Greetings from a computer geek!

[JavaRox]

Hi! I am a programmer with 14+ years experience working in the corporate world (manufacturing, mostly, with a stint in automotive insurance).

I'm very interested in using my knowledge and skills to build a sustainable source of income that will allow my family and I to travel the world.

That being said, I have no idea where to start. Well, let me put it another way: I don't have a product in mind that I can sell. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how good they are:

1: An eBook to show how to easily set up an online website/store for a small mom and pop business. Could include links to downloadable templates for websites and shopping carts, etc.
2: A DVD that teaches the user HTML. Sometimes, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

Other than these two items, I have a mental block. For the life of me, I cannot think of how to turn my skills and knowledge into a marketable product that consumers would want.

I'm also interested in grouping up with others that may want to explore the road to NR together. Just let me know!

[cartoonfan1983]

Your second idea reminds of a successful product.... Video Professor. He always advertises on TV and is an excellent example of the 4HWW mindset, good guarantees, explanations, etc.

Maybe you could become his competition, but I'm wondering.... could there be a way to sell this type of product to more knowledgeable users?

[donthecook]

Geek to geek I'd say to think outside the box ... just because you know lots of stuff doesn't mean that your muse needs to be within that area ... find a thing to sell that can be created and produced by others (less time of yours required to do it).

[jetpacklife]

Welcome aboard! I'm a programmer as well. Formerly Java, now mostly php.
I mostly create little apps for websites, and put ads on it. The site gets popular and I make a great living with practically no upkeep. ( I spend most of my time working on new projects or upgrading previous ones )

I'll copy a few of my old posts here to let you know what I'd recommend for you.


"I do think the book focuses too much on making a sellable product. Many of NR have created their wealth through content or online service sites (including me). I think they may be a bit slower to scale up and may require a bit more front end work, however, they require less start up capital and in the long run, require even less time to operate. These would include blogs, forums, widgets and just cool little online apps. If you're a writer, designer or software developer, this would probably be the best thing for you. Making money is just about getting traffic and having Google Adsense on your pages. (and, all the people pumping money into AdWords will be paying you to advertise their new products)"

"
This is a place where revenue generating websites are sold. They share lots of particulars with how the site is run, traffic, sales, advertising. It's also a great way to see how many different types of sites have become successful.

http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/viewcategory.php?categoryid=27

If you're just starting out, I wouldn't recommend buying any of these though. You have to know what your doing to keep these going, and, well, there could easily be some scams on here as well (it's pretty easy to temporarily increase traffic or get high in google search results)

They also have some smaller sites, many just templates or ideas or quick installs of things. Sometimes these are a little more worth it in terms getting a quick site up.

http://www.sitepoint.com/marketplace/viewcategory?categoryid=1
"

[rgraner]

jetpacklife, love what you wrote b/c i was beginning to doubt my current path. i'm also a web developer and am in the midst of building out five websites thru overseas developers (cheaper, faster & i maintain / manage the project) but then i found this book which talked about selling products and i started to doubt my process.

don't get me wrong, i think the idea of selling a product will become one of my weapons but i also think that small simple niche websites that serve a purpose with ads supporting them are my cup of tea b/c i have so much more knowledge in that arena (coming up with the website idea, creating a prototype, managing the project overseas and enhancing & supporting the website on my own thru php/mysql when i get it back is so much simpler) plus my focus is to keep them smallish and niche so nobody would bother to compete with me.

my issue currently is how best to promote the sites so they do get bigger like you said, i'd love to hear about some of your success and what you did to promote your sites besides the standard SEO white hat tactics, did you utilize adwords to get ppl there? what was the most successful and what would be your strategies be now when creating a new site?

[jetpacklife]

Yes, building traffic cheaply is the hardest part. Of course you could pay out the nose for AdWords ads, but you'd be losing money with every click on an ad supported site.

Easily 1/2 my traffic normally is directly from Google with SEO.

Here is a few of the tricks I've used.

- Extensive keyword analysis to see what people were searching for. This usually made the decision for product A (Widget Converter) over product B (Widget Builder). It also helped me name the product to be exactly what people were looking for.

- Started with an OLD domain that already had good PR. For some services, I'd bounce right to the top of the search results with no work.

- Get links from sites that were in the first pages of the search results.

- Get links from a select few high traffic directories, like dmoz.

- Get links from almost every site I own or had control of. Friends sites, myspace sites, blogs, everywhere.

- Get some blogs to write about your service.

