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Comment by icey | Hacker News Reader

I think the bigger hurdle for most people is getting from $0 a day to $1 a day. Replicating success isn't as hard as finding success.

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I refer anyone that's interested to Ed Dale's 30 Day Challenge. It's a free online course to learn to make your first $1 online. It's mostly about niche selection, test marketing, and beginning SEO, but it's great for beginners. It's not overwhelmingly awesome, but it's free and targeted to people that aren't ubergeeks like us.

http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com

Max is proposing that it isn't that difficult for a programmer to find a way to make $1/day. Max -- care to elucidate?

If you want to make $1 a day, go search for a keyword. Like Owls. Then find a bunch of videos of owls in YouTube, put them on the site and call the site OwlVideo.com. In a week you will be making $1 a day.

Or if you prefer to program for the desktop - go wrap ffmpeg and make an AVI to MP4 converter. Def make $30 in sales in a month.

Or if you prefer to program for the web, make something that parses Apples XML of new iPhone apps, put all that text on your website, slap adverts on it. There is $1 a day.

Or you can copy the bible and allow people to annote it. Put on web. There ya go.

Find a commonly done task like file uploading. Write a wrapper script for this in PHP. Sell it on a scripting site. $1 a day.

Make a wordpress theme and target a specific group. "Theme for Doctors". Make it premium and put it for sale. $1 a day.

It's easy, you just need to think in the right mode.

So these might be great ways to make a little bit of money, but they don't really create value (except for the theme). Creating a successful startup should be more about creating value then making money, if you create value the money will come. When you think about success do you define it as money or building something people use and love (and also makes you money). If you want to make a cheap buck there are plenty of ways to do it without providing value. Go create a trash blog on a popular keyword, become a domain squatter, etc. But I want to create value and build something people will use and enjoy using.

I want to make many cheap bucks and I hope people here will continue to teach us how to think of ideas that will generate these cheap bucks.

Agreed - these ideas are not a startup - they don't create real value as a company. However the idea of making passive income is very attractive to many programmers, and creates an opportunity to have time to work on something big.

they don't really create value

Maybe they do -- it depends on who's judging. To use Max's example, let's say I am casually interested in owls. Seriously, there are such people. I'm 60, I am on the internet but am somewhat uneasy with how to use it, and I like owls. Somehow, I find Max's owl video site. I like it! Maybe I even see an ad and click and buy. Maybe. But to me, finding the site and being entertained by his collection of owl videos -- that has value.

Yeah, the people who created the owl videos are providing value, youtube is providing value by making them available, the owl site is just leaching off of that to make a buck.

Aggregation has always had value (the Bible, Familiar Quotes, Readers Digest, The Big Picture, etc.).

Thoughtful aggregation does add value, to me it sounded like the idea was to grab the first X videos on youtube.

Even thoughtless aggregation adds value, if you consider successful sites that are nothing more than a bulletin board built around a user community that does the actual gruntwork. Putting things in context may be the "location, location, location" of the Web. You could say we're doing it right now, here on HN.

I really disagree. Some call it "aggregation," but I'm starting to call this layer "discovery." This very site, Hacker News, is a filter that is mere pointer to content elsewhere. (There are occasional "Ask HN," but most every post posts elsewhere).

Most sites and tools I use every day are filtering tools. Techmeme is another great example.

It is true that a purely automated owl video scraper wouldn't be as good and one that was even cleaned up for five minutes a day, but that wasn't the suggester's point.

Yes, a large portion of the value (for me, at least) is the comments, which are generated by.... us.

That is beyond, and because of, the aggregation. What is created is new and more valuable than the original posts, or even the aggregation thereof.

Aggregation itself doesn't necessarily create value, but depending on what is done with the aggregation can create much value.

Google news is a good example, no one could really say that having all that article discovery and grouping was providing no value. Google scholar provides no content by itself but is very useful.

