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Making money online

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:10 pm
by shiznit
I see all these scams (surveys, searching, surfing) and I’m wondering if anyone here has ever been able to legitimately make any decent money online?

I wonder how gamespy, ign, gamespot started out? They are worth millions now. :icon28:

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:12 pm
by phantasmagoria
Some people I know do this:
AQA, Any Question Answered. http://www.aqa.issuebits.com/

Basically, people text in a question to the company, and the company then give these questions to people working for them who reply an answer to the question, and give them a fee of about 15p for basically going on google and looking up the question.

I think you get to pick which questions you want to answer, and I don't think there's any obligation to answer any questions at all. It just means you won't get any money.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:13 pm
by dzjepp
There are people that have made a decent amount of money, but the majority do not.

If you want to try and make some cash, but also take a risk at the same time, start a pyramid scheme site. You know, one of those that you get a certain number of people referred and you get moneys in your paypal account in return.

As for IGN, they are privately owned so I assume they had a lot of capital starting out.

Gamespy on the other hand had gamespy 3d, their server browser. Albeit it would be hard to imagine how one tool like that would build their empire, but there are probably other strategic factors involved in it.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:15 pm
by shiznit
phantasmagoria wrote:Some people I know do this:
AQA, Any Question Answered. http://www.aqa.issuebits.com/

Basically, people text in a question to the company, and the company then give these questions to people working for them who reply an answer to the question, and give them a fee of about 15p for basically going on google and looking up the question.

I think you get to pick which questions you want to answer, and I don't think there's any obligation to answer any questions at all. It just means you won't get any money.
brilliant idea, but do people really waste money on this?

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:17 pm
by phantasmagoria
People can't wait to waste their money on things they can text to, I've seen them do it dispite my advice and lose up to £50 by signing up for 2000 "free" texts.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:18 pm
by shiznit
dzjepp wrote:There are people that have made a decent amount of money, but the majority do not.

If you want to try and make some cash, but also take a risk at the same time, start a pyramid scheme site. You know, one of those that you get a certain number of people referred and you get moneys in your paypal account in return.
That sounds pretty lame, might as well steal some credit cards if you want to comit fraud and face persecution. I'm more interested in legitimate long term ways.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:19 pm
by Mr.Magnetichead
Start making ringtones.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:20 pm
by shiznit
I guess it's a matter of providing an original service that has demand. But that could cost a few million to start up.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:22 pm
by Foo
Money has to come from somewhere to end up in your pocket. Hence most money generation online results in making a few people richer which making a lot of other people poorer.

I mean, be more specific... do you want some ideas for something to do online to make yourself cash? Okay, but are we talking hard work and technical ability, or 'sits in my taskbar and makes me cash omg!'.

'online' is a pretty fucking vague concept. Look at amazon.co.uk, of course they're making money.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:23 pm
by dzjepp
Well then, you should of thought of this first: :p

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

Holy shit the bastard already made almost 50 grand in under a few weeks.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:27 pm
by shiznit
Acctually I was wondering if anyone here was making any money online.

Yeah I was just looking at that site, I wish i'd thought of that.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:28 pm
by phantasmagoria
Lay claim to the moon and sell it off acre by acre

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:28 pm
by duffman91
You make money online the same way you make money all over the world. Provide a service to people who are willing to pay for it. This can be advertisement space, site memberships, product reselling, etc.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:34 pm
by dzjepp
You can make money on ebay selling shit from your own store. The benefit would be not having to own your own brick n mortar to house stuff. Just store it all over your house. :p

But then again, that's gonna take a lot of work, not just a week of planning. You need to find out what the hot items are, figure out how you're gonna get the merchandise, etc.

But there are plenty of ebayers that are making this their full time jobs.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:39 pm
by shiznit
phantasmagoria wrote:Lay claim to the moon and sell it off acre by acre
Good idea, but since you can't physically own the moon. You could create a flash website that has a 3d representation of the moon. You stitch the satellite pictures of the moon, divided it into acres and sell each acre for $10. Once a person buys an acre they can do anything they want with it visually, they can put ads that can be seen from above or create little pixel communities (pixel art).

People who come to the site can pan and zoom in to look through all the acres, someone with a lot of money can buy enough land and make a huge ad which can be viewed from space. You can put links on the ads so they link to a website.

Could work, too bad I lack any skills or motivation to actually making something like this.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:41 pm
by phantasmagoria
It's already been done ;)

No Organisation or Company could own the moon, but there was nothing saying a person couldn't, so some bloke laid claim to it and is selling it off acre by acre. When people buy it they get a little photocopy of the section of moon they've bought.

Whether or not he, or the people who've bought pieces off him own the moon or not doesn't really matter, he's made a killing.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 8:43 pm
by shiznit
Has a virtual graveyard been made yet? You own a little gravestone page or something.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:36 pm
by Guest
phantasmagoria wrote:Lay claim to the moon and sell it off acre by acre
That would be funny if someone hadn't already thought of it and is currently doing it.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:37 pm
by Guest
shiznit wrote:Has a virtual graveyard been made yet? You own a little gravestone page or something.
That's actualy not a bad idea... an online memorial of sorts.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 9:58 pm
by seremtan
dzjepp wrote:You can make money on ebay selling shit from your own store. The benefit would be not having to own your own brick n mortar to house stuff. Just store it all over your house. :p

But then again, that's gonna take a lot of work, not just a week of planning. You need to find out what the hot items are, figure out how you're gonna get the merchandise, etc.

But there are plenty of ebayers that are making this their full time jobs.
indeed. there was a prog on UK TV about this very phenomenon earlier this evening. about 10,000 brits make their living selling crap on eBay.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:00 pm
by seremtan
phantasmagoria wrote:Lay claim to the moon and sell it off acre by acre
believe it or not this is already being done. last i heard about 6m 1 acre plots had been sold. even bush owns an acre (true - it was a goodwill gift from the guy selling the stuff. also one of the brit royals owns some too. probably charles. he's batshit enough to do that

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 10:09 pm
by R00k
dzjepp wrote:You can make money on ebay selling shit from your own store. The benefit would be not having to own your own brick n mortar to house stuff. Just store it all over your house. :p

But then again, that's gonna take a lot of work, not just a week of planning. You need to find out what the hot items are, figure out how you're gonna get the merchandise, etc.

But there are plenty of ebayers that are making this their full time jobs.
Yep. You can even buy goods from wholesalers and simply resell them on Ebay. There are places in the world where people will pay quite a bit for things you wouldn't really think twice about.

I friend of mine made several hundred dollars just selling old frisbe-golf discs and random shit out of his closet. He got like 80 bucks out of old dirty jeans, 50 or 60 for ragged t-shirts, even old used shoes.