makin the $'s

[Lithium88]

I know this is probably not the place for this but because I received so many questions from my previous post where I mentioned that I have a successful web site that makes money I 'll write this. My first tut so hold on.

Disclaimer: Sorry to disappoint anyone but this is not about stealing credit card #'s so thieves stop reading here.

There are three basic things that all business' need on the web or in the physical world......... supply, demand, and convenience. If any one of these things are missing your business is doomed to fail. Keeping that in mind a business also needs to be associated with something that you are familiar with (usually). So the first thing you have to do is make a list of all the things you know a little bit about or would like to know about. Don't exclude anything no matter how silly it may seem to you. Just think about the guy who started pokemon. That silly idea made a lot of cash. Then narrow down your list to things you can either supply yourself cheaply or things that you could acquire a supply for a very low cost (I'm not talking about your buddy who says he can get a deal on the latest gadget. I mean actually get a deal and buy in bulk.). Now take the items or ideas and start researching for a demand. See if there are companies doing similar things already and apply some of your hacking skills (not cracking skills) to maybe socially engineer them a little. Call them up or send them email............. find out how there business is doing. Do they have enough customers? Do they have to many? or not enough? Do this to enough companies and you'll get a pretty good idea of how the market is relating to supply and demand.
So now we have reached the point where we have a list of possible products or services that:
A. You have knowledge about or in,
B. You can acquire for a good price, and
C. Have a good supply Vs. demand ratio. (narrowed down by may favorite...... social engineering)
Of course you are no where near making the $ yet but hold on and we'll get there. And of course none of this applies to a web based company yet either but that's coming too. I will attempt now to break down the basic fundamentals of business (Supply, Demand, and Convenience) into more detailed categories and give an example of supply and demand.
Supply and Demand:
Because supply and demand are so closely related I will put these two in the same categories. Supply and demand by themselves are useless. If you have a huge supply of buttons but there is no demand then your buttons are useless. It doesn't matter how cheap you got them or how many you have if there is no demand they just won't move. The same goes for having a large demand but no supply but I won't go into that since that's kind of common sense. In real world scenario the value of supply or demand are rarely 0. There is almost always some type of supply and also some time of demand and things are not always what they seem. You may find that there's 10,000 people who want the newest hottest gadget but you have to make sure you don't fall into the trap of buying a truckload of the newest hottest gadget only to find out that 10,000 people want it and 50,000 people are selling it. The point is do your homework on how supply and demand compares to each item on your list because chances are out of those 50,000 people selling it someone else got a better deal than you did which means they can sell it cheaper and your stuck with a truckload of unmovable product. Okay I'm sure you're all sick of hearing supply and demand so here is the real life example of one of my first successful online transactions.
Example:
I once found a surplus of water hoses in a thrifty nickel add that were in the storage room of some lawn and garden place for ever and they couldn't sell them. They were willing to take a loss on the product because they couldn't move it and they had to pay inventory tax on it every year. So I did like I had done so many times before on good deals and whipped out the checkbook.

I ended up with 2500 water hoses for just under $4.00 a piece. A water hose at Wally world costs around $20.00. I had the supply now......... just no demand. (note: I would have done my homework better if I knew what I know now. Over the past two years I have taken some pretty heavy losses.)

I had already sold a few items on ebay and bidz.com for way more than what they were worth....... "but water hoses?" I asked myself. What the hell.... I tried it. Average price I got for the water hoses....... $12.00.

You do the math.
$12.00 money coming in (buyer pays shipping also)
-$6.00 list item on ebay
-$4.00 my cost for item
=$2.00 profit/item

doesn't sound like much hu?????? oh wait I forgot......

$2.00 x 2500 items = $5,000. Looks good. Of course with ebay it takes time to sell stuff. It didn't all happen in one day. But I promise if you start here after finding surplus after surplus eventually you will find someone willing to give you the same product over and over again for killer prices.

