How do I mess up and lose money?

Status
Not open for further replies.
krazyjosh5

krazyjosh5

theres GOLD in dem tubes!
May 28, 2007
1,010
19
0
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.

GO.

PS - Just a note to say that I AM starting to read the stickies. Also, that Im not looking to get into the adult industry.
 


I think you should write a book. Shit you can write.

There is no for sure thing man.

And you just made yourself a prime target for sharhs in the background waiting to pm you with an offer. Let me guess, 10 offers by pm on how to make you money fast, right?

Do us a favor and post their screen names here for us to see.
 
Gotcha. Will do.

Sometimes I have short bursts of creativity to write but Id like to think that its too few and far between to capitalize on. Plus, I can ramble, I cant really seek out interesting news topics and comment on them. If someone handed me 5 good websites to ramble about a day, I might be able to do it.

Btw, blast your ass, I have your website open for me to read sometime today. Good stuff. :)
 
Does the farmer go out in spring after sleeping all fall and winter to a field of dreams? Fuck no. The field will be dry and fruitless. He hs to till the soil, plant the seeds, water the seeds, fertilize and then if he does it right he will have a bountiful harvest! So with that said.

OK, you want my advice. Learn the sales business and get some good books on selling and human behavior from Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar. Spend $100 at amazon and read the shit out of those because your ass is going to become a saleman and a good one at that.

Now while your reading think of ways and reaserch how you can make money selling things. Now narrow it down to the highest ticket items where you will get paid the most amount of money. Now reaserch the market and see how you can tap it and make cash for you. Now develop a blue print on how to get where you want to go based on what you have learned and be prepared for many issues and problems.

Now learn the business or products you want to sell inside and out. Fucking live it and learn the benefits.

Where are you now after 4-6 months? Your an expert (at last you know more then 99.9% of peeps) and you can monetize that expertise and make cash

I've done this with real estate and mortgages. Keep in mind that I'm a high school drop out, my grammer sucks and IO have tattoos to my toes. But I'ma fucken experts who can stand toe to toe with any real estate agent or laon officer any day.

I am making well over $100,000 a year and am on my way to $250,000 using the above plan.

Now make a plan on what I say and find some shit you can sell and get learning and then the cash will come.
 
"OK, you want my advice. Learn the sales business and get some good books on selling and human behavior from Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar. Spend $100 at amazon and read the shit out of those because your ass is going to become a saleman and a good one at that."

This is the best advice in this thread. You must understand that being intelligent alone means squat. If you're unable to present your ideas, and you don't 'see' things from the point of view of a business man, then you won't make much.

For example, I am an experienced programmer. I used to write malware, games, patches for apps, etc.. I coded for half a decade but I never thought about selling any of my software. I gave it away free (open source) because I didn't have a business mentality. I didn't see code as something people should pay for, much like books and access to the uncensored Internet.

I am also quite good at web design (AJAX, CSS2, etc). I can't design layouts, but I can take your layout blueprint and code it. I designed many small scripts and sites for my friends and me, but I never made them public. I coded many things for fun, which are worth billions today. For example, take YouTube. I coded a script that lets you upload videos and then displays them in Flash, because I use Linux and don't want to get all the codecs for Firefox, and my friends use different OSes. I wasn't the only one who coded such scripts.. there were dozens before YouTube gained popularity. The only difference is, the YouTube coder had a vision. He took a huge risk, quitting his job at Facebook and worked full time on promoting YouTube. He "saw" an opportunity and took it. You have to learn to take risks.

Point is, I don't make any money off my skills. I'm broke, and I _hate_ going to my 9 to 5 job (which makes no use of my technical knowhow at all). My successful friends don't really have technical skills, but they can socialize, and they take risks if they think an idea they have can be monetized.

I'm also looking for a continuous passive income. I've owned plenty of sites before, but I found it unethical to place ads on them unless I had trouble paying for hosting (which was free because I hosted them myself). I'm slowly getting back in the game, and hope to start some big projects soon.

