

Ask HN: Shortest path to $1 million? - csomar

I have been thinking about long term investment in real estates and mutual funds, but then I wondered why I don&#x27;t leverage the technology and world I already know.<p>$1 million (assets or cash) or $50k&#x2F;month (stable for the next couple years)<p>Here are a couple ideas I have:<p>1. Premium WordPress Themes. Looking at Themeforest author sales, some of them are hitting $100k&#x2F;month and they are not seasoned (at least in ThemeForest).<p>2. Premium WordPress Plugins. These guys (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tri.be&#x2F;wordpress-events-calendar&#x2F;) used to sell on CodeCanyon and it looks like their product took off quite well (selling $20k&#x2F;month last year)<p>That&#x27;s it so far. Some of you are going to complain about support and stuff. Cost of doing business in my opinion and $50k&#x2F;month is the net profit you make. So maybe your revenue should be in the $80-60k range.<p>Any ideas? Please I don&#x27;t want the overgeneralized SaaS or eBook thing. Something more concrete and with examples of people who achieved it.<p>Time doesn&#x27;t matter as long as you believe or it&#x27;s what you know to be the shortest thing.
======
tptacek
My answer, as always:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615)

Another answer:

Get a $120k/yr job. Live like you make $50k/yr. Wait.

Note that both these approaches also mesh well with investment in real estate
or whatnot.

Also note that both these approaches leverage technology.

~~~
csomar
1\. I don't have a CS degree or any high-education degree.

2\. I don't live in the US or a developed country.

3\. Middle/Lower Class family with no superior connections.

Edit: 4. I have a WP product selling @ $2,000/month. I'm looking for some
dramatic change, though.

~~~
tptacek
1\. Neither do I.

2\. You've got me there.

3\. Neither do I.

Congrats on $2k/mo from Wordpress. You can't do another one and make it
$4k/mo? Maybe if you picked a specific industry vertical to target, like
lawyers or accountants, you'd be able to charge higher prices. Maybe if you
rethink the packaging of your offering --- instead of "a product for
Wordpress", you sell an entire offering that happens to be "Wordpress
Compatible" \--- you can escape the price points people have for Wordpress
offerings.

~~~
csomar
4\. I learned the trick and I'm building another $1-2k product. $4k is much
harder because these markets are highly competitive. But I can't build 25
products and support them (or manage their support). Maybe a couple products
that sell for $25k/month.

I sent you an email.

------
superasn
To make that sort of money, you always go for a B2B market, pref targeting
small business. Forget social sites, consumer apps, etc. When your product
makes more money for the customer that what s/he is investing, your
conversions are faster.

Unfortunately, even with a shortcut you have to take at least a 2 to 3 year
perspective. So think about what a small business can use. Like a software for
eBayer sellers, or some really useful site insight tool that increases website
conversions, or maybe some cost cutting tool for traders, etc. Something which
actually makes or saves money for the customer.

In my experience i have seen the more specific niche you go after the better.
Like if you are making a tool (or even say a theme template as in your
example) for eBay sellers, it is better to go after sellers in eBay motors
than targeting everyone in the market.

Also if you are in to make money, then instead of honing your programming
skills you will have to teach yourself marketing, specially the part of
getting traffic to your site and networking with people in your niche (they
are the ones that make your launch day a million dollar payday).

You will have to write tonnes of content and create a lot of buzz about it
everyday. You will have to create an email list of interested prospects right
from the get go and mail them regularly with good quality practical stuff for
which they have subscribed. Creating the product is always the simple part;
marketing it successfully over and over is what creates the difference between
$1 mil in sales or $1000 in sales.

You can probably spend one day / week adding features, but the rest of the
week you will hang around forums (dedicated to your niche) to help people
while building your reputation as an expert in that field, write blog posts,
make guest posts on sites related to your niche, follow the market leaders on
twitter and hopefully make them your affiliates.

As you do this you will start getting more and more traffic to your site every
day (it happens slowly and steadily). The blog posts and guess post also help
you in Google. It may be sounding very simplistic (or maybe even confusing)
but this is definitely one of the ways to making a million dollars.

------
hello_newman
This is purely on your suggestion of "what you know to be the shortest thing".
This may, or may not, seem a bit outlandish but there is a reason it is so
lucrative. So my answer would be porn.

I read a figure that said something like 70%+ of ALL Internet searches are
related to porn, sex, or nudity. Not that I have really given it much thought,
but I am positive there are dozens of ways you could get to $1million in porn.
I have a couple off the top of my head:

1\. Tube site: I'm sure you could get video crawlers that take videos from
other porn sites. You could go on eBay and buy views for all of those videos
to inflate the perception of the traffic you are producing to other users.
Then you could use an ad network for popups, banner ads, or whatever.

2\. Cam site: These are supposed to be super popular, as pirating (although
still an issue I'm sure) is much harder. There are numerous examples of
popular cam sites, but because it is "porn" all of them are shady. There have
been numerous complaints filed against the owners of myfreecams for example. I
guess for this after you develop the site, you could use Craigslist to find
models. Drive traffic to the site (again, it's porn, so marketing naked girls
would seem to be easier to market than some eBook), leverage social media, or
whatever else. You could also promote traffic for some other site, but
affiliate marketing is overrated in my opinion. No offense to anyone doing it,
but it just seems like an awful amount of work for a measly scrap of the
revenue you could be seeing if you owned the site/content or whatever.

3\. Produce your own content: Now this does need some overhead. Cameras, a
somewhat trained crew, models, lawyers, location etc. This one would be what I
would stay away from. Too much headache for me personally.

I am not saying turn into a "smut peddler" or some porn kingpin, but if your
sole goal is to get to $1million as quickly as possible, porn seems like a
great solution. Porn is recession proof, there will always be a demand, and
you can't argue with the numbers. Best of luck.

