

Easiest path to $2000 a month? - sadiq
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.820663.27

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jswinghammer
I wonder if people are being unnecessarily negative on this discussion thread.
It seems to me that his best bet is to start something that he can manage in
his spare time that solves a problem. That's not easy but it's not horribly
difficult either. I was able to bring a product to market in my spare time and
recruited sales people to sell it. I have even lined up speaking gigs at
conferences in my vertical (no idea if I'm actually going to be any good at
this).

I realize that this person is different than me but I did it for a similar
reason: I have to make extra money to provide for my family in the long term.
Consulting actually seemed harder to me because you need to put in a
consistent amount of time and if you have a family that's very hard to do. I
still work a job during the day but my evenings are spent largely improving my
product and writing marketing copy for the website I'm having designed.

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ahoyhere
Yes, they are overwhelmingly negative because they have all struggled and
mostly failed.

Taking years to get to $2,000/mo revenue as some of the commenters say? That
is truly sad. Somebody seriously needs to teach these guys some business
skills.

Hopefully it will be me.

I wrote a positive comment - I've made gobs of money and my SaaS made $1300
its very first month, after the first round of trials ended. And the reason is
because I created a truly different product in a category proven to make
money, and used my blog/twitter audience to spread the word as I was launching
(and before).

It's really, really, really not that hard.

~~~
smanek
What was your SaaS? (I didn't see a link in your profile)

~~~
luckystrike
She recently posted about it here that led to a very interesting (and useful)
discussion: <http://letsfreckle.com/>

HN Post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1366862>

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josh33
You need $2000 per month? You must add at least that much extra value into the
world to get it. The reason people who responded to the original post
suggested consulting is because consulting is value creation that is very well
defined by the person requesting it. If you want to create value in software,
in either desktop, iphone OS, or web apps, you have to look where there is
pain in some market, and see if the pain is worth $2000 to solve. It's not a
question of platform, but a question of market and value.

~~~
dpcan
With mobile "games" it's not about pain, it's about pleasure. If you can show
someone a good time for 24 hours, you can get $2 from them.

Therefore, in the app world, you are in the "I'll tickle you for $2 business"
and you just need 1000 customers a month.

~~~
philwelch
Now that we have mobile games, people have begun to experience "boredom at the
train station" as pain, and "getting tired with old games" as pain too.

People will try harder to get themselves from pain back up to baseline than to
get themselves from baseline to happiness. And once they reach happiness for
long enough, that becomes the new baseline.

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Mark_B
One comment in thread stood out for me: "Since your problem is medical bills,
it seems extremely obvious that you need to switch to a job that has a better
benefits package."

The poster simply stated she needs an extra $2,000 a month for medical
reasons. Why? Medication? Visits to a specialist? If the extra $2k is needed
because what she needs isn't covered under her current employer's benefits,
job shopping is probably a better way to spend her free time.

~~~
berntb
Good point, but maybe the money is needed for a relative that won't be covered
anyway?

Anyway, how about a move to a country with socialized health care? (Canada?)

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laut
Socialized health care is not the same as having money to pay for treatment.
Some Canadians go to the US to get treated for cancer.

In Denmark there is also government healthcare, but some people, including
politicians, still pay private hospitals for treatment.

~~~
jarek
Canadians go to the US for treatment because they either want to get treated
faster than it is possible in Canada or they want or need a method of
treatment which is not available in Canada. (The latter is not terribly
surprising if you consider population sizes.) Nobody would go for US treatment
because of money issues.

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maxklein
They are right in that it just does not happen that fast. Furthermore, trying
to make cash when you are under pressure to make cash rarely works - people
who need cash quickly usually don't have the time or the patience to
successfully bring a product from conception to release.

One first has to solve the cash issue before trying to build a product.
Building a product from dire straits rarely works.

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aaronsw
$2000 a month? Find a large quantity of text that isn't on the Web that people
might search for, put it online, and put AdSense ads on it.

~~~
ddemchuk
I really hope you're kidding...I would venture a guess that there are no more
than a handful of people in the world making more than $100/month in adsense,
even with a lot of content sites

~~~
prawn
I'm smallfry and do $3-4k/month through AdSense for about 10 minutes/week
effort tops from a handful of sites.

~~~
ddemchuk
Well you sir would then be a member of that handful. The income on the Adsense
network is just like the income distribution of America: 1% control 80%.

~~~
prawn
I think you're underestimating the number of people who'd be doing OK out of
it.

You said, "I would venture a guess that there are no more than a handful of
people in the world making more than $100/month."

A handful would be fewer than a dozen, surely? There'd be thousands making
more than $100/month. Actually, there'd be thousands making more than
$10k/month IMO.

~~~
ddemchuk
meh, I guess my idea of what I thought a handful of people meant was lower
than everyone elses opinion. By handful, I mean a small percentage. Since
there are so many publishers on Adsense, a small percentage of that is still a
good amount of people.

