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Comment by maxklein | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

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.

Do you have a newsletter or blog?

He is the author of the post.

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.

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