Best Posts in Thread: Making money online?

That's not a spam post. Udemy offers free courses for many things. He is suggesting that you can use the site to build skills which you can then use to make money. After all, skills pay the bills.

 

Making money online is much the same as making money offline. Find a need and fill it.

Your greatest opportunities are in areas where you can help people make money. It's much easier to persuade people to pay you money when you can sell yourself as an asset rather than a liability. As your impact on the bottom line grows, your value also grows and you an charge more.

Anything which allows you to make money by working completely for yourself comes with a lot of competition. If it's easy, then you aren't making going to make much. Most likely you will need to do a lot of work to build skills and create something or offer these skills to others.

A good way to get started in seeing what's out there for making money for others is to get on Elance or Odesk and browse through the gigs people are hiring for. These aren't necessarily gigs to aspire for as they are more like labor shops, but it's still a good place to generate ideas.

Keep in mind that any consultant here who can help you setup a business should be charging fees for their time.

 

Yep, to get something going with someone who is already successful, you have to be able to bring something to the table. Invest in a stake. Bring some skills. Bring your own successful track record and a compelling case that two of you would equal more than just 1 + 1.

As I said, making money online is no different from making money offline. The variables may be different, but that's always the case no matter the situation. Making money in an airport has different variables than making money in a trade show. Running a restaurant has different variables than running a lemonade stand in a sports complex during a game. Different variables, but the underlying laws of business physics still apply.

For some reason, the idea of "making money online" seems to make people to make people think these laws don't apply. You are no more likely to be able to join someone already successful in "making money online" than you would be in joining someone in a successful local restaurant. You may be able to sign on as an employee, but as Dustin said, you won't be making much money.

Starting, running, growing and maintaining a business is a big task. If it were easy, then you would always have competition willing to take your slice by working a little harder and for a little less profit. Again, you need to be able to bring something to the table for this person to be willing to spend time educating you and helping you grow your own business.

If I had a gun to my head and I was forced to help you create a business making XXX per month, then it may be a better use of my resources to simply pay you that much money rather than take the time away from my business.

If I believed that I could be successful in a business, it wouldn't make sense for me to take on a 50/50 partner unless I know that partner is going to pull his weight. If I don't know you and you are telling me you have little skills, then I would rather go solo. You may not think about this when you are making nothing, but you will seriously think about it when the business hits that first month of "pays all my living expenses" in profit. You hit that magical point, but then you have to give half to a flakey partner.

What's the alternative? Run two businesses? One for myself and one for someone else as a favor? No.

Why meet up with someone who probably doesn't have much knowledge to share anyways. As a professional web developer, I'm going to get far more information by looking up resources on the internet than I would by talking to hobbyists here. I'm not saying that I can't learn something from people here, but there is a wealth on information accessible via the internet and from world class people in my field.

What you need to do is open up Google.com and start doing your own research. You could find someone in a similar situation to join up, but I think when the rubber meets the road, you are better off working solo or instead locating a highly competent partner through a thorough selection process. I'm not saying this to be an @ss. I went from zero to professional web developer following this same formula. It may have taken me longer than if I would have had someone holding my hand, but it still would have taken a lot of time and effort. It's better that I figured out how to teach myself and locate resources than to be spoon-fed.

Maybe what you are really looking for is a mentor. A mentor isn't a partner and not necessarily a teacher. A mentor can provide support, encouragement and perhaps provide key information at the right times to help accelerate your business. However, you first have to put in the effort to show that you are worth mentoring.

This advice is the difference between talking and doing. Rely on someone else in the same sitation as you and you may still be talking about doing something 6 months from now. Making this forum post is easy. Let's see you make some real progress on something tomorrow, next week, next month and continuing that process. If you can do that, then joining up with someone is much lower importance (this person could actually hold you back rather than helping.)

Good luck!