Ask HN: Fastest way to make $1000 a month online?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692995

by adambourg • 16 years ago

29 28 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm looking for an easy way to pay for school that I can do part-time, that aren't scammy.I'm not looking to build a monster business, I'm looking to cover my costs of going to school. Got any bright ideas?

drewbuschhorn2• 16 years ago

What are your skills and interests ... i.e. why not get a part-time job?

exline• 16 years ago

The fastest way would be contracting. Creating a webapp to earn that much a month could take a long time. I've had my webapp for a while and I'm not earning that much a month yet. Building a webapp is the easy part, marketing and getting paying customers is where the hard work is.

drewbuschhorn2• 16 years ago

I second contracting, but I was asking him to find out what we should recommend he contract at.

ambiate• 16 years ago

I'm on the same road as you. I'm attending my second year at my uni and I only need ~200-300 per month to manage transportation to and from each month. I'm a programmer/designer/philosopher/bioinformatics nerd. My schedule varies too much to get a regular part time job.

I started down the path of niche sites. Devoting a ridiculous amount of time into writing articles for them. A quick glance of webmaster tools has me ranked 1-4 on some 200-1.4k+ searched keywords each day. Generally, I went whitehat on the Adsense to assure my account stays alive. Generally, I receive a click every 4000-9000 views because I try not to fool/force people into clicking ads. This hope doesn't even cover the cost of my linode. I strayed away in Feb and venture back to check in on it every once in a while.

I figured I would write an ebook and sell it through ClickBank and self advertising (twitter/facebook). My ebook was too much like a real book. The information was too specific, required too much non-general knowledge, and users strayed away once they saw the preview. Looking back: the price was too low too (gasp). I wrote nearly 300 pgs and ended up with maybe enough to cover the coffees I inhaled while writing it.

So, recently, I joined the Fiverr community. I offer up a few shady SEO techniques. I've completed 3 offers and made a whopping $12. After those initial 3, all positive feedback, I've received 0 interest.

I considered offering tutoring of some type, but that's really not my field. I'm not social enough for that nonsense. My patience with what appears obvious is also described as a short fuse.

I ended up just craigslisting most of what was important for me to make it through Aug/Sep. It really hurt to sell my server, my hedgehog, and my world of warcraft account.

What I'm trying to say is this: there are many roads to achieve money. Not all paths will work out. Most will flop, or we would all be doing it. Even if you build a webapp of some type, you still need users. Even if you write a book, you need readers. Even if you build a niche site, people ignore ads for the most part (except the people who have used Adsense and realize its somewhat beneficial). Find a basic need, fill it, they will come (if they can find it); and if your product/service is worth it: you will profit. Otherwise, prepare to sell yourself to survive for now. As in Amazon turk, some kind of free lancing, craigslist, ebay, etc.

braindead_in2• 16 years ago

If you're good at typing then you can try transcribing. We offer freelance transcription jobs.

https://callgraph.biz/freelance-transcription

The best of our transcribers/reviewers make upwards of $100 per month.

KishoreKumar• 16 years ago

Website says $10/ah. So your best transcribers/reviewers are able to work with only just 10ah/month?

iworkforthem2• 16 years ago

I see that you had tried a lot of things. why didn't you stick to it till you make it a success? how long had you been working on each before you decided moved on? to get from a beginner to novice is a short trip but from novice to expert is a long way, and the money is in the expert's pocket.

justinchen• 16 years ago

If you're interested in online marketing and advertising, perhaps we can work out a commission arrangement with one of our sites. Contact me if you're interested.

Concours• 16 years ago

If you are interested in a partnership, drop me an email, we can work together, I have a twitter high paying follower niche community of ca. 21000+ peoples (growing), I have trouble monetizing it. (email in profile)

skinnymuch• 16 years ago

for the fiverr thing, you offered shady seo techniques for money? if so, then why didn't you ever try blackhat or automated whitehat sites?

stevederico• 16 years ago

do you know objective c? I have a few iphone ideas, I have been meaning to get developed and would be willing split the revenue. email me if you are interested. steve at Stevederico.tld

also if you are in dire need for cash, you could sell a website on flippa.

happy4crazy• 16 years ago

This will sound silly, but it's not that hard to make $1k per month playing online poker... if you're moderately mathy and have good self-control, you can make a bunch of money.

If you don't have good self-control, then yeah, pick something else.

_harry• 16 years ago

My roommate from my freshman year tried the online poker thing. Made $100 the first day. $1k the first month. $5k the second. Then he won some $30,000 tourney. Then he dropped out.

He's been pursuing it full time for the last 4 years. He'll go into casinos and play for 50 hours straight without even realizing it. For awhile, he was dating a 35 year old women during one of his 3-month stints in Vegas. Then her husband showed up and punched him the face. He says he made around 110k last year.

