As I waste away in my college dorm room, I decided my part-time job wasn’t enough. I refused to be locked into working for “the man” for the length of my life. I really want to start my own business. AFAIK, or at least can tell, there is still plenty of opportunities to make money on the internet. Shy of porn and network marketing, are there any dopers out there that run online stores or websites that make money without selling an original product? Can anybody point me in the right direction?
Send me $5 and I will give you all the info you need to make money on the net. Email me to find out where to send the money.
I was going to make the same offer but I was only going to ask for a dollar.
So email me where to send the money, and you’re already four bucks ahead!
I was going to make the same offer but I was only going to ask for your parent’s credit card details.
So email me where to send the details, and you’re already five bucks ahead!
Neener neener!
Well, if you send me all your details, I’ll give you a cut of $180,000,000,000,000,000,000 that’s sat in a Lagos bank account, and then you’re, ummm, quite a bit ahead?!
I for one am shocked at the deliberate spreading of misinformation by members of a message board that claims to fight ignorance.
Yesterdog, I can advise you in a lawsuit against these people for causing you emotional damages and being meanies. We’ll take 'em for all they’re worth. I have a sliding rate scale for my legal fees, I’m sure we can work something out…
But seriously, porn is the key to making money online. Lots of porn. The kinkier the better - people will pay surprising amounts of money to watch some very strange things, so you should invest in a webcam, some fruit, and some farm animals.*
*Antigen does not condone the use of pornographic websites as a means of making money online. Spending… maybe.
[old joke]
It’s easy to make a small fortune on the Internet.
First, start with a large fortune…
0/old joke]
neighsayers!
:dubious:
You make money by offering some value added, same way you make money in a bricks and mortar store. So, what can you add of value?
Well, I have an idea. And it’s a gem…bizarre, but highly lucrative. At least a 100,000% return on investment (maybe more). I cant’t tell you, must protect my interest.
Maybe you will own some StarP® (all rights reserved) one day and contribute to my fortune.
Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam.
There’s money in that there V14GR*A
I don’t think anyone is really making money off the net outside of porn and the really huge stores like Amazon.
Small businesses usually have online sales in conjunction with regular off-the-street sales, so that’s a hard thing to measure.
Maybe if you had a web comic strip, and sold T-shirts with your wacky characters in hilarious predicaments?
I’m going to say ebay - find stuff you’d think noone wants and be amazed when it sells.
Actually you don’t even have to have what you sell, just claim it’s invisible, a ghost, dehydrated water or something like that.
Plan on winning the lottery , otherwise you work for the man
Maybe its just the way you wrote that ,but I imagine that you also want to run that business and make money and buy the toys.
There should be some course that you can take that advise you on how to write a biz plan , logistical details of how this biz will run and what not.
Couple of things that I can think of off hand , is to procure items at garage sales , used bookstores , bric a brac places ,and sell em on ebay. What ever money you make , gets re-invested back into purchasing.
Second would be to aquire a credit card , and allow people (without CC’s) to purchase items , while they front you the cash , the vig is something that you have to decide on.
Declan
One word: Betfair. It’s an internet betting exchange, but don’t think of it as a place to bet - think of it as a very short-term futures exchange. Prices fluctuate, and you can trade them. Start with a reasonable size bank and it will grow very quickly, and with little risk, as long as you close your position before the event starts. In play in things like cricket and tennis matches, you can make much more but also lose more!
However, adopting a virtual no-risk strategy it is fairly straightforward to make 1% a day with a couple of hours’ work. That might not sound much, but compound it and you’re doubling your investment every couple of months. Plus it’s all tax free (in the UK at least).
One guy I know of has been making around £1,000 - £1,500 per week, every week. I don’t have the spare time or the inclination to dedicate myself to it to that degree, but it’s a good bit of spare cash.
Colophon - because I’m a complete neophyte when it comes to betting, can you explain how this works? I’ve been to the site and I still don’t quite ‘get it’. Surely if anyone with a couple of grand a couple of hours to spare can be raking in 1000/pw after an initial period, everyone’s going to be doing it? If people are making a profit, where does it come from - are the losers the ones who are more risky in their bets? Thx…
Well… the majority of people do use Betfair purely to bet on, i.e. take a view on an event and place their bets accordingly. But yes, if too many people trade on it then it could be a bad thing. It certainly seems to make the markets more volatile.
Anyway, basic principle: say you have a horse race with 5 or 6 runners. The favourite is currently available to back at a price of 3.40 (this is equivalent to traditional odds of 2.4/1, i.e. bet £1 and receive £3.40 return, a profit of £2.40).
The site has a “back” column and a “lay” column. You can either back the horse to win, or lay a bet to someone else, i.e. take their stake and pay them if it does win (and keep their stake if it loses).
So it will look like:
Back | Lay
Horse A 3.30 3.35 **3.40** | **3.45** 3.50 3.55
£xxx £xxx £xxx £xxx £xxx £xxx
The prices will be fluctuating… those in the centre are the current prices, but the ones alongside are money waiting to lay or back at better prices (“better” from the perspective of a layer or backer, i.e. lower or higher respectively). The figures below are the amount of money queued up at each level.
That’s where the fun part comes in - watch the prices, watch what the money is doing, and dive in with a back at, say, 3.40 followed by a lay at 3.35, or vice versa, depending on which way the micro movement is going. You can call up a graph of past price movements for each runner to get an idea of the long-term pattern. In a reasonably stable market you can do this repeatedly. You then wind up with a “free bet” on that particular horse", then before the off you lay that off to ensure a level profit whatever wins. Money from nowhere!
Of course, you have to be disciplined - if the market swings against you, take a small loss QUICKLY. It will always happen from time to time, but you can minimise the damage.
It does take practice, and not everyone can do it, so it’s wise to start with small stakes to get the hang of it… but it’s a satisfying way of creaming off profits.
So in short, yes, the money comes from those who are taking a view by either backing or laying and leaving the bet to run.
Thanks Colophon - it’s much appreciated. I think I’ll watch the site for a while…
Just as an example, say you’d backed at 3.40 for £100 and managed to lay at 3.30 for £100:
If horse wins:
Profit from backing = (£100 x 3.40) - £100 stake = £240.
Loss from laying = (£100 x 3.30) - £100 stake = £230
Total profit = £240 - £230 = £10
If horse wins:
Loss from backing = £100 (your stake)
Profit from laying = £100 (backer’s stake)
Total = break even.
If you think the horse will win you could leave it as is for a free £10 if the horse wins.
However, for guaranteed profit you should split the profit across all runners:
Lay stake = (potential profit) / (current price),
so if the horse is still at 3.30:
10 / 3.30 = £3.03.
Lay it for £3.03 and you’ll get that profit no matter what the result.
(NB All this ignores commission, which is 4% or so depending on how much you use the site)
Sounds like your working the arbitrage of the market. The problem is that as soon as other people figure out that strategy, it ceases to become useful. AFAIK, it’s a zero sum game. What happens if you back at $3.40 and then it jumps up to $7? you won’t get a chance to lay and you might lose the backing money.