~~~
prawn
Saying "small percentage" would've removed that ambiguity.

Now, regardless, the majority trying AdSense make bugger all because they're
clowns, half-arsed, give up early, don't know what they're doing, etc. Anyone
with either some luck or a half-decent plan, some ability and persistence can
build up some passive income or at least give it a shot for free.

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jonpaul
I've done it. I consistently make over $2.5k a month selling iPhone apps. At
my peak I made a little under $5k. It kinda sucks at times as it's not just
one app. To be honest, most people would consider them shovelware, but if you
actually download them you'll see that they provide value. You can read my
story here: <http://techneur.com> I should mention though, it didn't happen
overnight and it took about five months or so to get to this point.

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petervandijck
Consulting in a hot area like iPhone apps or something, I'd say. Creating and
selling some products is much more risk-prone.

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brc
I've thought about this some more, and I've come to the conclusion that by the
time you need $2000/month more, it's almost too late.

The problem is that by aiming for such a small amount you're going to be
looking at marginal solutions to marginal problems.

You're better off, in my opinion, aiming for 10 or 20,000 a month and hitting
2,000 than trying to max out at 2,000, and probably hitting 200.

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OmarIsmail
30 hrs/week * 4.3 weeks = 130 hours in a month. $2000/130 hours = $15/hour

You can take on freelance writing gigs that pay the equivalent of $15/hour
pretty easily. And these have the extra benefits of being incredibly flexible
in regards to work hours, can start pretty much immediately, with no real
sales effort required.

~~~
hugh3
Where would one find these freelance writing gigs?

~~~
OmarIsmail
There are dozens of postings here: <http://sfbay.craigslist.org/wri/>

And don't limit yourself to your local city, look in all the major cities in
North America. At any given time you'll see a few dozen freelance
writing/editing gigs in the San Fran, NYC, Toronto Craigslists.

You also have sites like Associated Content, Hubpages, etc. And actually, in
its heyday Mahalo was probably a pretty good place to make decent money for
the right people.

I don't think sites like Squidoo, Knol, and the new Mahalo that do rev share
are good sources of income. I mean, they can be, but it's probably almost as
difficult to make money on those sites as it would be to start up your own
content site. Being paid per article/report is the best way to do it - from a
writer perspective. Rev share is the best way to do it from the site's
perspective.

If you're in Canada: <http://apply.productwiki.com>

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loewenskind
>Hard work doesn't scare me but consulting is off the table due to restriction
at my workplace.

What "restrictions"? You have a (most likely verbal) contract with your
employer to provide your effort in exchange for money. They don't own you and
any clauses they have that restrict what you can do when you're not there or
don't even work for them anymore are probably not enforceable. Especially when
this dubious claus is holding you back from money you need.

Just because a contract says something, even if you _signed_ it, doesn't mean
it can actually be enforced.

~~~
petervandijck
"a (most likely verbal) contract" => most likely he actually has a signed
contract, no? Why do you think otherwise?

~~~
loewenskind
The US goes mostly on verbal contracts for permanent employees. I don't
personally know of any non-executive exceptions, but there must be some.

EDIT: P.S. Even if it's a signed contract, that still doesn't mean it's
enforcable.

~~~
hugh3
The US also goes on at-will employment, so regardless of how legally
enfoceable his contract may be (in that they can't sue him for violating it),
they can fire him for violating it.

~~~
loewenskind
Some states are at-will employment. I would avoid working in those states,
they give the employer way too much power over the worker.

~~~
roel_v
LOL. All states except Montana have at-will employment, albeit that the nature
of exceptions varies across states. Where do you live?

~~~
loewenskind
I always lived in an at-will state, but I wouldn't ever go back there to work.
I was under the impression that the states were either Union (California?) or
"Right to work".

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leftnode
If he absolutely needs the extra $2000 _this_ month, consulting may be the
wrong way to go. Say you bill for 20 hours at $100 an hour to a company and
they pay invoices 45 days after submission. Now you're SOL.

I'd look for a part time job, or pick up work on the weekends from a
Craigslist job where you'll get paid that day.

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pramit
Does this story help the quest to $2000/mo? Making Money Online in your Spare
Time: 50 Ways & 150 sites [http://bighow.com/news/making-money-online-in-your-
spare-tim...](http://bighow.com/news/making-money-online-in-your-spare-
time-50-ways150-sites)

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JoeAltmaier
[http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/109756/7-strange-ways-make-
mo...](http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/109756/7-strange-ways-make-money-online)
Its another Hacker News article on the main page. Don't know how to copy the
HN link.

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shalmanese
Start with a product that's earning $4000 a month.

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yan
> > Success in business is rather like pregnancy.

> Because you get screwed a lot at the beginning?