Classic long-tail fallacy in there though, 'build it and they will come' is a bad strategy on the high end, on the far end it's much harder still.

I do think there will be 300 youtube aggregated owl sites by tomorrow 9 am though.

Best to diversify and do one on whooping cranes instead.

the owl site is just leaching off of that to make a buck

Editorship -- or, if you're more cynical, "leeching". There really is value in collecting other people's works. I am convinced that it's more than mere leeching.

Do you have a newsletter or blog?

He is the author of the post.

Damn! Someone already owns Owlvideos.com - I thought it was my ticket to the big time :)

Ok, I'll bite. I challenge you to make an owl video site that makes $1 a day and post the link and revenue here. Ditto for an AVI to MP4 desktop converter. Ditto for the iPhone app site. Ditto for the annotated bible. Ditto for the file uploader script. Ditto for the Doctors theme.

I don't believe any of these will make $1 a day. I believe they'll make $0 a day. There's a world of difference between $0 a day and $1 a day.

Just because $1 a day sounds like almost nothing doesn't mean you'll get it for a site that's worth almost nothing. It's $365 a year. You won't make that with 30 owl videos and adwords.

Well, I have 2 apps on the app store right now. One of them makes nothing, it's not free, just does not make any sales and one makes just about $1 a day (after I raised the price from .99 to 1.99). Both apps are pretty simple, are in the same category (healthcare and fitness) and I've done nothing to promote them.

Yeah, I'm in that same boat. Two apps on the store, one is free, the other is making about $3.00 a day:

http://www.platinumball.net/hearts/

Kind of frustrating, because when I made my app free, it was being downloaded 1700 times a day. So it seems like there is demand, but not enough to push them over into the 'pay real money' category.

I'd love to work with somebody who is better at marketing than I am, if somebody wants to get in touch.

It looks like you're in San Francisco. Mobile Monday Group is holding some kind of event tomorrow about how to increase app sales. I saw the post on the Silicon Valley iPhone Developer's Meetup Group mailing list. May just be a sales pitch but might be worth checking out as it's free: http://momosvfeb10.eventbrite.com/

i actually don't live in san francisco, i was just there when that photo was taken. and i'm kind of over doing marketing on my own, i know perfectly well i'm not any good at it. i'd like to work with somebody who has the personality for it.

I experienced the same thing. There seems to be a world of difference between free and 99 cents on the app store. And, I think, understandably so. If I want to try a whole bunch of programs, I'd much rather try free programs. If it costs even just 99 cents, then I am forced to stop and think about it before downloading. "I can download hundreds of free programs for less money than this one 99-cent program... do I really want the 99-cent program, or am I okay with some more free programs?"

I also noticed that making an app that was 99 cents to be free not only increased downloads, but also increased bad reviews. I guess people who get programs for free expect a lot more out of them and are perfectly happy to express their disappointment both rudely and publicly than those who pay for the programs.

i think i have that angle pretty well covered: there is a free version of my game. it's intended to give people a taste of what it's about. if you like it, then you can buy the better one. if you're a cheapskate, fine, stick with the free one.

people who like the game tend to really like it. here's the text of a review for the free version i got just yesterday:

  I've now played 150 games against the ai players and
  it's a great implementation! It can be a bit easy to
  shoot the moon (something apparently improved in the
  author's hearts net) but still MUCH better than most
  other iphone hearts games. Highly recommended, great
  fun.

so, let's review. here's a guy who has spent many hours playing my free game, and likes it. he is aware of my paid version. he is even aware that the paid version fixes a criticism he has of the free version. yet he is apparently still not willing to spend just a couple of bucks buying it. sheesh.

this has been enough to pretty much put me off the iphone ecosphere. i plan to port my game to macosx, whose users have a much better reputation for paying for software they use.

This also highlights one of the big problems with the App Store - there is no way to get in touch with that user to find out why he hasn't upgraded to paid.

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