Opportunity

The following posts are hopefully related to "Opportunity" in some way.

Friday, January 18, 2008, 10:55pm

Blogging is a Bad Way to Make Money (Directly)

There I said it. Someone has to agree with me, right? While blogging can do wonders for building your personal brand and securing freelancing gigs, by itself it isn’t a very lucrative profession.

Yes, bloggers have found the occasional niche and profited very nicely, but overall the grass is more brown than green, and the median income for a blogger is probably not far from $0. Here’s a very quick analysis of why I feel blogging strictly for money is not an effective use of your time.

To Blog

Let’s say I spend one hour a day writing 1-2 posts. I think that’s a pretty realistic time commitment and I challenge anyone to write a quality post in less than 30 minutes. So over the course of a month you’re looking at around 30 hours. (more…)

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Friday, January 11, 2008, 11:49pm

How Do I Make Money Online?

First, I’m not a professional blogger, nor do I claim to be especially knowledgeable on any one particular way of making money online. However, I have had some success through several channels and I’m willing to try even more in the future. For tonight, I thought I’d share a few with you that have served me well.

Shareware
My early days online were spent developing and marketing shareware applications. The most successful of which was AudioGizmo Ringtone Creator, which has been downloaded over 300,000 times since August 2005, with 18,000 of those users registering at $3.99 (v1) and then $5.99 (v2). This still remains a decent source of income for me even though development has slowed considerably.

Affiliate Marketing
AudioGizmo’s popularity generated a large number of targeted visitors to several websites that promoted other ringtone-related offers and downloadable tools. Combined with limited PPC advertising, this traffic still generates gas money each month. (more…)

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Wednesday, January 9, 2008, 6:37am

Sell the Concept, Then Yourself

As I’m sitting here trying to decide exactly when I’ll pull the trigger over at MacHeist, I’m reflecting on a conversation I had last night with a local business owner.  Now I have very little experience in direct (face-to-face) sales, and the purpose of this meeting was to bring his restaurant’s website over to Snowdrop.  While I felt I had a strong sales pitch and a nice angle, I quickly realized selling Snowdrop wasn’t going to be the difficult part. In fact, the owner liked the idea of Snowdrop being a small startup in the area.

The difficulty, it would turn out, was convincing him that a website in itself would help his business. (more…)

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Sunday, December 30, 2007, 9:41am

Becoming a Personal Coach

Small Business Trends has a good post on the Top Ten Opportunities in 2008 for Personal Businesses, #4 of which is “Business and Personal Coaching”.  This is a very interesting (and lucrative) opportunity for those with knowledge of a particular industry, marketing gurus, and other entrepreneurial spirits.  Some personal coaches charge $200+/hour and get it without negotiation - it all has to do with your reputation in the area.  Business Week remarks that blogs are a fantastic way to build exactly that kind of reputation, and with a successful blog you could catapult your career into whatever direction you’d like.  Powerful stuff, no?

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