Money making dreams and the reality | Hacker News Reader

Money making dreams and the reality

sanguinity.net

44 pointsambiate26 comments

I really sucked at market size estimation back in the day:

http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/reality-b...

That is absolutely creepy that we used the same colors and all. I was in mspaint trying to choose between green and purple as a 'dream color,' and green just seemed more like a 'start it' color.

I wish my reality charts were more like that. I scooped up a few iPad/Kindle dev/app sites and hope to find enough time to make something out of them!

That is absolutely creepy that we used the same colors and all.

Oh, my bad, I suppose without context that post might look like I was commenting about a pre-existing thingee. I created that image about ten minutes ago in response to yours and so used the same colors. Then a quick commit, svn update ..., and a new URL popped up on my website so I could copy/paste into HN.

What causes the seasonal spikes around October?

Halloween.

1) There is no day off from school, but it is traditionally a kid's holiday anyway, and the week of Halloween a huge number of elementary schoolteachers try to do a Halloween lesson plan.

2) It isn't religious (well, in contemporary America). If you've been around K-12 education in the US you can probably anticipate the sort of issues which come up if you want to play e.g. Easter bingo. (I generally try to provide customers with a "traditional" and "seasonal" variation on the religious holidays, which is my best attempt at phrasing the difference such that it doesn't sound like I'm talking down to either group.)

3) In years prior to 2009, the gigantic tidal wave of searches for [halloween bingo] and [halloween bingo cards] (see: http://www.google.com/trends?q=halloween+bingo+cards) landed on pages at About.com and Mes-english which both a) fail to satisfy searcher demand and b) run AdWords ads. Guess who was right next to those articles saying "I've got your Halloween bingo cards right here." (In 2009, the #1 ranking site for those queries was halloweenbingocards.net . I did not put AdWords on it, for the obvious reason.)

Link doesnt seem to be working?

something in the tubes went wrong! (100% cpu usage, 100% disk io), my linode got throttled

This is pretty fun, I especially liked the iPhone graph.

I'm hoping the Kindle will be the next gold mine!

No way man. The iPad is the next gold mine!

The iPad just seems like most of the apps will get converted to a larger, 'friendly' UI and keep on making revenue.

The Kindle is an open book!

I am holding a candle-light vigil for CrunchPad, yo.

This mirrors the average money-making-misadventures in the online space so well it's scary, nice job to the author.

isn't the whole "my hope for this post is $1.29 from adsense" against Google ToS? Kinda implies you want people clicking.

wasn't exactly what I was aiming for, last time I posted I made 1.28 ;\

Would you mind writing up a piece about your offline affiliate marketing experience, since it seems to be the most successful thing you've done?

I'll do a write up tomorrow, but I'm about to head to sleep. Been refreshing the statistics page and looking at ref urls for an hour and checking out some of these news sites I've never heard of!

email me at admin @ the linked website . com and I'll either email it to you or post it. The writeup will require quite a bit of time and tweaking :D

Inaccurate

I really do wonder how people don't make money on the internet. It's trivially easy to make it to mid six figures. I've personally found it extremely difficult to make it to 7/8.

If it's so trivially easy why don't you have 20 people do it under your direction, and to your benefit? If it's so easy why don't you just do it 10 times simultaneously?

I'm working on that. It's hard to find good people though - most people I come across are too lazy or scared of failure.

Under the assumption that “it is trivially simple to make mid six figures” then to reach 7/8 figures just:

    1. Start new enterprise
    2. Increase profit to mid 6 figures
    3. Sell enterprise for 7 figures
       (only a couple of years profits)
    4. GoTo 1

Do that enough times, and you should be loaded — as they say, once you are lucky, twice you are good :)

But unfortunately, two of those six figures tend to be on the wrong side of the decimal point. :(

[citation needed]

What is your recipe to make mid six figures?

Know at least one other field to postgraduate level. That way you can see the gaps in the field. Use IT as an enabler, not a panacea. Spend time with your customers face to face. Work hard. Sell, sell, sell. All the usual really.

I don't think I could make money from many of the "businesses" people start up around here giving everything away and searching for money, I always go for money first.

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