Anyway, here's the only advice you need: Read. A lot. Read as many threads as you can on this forum, DigitalPoint, etc, and blogs. If you're unfamiliar with any concept or term, then you aren't ready to venture out yet. BUT, do start a site ASAP just for the experience. You'll fail and fail, but the experience is what you're aiming to get, not success.

After awhile, you'll start seeing things different. You'll overhear something and think "That could be a great niche!" and you'll start noticing how other people run their businesses and how people can fuck up their business.

There really is no secret to it. There is no way you can just spend 10 hours setting something up and then having it generate a passive income. This is what most of us come here thinking, but unfortunately, this is not true. It takes months of very hard work and a lot of studying. Pretty much the same as any other hobby. Money and time have to be invested, and you have to overcome obstacles, yadda yadda, you know this stuff.
 
Blastyourass and Wildpointer, thanks for the very useful advice. Ill start reading.

Im really want to figure out WHERE to go, once I acquire all this knowledge. Forgive me for jumping the gun but I just want to check this shit out before I dive into it. Adwords, landing pages, etc. Im looking to learn the ins and outs about those before I dedicate time reading books. I hate reading books. (I will if I have to, though) My idea is that I dont want to spend 60% of my time on what is 30% of the company (simply KNOWING how to sell shit). When ads and landing pages and seo is 70% of the business, Id like to figure those details out first before I polish off my salespersons skills.

Dont get me wrong, Ill be picking up those books. Ill be working towards an MBA one day and that some valuable information there :)

Also, Im not trying to make a living out of this, $100,000 is nice for sure, but Im just a college student right now looking for extra beer money. If I come to the realization that I want to make big bank on this shit then Ill start considering working towards big bucks, but for now im starting small.

Thanks for the insight thusfar.

btw - no spam shark pms just yet ;)
 
krazyjosh5 said:
btw - no spam shark pms just yet ;)
Click to expand...
This isn't DP, BYA is wrong there, you won't get a lot of spam PM offers (unless requested) because they get banned immediately.

It's important to note, you need to see things from the business perspective AND the customer perspective. You have to think about your product and the demographic of your customer. Then you have to make the site theme/template fit that demographic.

If it is quit smoking, you should be using a much bigger font because old ladies love that quit smoking hype bullshit..

I think BYA gave good advice on those books. Hell, I might pick them up for the fuck of it.
 
Scott, when you talk about 'quit smoking' sites. Do you mean creating a page full of scraped/purchased info, links, adwords, and doing some SEO on it? And would that be one of many sites in a personal network that generates profit for you?


I just haaate reading books. :P Trial and error always worked better for me although very expensive.
 
I hate reading too. However, reading a book that encourages me and showes me "techniques that generate money by work ethic" actually grabs my attention - and doesn't let it go!

heck, that's why I was one of the clickbank ebook kiddies for the longest time, until (thank God) I found WF.

krazyjosh5 said:
Scott, when you talk about 'quit smoking' sites. Do you mean creating a page full of scraped/purchased info, links, adwords, and doing some SEO on it? And would that be one of many sites in a personal network that generates profit for you?


I just haaate reading books. :P Trial and error always worked better for me although very expensive.
Click to expand...
 
Heh. Ebooks. What a flop.

My second business, when I was like 13/14 was selling resellable template CDs and ebooks on ebay. Probably made all of $100 with a whole week of work.
 
krazyjosh5 said:
Can someone suggest some things to look into? Places to go to read up and get good guru information and ask questions?
Click to expand...

Your on it mate! WF is one of the best sources of info and advice around!

Good guru information? I think anyone who calls themselves a 'guru' is most likely not giving out good information. Just trying to get you to buy their shit - mostly get-rich-quick ebooks.

I disagree slightly with BYA's post. Unless you have a gift for selling or really want to go in that direction then - while it's certainly good to get a better understanding of the psychology behind it - don't put all you time and money into become a great salesperson.