The first day we met, he said he wanted to be either a zookeeper or a weatherman. Funny how quickly your life can change.

KoZeN• 16 years ago

As risky as this obviously sounds, it's an approach I agree with.

I've tried multiple angles to earn a passive income and at my highest point I earned about £75 in a month. I played poker with friends as a hobby and I used to destroy them as I'm much more analytical than they are. They all played for real money online and I figured there must be tens of thousands of other people around the world who play poker online that also aren't very good.

Join one of the main sites like pokerstars and make sure you take advantage of one of their joining bonuses. I started with £10, lost it in an hour, put in another £10 and I have not since added another penny. That second £10 has turned into about £450 over five weeks of playing a few hours every other night and a marathon session every sunday evening.

Fine, I may not be on the verge of becoming the next WPT champion and I may be a way off retiring on my winnings but I am getting progressively better as poker requires a high degree of skill which improves with practice.

eltados• 16 years ago

We said not scammy :).

iworkforthem2• 16 years ago

private events/parties are and still bring quite a bit of money, and it dun take much to get started. you just need to be a bit of the social animal, fairly good at writing todo list and able to use software like eventbrite.com and wepay.com i dun see why you can't make $1k per month. just get started and perfect your skills. this may take time... :-)

il• 16 years ago

Affiliate marketing/PPC arbitrage is by far the easiest way to build passive income, especially the amount you without high time commitment or too much risk.

Find some offers to promote, make some PPC ads for them, test, rinse, repeat.

noahc• 16 years ago

The good news: It sounds like you've done a lot and are relatively internet competent.

The bad news: You're not an expert yet.

I would say you could easily do online marketing, wordpress installs, SEO, etc. Basically, anything a small business would need. The key here is finding the right small business.

Here's what I look for when contacting small businesses to do contract work:

1. They sell to larger audience than the local area. This means having a web presence actually matters, because everyone doesn't already know about them.

2. It might be hard to tell from the outside, but look for businesses that could potentially have their crap together.

3. Call them and tell them you were looking at their website and saw some ways you could improve it. Ask if they'd be interested in hearing about it. IF THEY ASK HOW MUCH RIGHT AWAY...RUN! RUN! RUN! You don't want these people.

I was able to bill $35/hour on my first project like this. That works out to working about 30 hours/month (billable) to get the $1000. Depending on where you live $35/hour may or may not be the right price to start at. I just did what was considered a good wage around here and took it to a multiple of 2.5. I'd start higher rather than lower on whatever number you use.

bendmorris• 16 years ago

You're looking for a lot of money fast for little effort and your first lesson in school is going to be that pretty much nothing in life is that simple. Try and find a flexible part time job - they do exist, especially on campus. I worked two development jobs on campus that paid pretty well (for a student, anyway) - there was never any shortage of $12-15 an hour web development gigs here, which is more than your friends will be making as janitors or bookstore cashiers. I was also allowed to work remotely, and I gained experience and made a lot of useful university contacts this way. You can try things like contracting, but be ready for it to be a lot more work than you thought - when you have to deal with people it's almost never easy money. Whatever you choose to do, you're probably going to have to earn every penny.

cma• 16 years ago

Pretty sure craigslist closed that section.

adlep• 16 years ago

Try to freelance at your time and schedule. Sites like: www.freelancer.com offer plenty of opportunities.

Raphael• 16 years ago

Porn.

trustfundbaby• 16 years ago

Learn HTML and CSS (not hard at all) ... lots of freelance gigs for frontend layout people. You'd clear $1000/mo easily with less than 20hrs of work a week.

maigret• 16 years ago

May I ask why you are stating "online" in the question title? I mean, wouldn't you be interesting in developing the next firmware for a tablet for example? Aren't there any computer company in your area who is looking for a student 10h/week for automating test scenarios or remodeling one of their database? That would not only make you meet professionals but also would enrich your CV probably better than a SEO gig would.

RealGeek• 16 years ago

Here is a nifty little trick to make money online with legitimate affiliate marketing. It requires almost no technical skill.

A lot of people ask for buying suggestions on twitter like "Where can I buy $productX ?" or "Which digital camera should I buy?".

You can find them using http://search.twitter.com/search?q=where+buy+%3F

You can try pairing this query with different keyword combinations like http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hdtv+buy+%3F and http://search.twitter.com/search?q=laptop+buy+%3F

Looking at the search results, it seems like such questions pop up every second on twitter.

You can make money by helping those people to make buying decisions. Suggest them a good product or deal, and give them your affiliate link to buy it. If they make the purchase using your link, you'll get affiliate commission for the sale.

nikhilkodilkar• 16 years ago

This is a sleek idea !

jqgatsby• 16 years ago

actually, twitter is already cracking down on this practice. too many automated spammers trying to shill lame products.

Ask HN: Fastest way to make $1000 a month online?

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