Then if your lucky and smart you'll do good business with your customers (also known as building a customer base) and after a year or so you'll have enough repeat customers to keep the $'s coming.
And now for the final chapter..............
Convenience:
This is the subject that can make or break you know matter how much you did your homework on supply and demand. Just as you wouldn't drive 4 hours to buy a Dr. pepper for $0.50 when you could go to the local Quik-e mart and buy it for a dollar. People don't want to search for your product for 3 days when they could buy it somewhere else today. As a matter of fact not only do people not want to search for your product for a long time but they won't, and they shouldn't. Search engine optimization is the number one biggest thing for a small online company and believe me it doesn't come easy. You can make money off of even the crapiest products on the web if you are just at the top of one major search engine. (Search engine optimization would have to be in a completely different tut. Just wanted to stress the importance) This was the biggie that killed my website for it's first year and a half. I pretty much had the market cornered with my particular product and I could sell tons of it on ebay but ebay costs money. I thought if I started my own website I wouldn't have to pay ebay for listing items anymore and I could make that much more money. Well, well, well............. not so easy. There are pay per click sites for goggle, AltaVista, alltheweb, and almost every other major search out there but they are about like paying for ebay. Way too expensive. There also ways to manipulate the search engines to get higher rankings such as super large meta tags and keyword stuffing (the art of craming a crapload of keywords in your text but making the font match your background so that people surfing don't see it. only the search engine spiders) but I would not recommend it as my site now resides on the first page of two major search engines and I have never done either. I see sites shoot past me all the time that do this stuff only to get banned for life a week later. At least I don't have to worry about getting banned. Just be honest with the search engines and you will be rewarded. One of the biggest things they look for is incoming links to your site. Make sure you spend plenty of time emailing other web sites and asking them to link to you. I usually link to them first and then ask for a link back. Seems to work pretty well but remember..... sites with a lot of traffic don't benefit from sites without so until you get some traffic it will be pretty hard to get links but keep trying. One day you might be the one people are asking for links from.
Overall..... with a lot of hard work and consistency you CAN find a stable income with an online business. Just remember this one thing: Damn near all successful people have failed at least once on there journey to success.

P.S. I'm only twenty four years old and I now make about $2,000 dollars a week which is putting me through collage for html, JavaScript, and C++. (maybe security+ later on) and I spend most of my time as a stay at home dad with my daughter (4) and my son (1.5). My wife is also in collage for marketing management. (oh and man is she fine......... I love my wife). We went from poverty level to pretty darn well off mostly because of my obsessive compulsive disorder with computers and just work in general. Constructive criticism welcome. This was my first tut. Thanks for reading.

oh and here are some handy links
http://searchenginewatch.com/
www.overture.com
www.linkshare.com
http://www.websitetips.com/search/

[c0re]

Very nice Lith. My wife and I just started a Site for artists to post thier Work and sell prints. Who knows it may really help us. loved the part about how your wife is fine haha.we are also new parents to two twin girls and a half and a baby boy on the way our ages are 24 and 26. so we know what you mean by the poverty level. very cool tutorial. are you going to post your site so we can see it or is it a secret? haha anyway our site name is www.c0refx.com
it's new and bulding. if ya see anything i may need to change or get ideas off of it well then that is great. just email suggestions to c0retek@c0refx.com. very nice read man hope to see more in the future.

[Lithium88]

The reason I didn't put a plug in for my site is just because it is how I feed my kids (and buy my toys). I just don't want to tell everybody and end up losing because they flood the market. I'll check out your web though and thanks for the good comments.

Very cool flash..... nice site.

[d00dz Attackin]

Wow this is a great read and going to send it to a few of my friends. I was selling on ebay (motherboards, cpu, and cases) but only made around 20 profit. Thankyou very much. Making a web site/linking them takes time, but of money, anytime. Damn making 8,000 a month and your growing good for you man, happy of you!! Hopefully when you become very well knowin you can shoot some money over here HAHA. What did you use to put up your website (e.i: angelfire, homestead)?? I booked-marked this. Great job.

Cya --d00dz attackin

[Lithium88]

I don't get it. My "user tends to assign" is on red here but when I login on the home page it is in the middle. Actually I have never givin anyone negative antipoints so why would it be in the red at all??

[d00dz Attackin]

It's a bug...... Take a look http://www.antionline.com/showthread...readid=243357.

[c0re]

did you try to update your mood?

[thehorse13]

Nice to see that you have made some decent cash on the web. Your post is well written but I believe that it has nothing at all to do with what this site is about. The last thing I want to see in the tutorials forum is a trend that looks like, "Learn the secrets of internet millions"

[Linen0ise]

I thought the tutorial was pretty good. I read it several times only to get more ideas. There are alot of auctions to conquer out in cyberspace.

[thehorse13]

I never said it wasn't a good post. In fact, I said it was well written.

My point is that it is not related to anything here on this site. I'm merely saying that if people see that positive APs are given to posts like this, what do you think they will do? Yes, you will start seeing posts that are titled, "I made $50,000 from my one bedroom apartment." If you're here trying to use the site for what it is intended for, is this what you want to see? I *know* that I'm not alone on this point of view and frankly I don't give a **** if people neg me for it.