As with everything else, sales copy can always be outsourced (see ad at top). While the actual selling is important it's not much good if you have no customers or don't identify the best products to sell.

You mentioned adwords - ppc advertising is something worth spending time getting to know, in my opinion. Compared to design, programming, content writing and sales copy, ppc campaign management is very expensive to outsource.

Identify your strengths and focus on using them to your advantage. GL
 
krazyjosh5 said:
I just haaate reading books. :P Trial and error always worked better for me although very expensive.
Click to expand...

There's but two ways to get through life: smart, or tough. I completely empathize with your dislike for reading (I'm a smart guy, I just lose focus easily when I'm sitting with a book, it's a real chore). Because of that, I tend to do the same as you, trial and error.

However, Moe is right about those books, and forcing yourself to constantly research and learn from other's lessons (which is what WF is all about, to me anyway) is the path to the big win. Spend your time going backward. First understand the wants and needs of the customer, research related campaigns that others have done (I always ask before I do anything bigger), and then, when you have your whole idea put together, jump into adwords.

It's really easy to blow your money quickly and have nothing to show for it.

Anyway, this is what you should do. Pick an affiliate offer, doesn't matter which. Pay to have a landing page coded up (make sure SEO has been done). Put the landing page on the web and experiment with driving different types of traffic to it while the SEO works it's magic. Anyway, good luck!
 
Blastyourass said:
Anyway, this is what you should do. Pick an affiliate offer, doesn't matter which. Pay to have a landing page coded up (make sure SEO has been done). Put the landing page on the web and experiment with driving different types of traffic to it while the SEO works it's magic. Anyway, good luck!
Click to expand...


Just the advice I was looking for :) (combined with the other info in the thread)

Thanks for the input everyone and whoevers willing to expand upon the above advice, it is appreciated. Time to get reading. Any specific book suggestions from the slew of authors given by BYA?
 
One good thing about online marketing is you don't have to spend a lot to learn if something works or not. So get this idea of sinking 1k into it out of your head. You will not need to spend anywhere near that much getting things going if you are careful and take your time.
 
here's a couple for you and thanks for listening to my advice!:D

Amazon.com
This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies. How to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." He teaches these skills through underlying principles of dealing with people so that they feel important and appreciated. He also emphasizes fundamental techniques for handling people without making them feel manipulated.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The Master Mind Principle: two or more persons working together in complete harmony toward a mutual goal or goals...Napoleon Hill's philosophy teaches you what you were never taught. Specifically: How to Recognize, Relate, Assimilate and Apply principles whereby you can achieve any goal whatsoever that doesn't violate Universal Law - the Law of God and the rights of your fellowman... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

go downlaod some mp3's on jim rohn. he's a great speaker

Good luck on your journey and never, never, ever give up! Smrat people are smart, persistent people get what they want, smart or not!
 
Hah
'How to Win Friends and Influence People'
Thatll be great beach reading.

Someone: Oh what are you reading?...
Me: How to manipulate your ass bitch. :D
 
Those books are some of my favorites, BYA.

Amazingly good shit in there. In fact, I would seriously recommend re-reading them every few months.
 
Another good book is 'How to Master the Art of Selling' by Tom Hopkins.

WildPointer had a great point - I'm amazed at how many great coders could care less about making money! I know a few who really know their shit- I'm talking hard core AI programming, programming advanced applications in assembler, etc... and yeah they do OK... but not what they could be doing for themselves if they ever thought of really getting into the business end of things - they just love to code for codings sake!

I write down every idea I have - carry around a little notepad with me because most of my ideas have come to me when I'm commuting to and from work... out of dozens I am now focusing on three which I feel are the most profitable.
 
fuck yes, tommy. he started selling houses is a band suit from high school and wore the same suit every day. he knocked on doors for 8 hours a day, every day and made a shit load of cash in a short time. good one

and I also read my books every few months for motivation. they always kick start me whn I'm down on life!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom