How To Create Your Own Micro Job Website?

How can I create a virtual job for myself?

• I've looked into blogging and a little bit into earning money off commission but I'm not sure exactly where to start. I plan on building a website with friends and seeing if I can make money off of it based on services, some products, and ads but I was wondering if anyone could give me advice on strategies that have worked in the past or work now in the present? I would love to create a streaming income that allows me to work from wherever in the world and does not require me to put in pay system based on hours. Any advice for a freshman in college looking to create a virtual job for himself and possibly start a business?

• Answer:

  It sounds like you're kind of all over the place. A website that makes money from "services, some products and ads" is hard to come by. Pick something a focus on it. Services Services are great for someone in your situation because, in many cases, it can require little capital. Find your niche, as suggested, and exploit that. You're a freshman in college. Are you particular good at a subject? Can you tutor fellow students? Even if you can't tudor someone in physics, could you help ESL students practice and learn to speak English? As a young person and a student your assets are probably: time, energy, mobility and flexibility. Find a way to exploit those. Now, the downside to services? Scale. There's no (easy) way to scale consulting. Services require your time, which is finite. You can only grow your business so much. Your rates may go up, your clients and projects may become more sophicated, but there's still only you. Products This is a bit more difficult because it can require some investment in areas like inventory and traffic generation. There are ways around this, like drop shipping, but the field is incredibly competitive. You'll need to find some product to sell, find a way to stock that product (or do a deal with a distributor), find a way to market that product, then sell it with some profit margin and then, before you can collect your money, fulfill orders. What a pain. However, you might find some success here if you can, again, focus on a niche. Don't compete with Amazon. You won't win. But do look around your campus. Is there something that everyone wants, but they seem to be having a hard time getting? No, I'm not talking about weed. Read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, the CEO at Zappos. He talks a bit about his college business, delivering pizzas at times and locations where pizzas were hard to get. Find your campus' pizza. Ads This is a whole `nother beast. Unless you are generating tons of great content, it is very, very difficult to make money from ads. Even Facebook and Twitter had a hard time making money from ads (they are getting better at it). Do some research on CPMs (that's Cost Per Mille, or Thousand). Most display networks will pay you pennies. Video might pay you in dollars, but video content is also very expensive and difficult to create. Long story short, to make money from ads you'll need massive scale. Millions of visitors to your site. You'll read and hear LOTS of get rich quick stories about how you can make money with ads, affiliate marketing, etc. And some people do, but for every person that gets rich, thousands fail. Unless you are famous and/or creating insane content, forget about ads, they would just clutter your website and turn visitors off from whatever your real business is. And this, coming from someone with a career in the ad business. All this being said, you are on the right track! Keep thinking this way. It's healthy. Try ideas, iterate them very quickly, kill them when they don't work and keep doing it. Over and over. Eventually you'll hit on something. Don't get discouraged.