I want to go.

 

[iNod]

Forums are getting old, sadly. They take ALOT of marketing and people only join when there are lots of good articles, so you would need something strong in your field to advertise.

- Steve

 

[Billy!]

I disagree Steve, forums are a great place to make new friends, find info, and so much more.

I have never marketed my car forum in my signature and it has done very well.

I plan to start on my backpacking forum in the new year and also a forum for people with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders etc soon.

I feel they will do very well.

 

[iNod]

If your current forum does good, than that is perfect. From my experience it takes ALOT to get an active community built up.

- Steve

 

[Keral_Patel]

Make a checklist of your own talents and also make strategies how will you offer this talent of yours to the customers on the internet.

The Talents I am talking here can be anything like photoshop, coding, marketing etc.

I think living off the net is easy.

 

[kwan]

I agree with what the others have said, but I would add a few things from my experience.

It is not always necessary to have money to start. I worked as a contractor programming and designing so it was easy to take time off between jobs to build my online business. The only costs I had was a new laptop and $100 a month for hosting. I never paid for advertising but marketed myself through clients, friends and forums. I still use open source for all my projects.

Second -as said earlier- look for partners. Working alone can be difficult (and lonely) and it's always good to have someone to criticize your work. I see myself as an idea dude, make happen dude and sales dude but there is always someone that does any of these faster and better.

And last I wouldn't say it is easy, but if you work hard and keep your eyes open for new opportunities you'll see your business growing in no time.

 

[ezimedia]

HI

Making a living online is not as easy as you may think...

It is just like starting your own business offline..

Most fail in the first 5 years of being in business..

Online it is more like most fail in the first 6 months..

The reason being is most people think you can get rich
online over night...and then just give up.

That may be true for a small % like 0.01% of people

Most people that earn a living online have been doing something
online to make money for at least 3-5 years or longer.

I started in 2000 and now am making enough to live off each
month..

I know of some people that got online and within 6-12 months
they were making 5 to 6 figures..per month

But this is not the norm...

What I recommend is come up with an idea for a product/software title
or service you think may be needed...

Post in forums and ask for feedback on your ideas...

Save some money to get a person to develop this service or software title
for you if you can't do it yourself..

There are places like..

Guru.com
eLance.com
Rentacoder.com
Scriptlance.com

Etc etc....

And remember if you start something and it does not work out don't worry
forget it and move on to the next idea until you find something that works.,

There is much more I could add but it would just make this post to long..

Thanks
Tom Dahne

 

[cache]

nothing is easy. However you will never know if you don't try.

 

[Cradle]

as long as you keep at it you should suceed quite well!
your first year might not be to good also depending on the business you decide to go with

 

[WhiteWebServices]

Remember: in the mid-term you need to diversify your revenue streams. You don't want to be completely reliant on, say, AdSense, in case income from that source dries up. As soon as you can, spread the risk.

 

[abdussamad]

Yo akrasia what should stalls.biz sell? :D

 

[WhiteWebServices]

Yo akrasia what should stalls.biz sell? :D

It should sell tables that pack away really quickly so that when you're selling dodgy watches and the police turn up you can do a runner.

Or everything you need to set up a 'cup and ball' scam.

Or a coconut shy with the coconuts nailed to their stands.

Anything along those lines (it's not a bad fit for the .biz extension) ... :hehe:

 

[abdussamad]

:D I like the one about dodgy watches.

 

[estibot.com]

I also have stalls.tld....I like the dodgy watch stalls idea

Back on topic...I agree with ezimedia, the most important thing is patience. You need to find a niche, something you love and would not mind setting up a website even if there was no money involved. Then you need to keep at it...If it's not the new youtube, you need to keep at it for years before you start seeing substantial income.

