Help me make One Dollar online?
Hi,
I've been wantrepreneuring for quite a long time now. Along the way, I've picked up a bunch of different coding skills, mostly for fun. I've made a few betas which I've shared with friends, but never really launched anything into the actual world.
Yesterday, I got re-inspired by the latest episode of Startups for the Rest of Us. Rob Walling was talking about his “Stairstep Approach” again. I went back through the archives and listened to the original episode (#222- http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-222-the-stair-step-approach-to-launching-products) and decided that I would make that first step.
I'm super busy these days (work + newborn baby + studying), but I would still like to get started with making that first dollar.
Does anyone have any ideas on something small and simple I can do just to get that first step out of the way? I can code, I can write, I also have a ton of ideas, but would like to know what others think.
Any thoughts appreciated! Thank you and thanks to Courtland for making a great site!
You could code me a bunch of improvements to my Rails app and I will pay you $1. There: you posted online (marketing/leadgen) and if you follow up with me, you could close the sale. Bam! Your first $1 online!
Oh, you want "passive income"? How about writing some of your knowledge down, into an ebook, and self-publish it on Kindle for 99¢?
Or code some interesting applets and post on Hacker News until they get upvoted, but apply AdSense to your page order to monetize the traffic.
Hey Anthony,
Instead of starting with your skills, start with 1 person who could be your customer.
Ask what they are working on, struggling with and what they could use help with.
Within a few minutes you could have a handful of ideas that would be worth $1, $5, $50, $100. What matters is extracting an idea that is actually needed, taking payment, then delivering on what you promised.
It is very easy to get caught up with 'what can I code' that you totally forget about helping people.
I'd definitely be happy to be that first customer if you wanted to test it out.
CodeForCash's ideas are both great. The traffic + ads one is probably the easiest way to start if your goal is truly $1. The only bar you need to clear with visitors in this case is, "This looks interesting, let me click to see what it is," which is much easier than, "This is valuable enough for me to open my wallet and enter my credit card details."
Another idea would be to use affiliate marketing. Sign up for Amazon's affiliate program and let them do the hard work of selling for you. You just need to build a site that convinces people to click through to Amazon. Random idea: Can you curate a list of really interesting products to people in a community like Hacker News, Product Hunt, Indie Hackers, or any of the thousands of sub-reddits? All you need is one person to buy something and Amazon will pay you your first dollar.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes!
Hi there…yes, thank you! This is exactly the confirmation I need that an idea I have had for a while is the right thing to get started with.
I’ll let you know once I get it started. 👍🏼
If you know photoshop you can dropship novelty merchandise, shirt and stickers.
If you just want to make your first dollar, what I recommend you don't do is spend 200 hours validating and building a product. ;)
I think affiliate marketing is the easiest way to get 1 dollar. Setup an amazon affiliate account, create some content about something you're interested in and know well, share it on relevant places and hope for a couple sales.
Just be aware that scaling affiliate marketing can be hard because getting organic traffic is hard (which will be true almost no matter what you build). But get it out there and let it grow over time.
Good luck!
Exactly what I am going to try. Thank you!
Quick way to make $1:
Set up a website which gets auto-content.
Apply Adsense on it.
Spend couple of hours to share links through forum postings, blog comments and SM.
5 clicks with 20 cents per click will get you a dollar. Easy, right?
I've done this. I created a technical blog, put AdSense on it, and it generated a few bucks per month in revenue.
Hi Jason,
I am curious about your Adsense business. How profitable is it? can you share some info regarding that. Please let me know if you are not interested to reveal it public.
Adsense is the best, and most easiest, tool to monetize content based sites. To make the most out of it, build your content around high CPC keywords.
Drop me a line if you need further info.
Thank you Kashaziz,
I love to get some info on that and also how to get my site higher in google search SEO. Please let me know how can I contact you?
Please use the contact form at http://www.kashifaziz.me/contact/
Not a blog, but for reference: I made a dictionary website which a lot of my users seem to love, it grew steadily and slowly over two years and is now making around $100 per month with Adsense with ~6 000 pageviews/day.
I like to have a look at your dictionary website. Is it okay to ask you to share? If you are not interested to share it publicly here I can contact you with other ways.
Yes of course, the site is https://en.openrussian.org
During the time I was doing AdSense I made about $5/month. So I made just barely more than $1 online.
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Hello everyone!
Thank you all for your replies and ideas. Special thanks to Courtland (again) for putting my post on the IH email and generating the additional traffic my question received.
I have a domain that I’ve been sitting on for quite a few years now. You’ve inspired me to dust that project off and get it online. It's basically an affiliate marketing/niche content idea.
I will have some time freeing up in December, so I will start it up then. I'm targeting mid- to late January of next year for launch. The goal is to get it up quickly without procrastinating it to project-death.
Also – thanks to those suggesting I do some work for them ;). I'm hoping to gain more skills that generate multiplicative revenue, not just trade my time for dollars. Writing code for $$ is already my day job, so I'm looking for something different.
Finally — thanks again to everyone! I will be back here to post my progress once I start and maybe even share some tips if I have any.
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Have you seen this plugin0? Haven't tried myself but the features looks good.
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May be you can talk with the developer and see if they can customize it as per your requirements?
I'd be curious to talk to you about what you have in mind; I've started to design something similar as a technical challenge without any actual use cases...
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