

New Ways to Make Money Online - ojbyrne
http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=2378309

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mahmud
Etsy, RentACoder, Mechanical Turk: there are plenty of opportunities to make
up to $5/day online.

Hint: you still make a boat-load more handing out your business card at the
pub during happy hour and talking to people.

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maxklein
What I personally am learning is this: Closed marketplaces are good! I tried
doing stuff for the internet - I had a BIG discovery problem. How do people
find you? If you do stuff for a closed ecosystem like the app store, ebay,
amazon, etsy, facebook - the discovery channel is already in place, all you
need to do is optimize for it

I think it is easier for an engineer to make money in a closed ecosystem where
there are already a lot of customers than if you just go wild in an unlimited
place like the internets.

Think of it like a shoe store. They open their stores where other stores
already are and where they know the customers are already there.

Opening a startup with no clear idea where your customers are is like opening
a shoe store in a residential part of town where you are the only shoe store
for miles. You then have to start getting really creative with marketing,
which is hard.

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wallflower
> Closed marketplaces are good! I tried doing stuff for the internet - I had a
> BIG discovery problem.

Yes, I am starting to meet iPhone app developers who target specific niches.
In other words, people are searching for something like their app. Their app
is not found via email/blog/twitter PR primarily. And it helps that the
_title_ of their app has one or more of those keywords.

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cschneid
I've recommended a friend to implement similar marketing strategies. He has a
small mac app (on HN previously), and he's already getting the good
blog/twitter market, but I'm guessing he's missing lots of speculative
queries. The kind where the user has a problem, and asks google in general
terms.

I think it's a useful, and probably more sustainable (steady), marketing
strategy in the long run.

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clistctrl
I really like the idea of etsy. I have a lot of friends in the town where I
grew up who have valuable skills, but due to the recession nearly none can
find jobs. The local economy is crushed, but sites like etsy open up
possibilities to people who didn't have the technical skills to reach a global
community previously.

