

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

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?
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ambiate
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.

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

~~~
braindead_in
Yes, thats correct. And that is by design.

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bendmorris
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.

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RealGeek
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
This is a sleek idea !

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

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exline
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.

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

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noahc
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.

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

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maigret
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.

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happy4crazy
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
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.

------
il
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.

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trustfundbaby
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.

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iworkforthem
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... :-)

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

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stevederico
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.

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Raphael
Porn.

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cma
Pretty sure craigslist closed that section.