~~~
true_religion
Just to critique this idea:

> I'm sure you could get video crawlers that take videos from other porn
> sites.

Then you get videos which are labelled with other sites watermark. This gives
you a poor reputation in the busines world so very few people will cut deals
with you, and you're essentially providing free advertising for your
competitors.

> 2\. Cam site:

There are already dozens of extablished cam sites, so it'd seem a better
option to just affiliate with one of them under a whitelabel program while you
learn the ropes.

------
gexla
The fastest way is to use leverage.

Leverage technology to sell digital copies of something you only have to make
once (which you seem to have already been doing and look to be doing more of.)

Leverage time by hiring other people.

Leverage money, which allows you to scale the other inputs more quickly than
you would by bootstrapping. Preferably you would be able to use other people's
money.

In another comment, you mentioned that you aren't living in a developed
country. It's difficult for anyone to get investment money and it may be more
difficult where you live. On the other hand, you have access to relatively
cheap labor. If you are able find decently skilled developers in your area,
then perhaps you could apply what you are making on your WP product which is
selling well and hire a couple of developers.

You could also try setting those developers on jobs from Elance and Odesk.
Maybe start out with a niche and build a brand for that niche. For example,
build a WP team and focus on WP jobs. Too many developers on these platforms
are too general. If your add-on is well known then that would give you a leg
up on the competition. Actually, every add-on you create would add to your
brand.

Another crucial point is to find someone who can sell! Too many job proposals
on Odesk and Elance are the types which start out as Dear sir, broken English
and no demonstrable understanding of the item they are writing the proposal
on. Get this right and you could crush it. Maybe even get someone from the
U.S. to work on commission and pair that person up with your best developer
(or yourself) to work on each proposal. Essentially the salesperson would
dress up the proposal from the tech guy and add some spice.

I'm currently living in the Philippines. I have been pondering going this
route myself.

------
bootslebaron
I thought about going the WordPress theme route about a year ago and stumbled
upon these same statistics. At first it seemed like a great idea. I mean, I
already knew how to build them since I use WordPress for almost all my client
projects.

But then I realized that part of why I was bored freelancing is that building
a WordPress theme is essentially doing the same thing over and over and over
again. It's just like an assembly line, factory job.

These days I'm much happier working a salary job for a company on a large
scale project that is constantly getting new features and presenting fresh
engineering challenges. The salary is good. I'm not a millionaire, but at
least I enjoy what I spend 8-10 hours of my day doing.

~~~
ricardobeat
That's the good part of selling themes: do the work once, get paid repeatedly.

~~~
ElongatedTowel
The themes selling well are constantly updated though.

------
benjohnson
Frankly quickest way to be 'rich' is to be content with the riches you already
have.

~~~
tptacek
Which is probably why he used "$1 million" instead of "rich". :)

~~~
csomar
yes, I'm not looking for getting rich. I'm looking for a particular amount.

~~~
wikwocket
Do you have a specific debt with a certain criminal organization? Just so we
know who to call if you disappear off HN... ;)

~~~
csomar
Nope, no debt and no expenses. Just have a delusional lifestyle that I want to
get by the next few years.

------
Lost_BiomedE
Deal making and the stock market are probably the fastest.

Stocks. The stock market isn't much of a good one without a knowledgeable
mentor that can show you how to create and verify an edge. Without this, you
will not know if you are consistently making money over time irrespective of
short-term results.

Deals. Larger deals work best, so that generally means business or real
estate. Once you have an idea, you can use cross directories to solicit your
targeted group. If you can make arrangements for people that make them good
safe money, funding the arrangements won't be a problem.

------
olalonde
I was skeptical about the $100k/month by selling themes claim so I did some
research. This guy
([http://themeforest.net/user/Kriesi](http://themeforest.net/user/Kriesi)) on
ThemeForest has 61,313 sales (which seem to be ~40$ on average). That's
2,452,520$ so I guess $100k/month is believable. I was quite surprised there
was that much money to be made by selling themes.

~~~
tptacek
It's a "hits" business though, right? For every person doing $100k/mo, there
are how many doing $10/mo?

~~~
csomar
Indeed. With some experience, however, you can better hit it. I have a friend
who never missed it and continues to generate more sales for every new theme
he produces.

------
carsongross
Time, Probability, Soul.

Pick two.

------
bdfh42
Just ask 1,000,000 people for a single dollar - job done.

You might need a good story...

~~~
fabrice_d
A bit like
[http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/](http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/)
...

