So, I have decided to move out of just doing content related stuff (buying, selling, writing, rewriting) and want to do something to make some money besides that. I have read ebooks and played with affiliate programs, but have never found anything worth really following through with. I get so ahead of myself and have a great plan, but with no foundation, it is no good. So what was your first money making venture? affiliates? blogging? What specifically? How did you get it going and into the black profit wise? I have tried and failed a couple times, but so badly want to eventually escape the rat race, so whats your story? Anyone care to take a hardworking 24 year old college educated person under there wing? Thanks all...
never earned from online..although I have some amount in adsense account but never got it in hard copy
Did a bit of freelance HTML/CSS, then started learning PHP - got an ecommerce job for nearly $1000 (last November), and quit freelancing after that to take some time off. I always intended freelancing again because I got to meet some interesting people. Then earlier this year I rounded up a few of my friends, one who was exceptionally skilled at Photoshop, and taught a few of them coding. They find clients, and design and code what the client wants. I then recode (for cleaner code) to get the final result, and am the one who hands the finished product to the client, who pays me directly. I then pay 20% to the designer, and 60% to the original coder involved, with me keeping 20% of the payment. It's pretty good since I do less than 2 hours of work a week, and can still make up to $250 a week. Everyone else runs the business, I just sit here and look good. Recently I was talking to a big software developer person at Sun Microsystems who was interested in a JSP/Ajax CMS. He handed me a lightweight version of one he had started a few years ago but abandoned, and since I didn't know JSP, the potential of this incredible system was too much to resist, so I replicated the CMS in PHP - using my own skeletal CMS's and am now packing a tonne of power and functionality - some which is never before seen, the brainchildren of my incredible imaginaton - into it. I hope to release it by this year for $25 a copy, with beta versions finished by the end of May. As I am just a 15 year old who, last year, had no idea what HTML is, I am fairly proud of myself.
eBay but that was not a long term strategy, High Quality content sites was what I had my first success with. Some more info here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=803165
I earned my fist money online from autosurfs and HYIP sites like the defunct studiotraffic and 12dailypro. Although I earned from them, I would advice against joining these type of programs since all end up as scams.
ebay. I would buy broken cell phones and fix them by combing the parts of two broken phones to make one good one.
I'm a middleman. For example, one guy has rare coins for sale, I find a customer on his coins and then i get my commission. I do it no with coins only. I do it with different goods.
It was a Web Stats Services made an investment in most of my revenue came from advertising (pre google) I built up a web stats services which I later sold for a very nice profit. A year later I started a Web hosting service, ran that for 5 or so years and sold it also at a nice profit.