I started a site in 2004, now after 2 years of hard work it's making about $300-400 a month from AdSense, pagerank 4. I think that after 3 more years I may start seeing $x,xxx monthly paychecks, it's been growing slowly but steadily, which to me is a good sign . The good thing about this type of income stream is that even if I do nothing, it still makes money, people find it through Google. One thing I probably should have done is promotion, but I've done none and all the backlinks have built up naturally, thanks to the content. You probably should do a lot of promotion. I'm too lazy.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I find the hardest thing about trying to do things online is distractions. I have ADD, so that doesn't help. I'm also an idea man, so I come up with 3-4 ideas, then bounce back and forth between them, rarely getting anything accomplished Plus I spend more time checking forums/adsense/sedo/Ebay than I do developing my sites. I'm fairly new to this myself, and I'm only making enough to feed 1-2 third world children every day... Which isn't a lot.

You can start out with little to no money, but it will take a lot of time before you get to a level you'll be happy about. So I agree with others, if you have money to save, do it. Also, I recommend coming up with one idea to start, trying it out, seeing how it goes, and then once you're comfortable with the entire process, maybe branch out into other projects and revenue streams. Forums can be difficult, because they take alot of time to develop and alot of time to manage. Depending on the forum topic, you may not be making much money per click. I dont know what the average CTR is for forums, but I cant imagine it's very high. Maybe I'm just the type of person who doesn't click on a lot of ads, I dont know...

 

[WhiteWebServices]

I too have seen steady growth year-on-year, and am edging towards having a viable income from my sites.

How long it takes depends on your marketing model. I've gone mostly for search engine traffic, which can take a while to get hold of but is cheap and long-lasting. If you used viral marketing, you could get much faster results, but they won't last for as long.

There's no one right way to do this.

 

[psalzmann]

Great topic.

I think one of the posters above hit the nail on the head. Why not create software? okay fine, if you cannot create software, then hire a programmer on rentacoder.com to make it for you.

Here is a PERFECT example. Where are you right now? posting on a domain name forum right? look at this guys's post:

http://www.namepros.com/for-sale-ad...-domain-snapping-software-bonus-ppc-site.html

(I love how he set's his deadline with the "purchase before date deal") because if you really think about what is being provided (which isn't much) it's nowhere near the amount he's asking.

He's marketing his VERY BASIC (1 week to make or less) software on one of the most popular "domain name" forums. If he didn't create it himself, this type of app would have cost him anywhere from $50 to $250 to make (if hiring a developer to do it) somewhere like rentacoder.

He is selling that 1 app that took him maybe no longer than a week for $149 per license. Let's do some math:

Namepros Registered Members: 43,529 (his customer base)
Currently Active Users: 553 (people that MAY see his thread just today ALONE)

Let's assume he makes 10 sales by the end of next friday:
$1,490

Let's assume he'll be back to *bump* his thread after his 10 sale week and get's another 20 licenses sold:
$2,980

By now, everyone is talking about "snapping domains" like Snapnames and like Pool or afternic. Everyone is buying his software (and their cousin's and brothers too)!

So in two weeks (or less) he's made roughly $4,470.

The only reason I bring this guy up is because I was almost interested in buying it myself and I'm not nowhere NEAR as heavy into domaining as the rest of the community. I like domains, in fact, I like great "keyword" domains and I really don't care about their tld extensions (as many here do). Because of that, I was able to pickup names like liveupdate.ca, sell.li, auction.li, freelance.li, freelance.fm, bids.fm and so on. To me, these are my pride and joy. I could care less if anyone considers them reg fee's as that's what I purchased them all for.

But, I will let you know I'm also in the business of software sales and I wouldn't be posting this if it had no merit. I started in 2000, learned my programming language of choice (PHP) in 2001 I had a software ready to be sold, and have been upgrading / updating it to my loyal customer base since 2001! It's 2006 now and I'm certainly on my way (well I was a few years ago) since then I've purchased a new home, my quality of living has increased in a more positive manner and I couldn't be happier (sorry to brag, but it's the truth, and I'm very proud since I did it all myself without any investors, help, etc).

So, when choosing a career path online, consider reselling your own software for starters. You can have something ready for the masses in very little time, and you only have to do it once to resell it as many times as you like.

Forums have become social marketplaces and I can see it hurting places like those mentioned above (elance, scriptlance, and most likely others) when there are programmers and designers online all the time in a community setting evironment where the best offer usually wins the race.

You could be doing this while you are finding your own comfort zone online. Your opportunies are virtually endless.

Good luck!

-Peter