- Allowed User created content, this added depth and additional content to the site. Users would also promote their own content. (youtube did this)

- Had some sort of Viral component. The could make a Widget on the site, but it was branded with my site domain, or had an embedded link to my site. Or, they would just have to tell their friends. (youtube did this too)

If the site is viral enough or if you make enough on ads from each user, you could buy some cheap ads initially to promote it... But you'll probably find it to expensive in the long run.

Link building and PR take a long time, so be patient. If you have a unique service that people are looking for, they'll eventually find you.

[ChiTowner]

Hi Jetpacklife

"cool little online apps"

I'm intrigued! Would you share a little more info about the nature of these apps?


Many thanks
ChiTowner

[jetpacklife]

Well, I'm not here to promote my sites, so, I never link to them or give out their name.

My first successful tool was a site to create and host zip files. It took me a couple hundred lines of code to write and it was successful enough to let me quit my very well paying job.

Another site I did was creating a myspace code site. (Basically just creating a few custom CSS snippets) Even though there are a zillion of these out there, mine had good SEO, so it did pretty well.

I'm constantly thinking of how to use standard utilities and make them easier to use, free and online.

Take YouTube, their main feature was converting videos from many formats to a standard flash format. Then they just let the users share what they created.

[ChiTowner]

thanks for the info jetpacklife

In my 9-5 life, I'm in application development (although I'm not a developer and can't write a line of code). I've been trying to think of a muse that could leverage that knowledge. I like the approach you talk about

thanks again

[fx_ninja]

what languages can you program in?

Hi! I am a programmer with 14+ years experience working in the corporate world (manufacturing, mostly, with a stint in automotive insurance).

I'm very interested in using my knowledge and skills to build a sustainable source of income that will allow my family and I to travel the world.

That being said, I have no idea where to start. Well, let me put it another way: I don't have a product in mind that I can sell. I have some ideas, but I'm not sure how good they are:

1: An eBook to show how to easily set up an online website/store for a small mom and pop business. Could include links to downloadable templates for websites and shopping carts, etc.
2: A DVD that teaches the user HTML. Sometimes, a picture IS worth a thousand words.

Other than these two items, I have a mental block. For the life of me, I cannot think of how to turn my skills and knowledge into a marketable product that consumers would want.

I'm also interested in grouping up with others that may want to explore the road to NR together. Just let me know!

[shortcutter]

Hey Jetpacklife,

I think its the proper path too. I am a programmer as well, mostly php, flash MySQL and I have been building over 50 content sites that bring in money every month with adsense and others... And also a few hundreds that are ads based only. I have also builted some membership site that can scale and bring-in a whole lot more than the ads based sites. In my opinion, the membership sites are where the money is. Check my post about what I am doing: http://fourhourworkweek.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=283

Shortcutter

[clt]

Hi Geek,
I am in the same boat as you are. One thing is I have few ideas that I would like to try out but like you I would like to brain storm with others to explore the road to NR so that we will be stronger and quicker to get there. I found out that you are in TN and I am in MD. I don't know how that will work. I know one thing though,with your experties in IT and my ideas can lead to success.
Contact me at chothaung@hotmail.com if you are interested to build a team we will make it happen some how. "When there is a will there is a way"

[webgal]

Holy cow, you are in the driver's seat. I can't tell you how many times I've thought I wish I could do more programming (php or whatever). For instance, I've noticed a lot of programmers doing database style reference. I'm more on the design and marketing end of things. I can put up a website and make it look nice, plan the navigation, make great headlines and ads but I can't program squat. I can manipulate an existing program sometimes and I can cut and past some php and make some low level forms.

For instance, a pharmacy look up. You plug in the prescription name and it brings up all the info like side effects and what the drug is made of, like if it's a steroid-based cream or fades age spots. These sites are sustained by advertising and bring in a few hundred a month. Since I don't know how to build my own database, I'm not clear on where you get the actual data to be spit out by the process. But I know programmers have these things all over the web from having worked with them from time to time.

For instance I think it would be great to have an office program with Access database and be able to make it talk to mysql with a click of a button. That way you would not have to enter the data but once and it would be consistent. Maybe this exists but I'm not sure. There are RSS feeds, affiliate feeds. I'd love a program in a box that detailed how you'd link an affiliate feed to a review.

I'll keep my eye out since I'm doing some investigating of my muse. But trust me, this is the decade for the geeks.

[Melch]

Here is another guy on the same road. I have a friend who has so far been traveling the world living off a website he built for 3 years and counting. Months after meeting him I am clone to launching one of my own. Followed quickly by a much needed 3 month break / work trip to my favorite place -- Argentina.

This stuff works.