Why do I never see lifestyle / online businesses discussed here?
There is a vast amount of content out there that's paved the way. smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/ ^ This is by no means the best resource, but it's a great place to start for anyone that's interested. There are a wealth of westerners that have started business and many live abroad in places like southest asia. They're essentially living the 4 hour work week (minus the 4 hours, though it doesn't seem uncommon for people to let employees take the wheel after they've grown tired of working on their business).
I've studied more about lifestyle / online businesses, startups (Silicon Valley) and digital marketing than a great majority of people. Like the 1% of the 1%. Ask me anything.
I'm 24 years old. I've largely lived life as a neet - though at least for the past couple of years you can replace playing videogames all day with researching shit all day. I've grown pretty knowledgeable because of that.
Recently I've started to teach myself to code. At this point I'm more than competent making algorithms in Javascript. I'm going to make an app (android) that is basically a voice command digital assistant. Mainly for managing time, setting reminders and taking quick notes. The inputs will be pretty robust - the goal is to talk to it like you would a person.
I've researched and gone to presentations on digital assistants and robotics. A lot of this shit is in its infancy and the main breakthroughs have been in Voice Recognition (speech-to-text) and Voice Synthesis (text-to-speech). And even then most players in the space are utilizing either one of two companies to do this (Google or a company called Nuance, which the iPhone uses). I don't plan on making money from the app. I'm just going to use it to get accepted into the best coding bootcamp (Hack Reactor), and I'd probably still be accepted otherwise. I go to meetups at their SF location.
Cont. I may be taking a break with learning to code by taking an apprenticeship as a digital marketer. Pay is $2000 - $3500 and I'd be working remotely, so I can move to a place like Austin, Texas which is a little cheaper to live. Here is info on current apprenticeship openings for anyone interested : empireflippers.com/apprentice-jobs/
Empire Flippers podcast is also a good resource to become knowledgeable about this space. Check it out if you're interested.
Anyway, if anyone wants has anything to add, ask me, or if you want to talk about what you're doing / what your plans are go for it.
Blake White
I'm a complete loser in my mid twenties living off my parents and struggling to make it through my CS classes at uni. I have no savings, no skills, and little knowledge about anything. Ive spent my whole life on Veeky Forums and thats all I know. What's the best way to kill myself?
Adrian Jenkins
I just got laid off from a seasonal job, and have until about april until I need to go back to work. What would be the most efficient use of that time if I wanted to create a sustainable income from an online business?
Kayden Flores
Apply to a solid coding bootcamp, drop out of uni, beg your parents for a loan to move to the bay area and get job as a web developer then save up enough money to rent the front of someone's house (can be pricey) where you have ladder positioned outside of a window. Then stick your butt out all day with a sign in rainbow that says "infect me".
And apply for remote marketing jobs. Create some blog posts while you do this. My friend at redpillreviews.com would let you publish guest posts. Just ask him.
There is an entire world of people - who were largely inspired by the book The 4 Hour Work Week - that are living in places like Vietnam (or just travel around there often) that are running their own business.
You'd likely end up getting a job from a business that runs in this circle. All these guys know eachother. Working with them gives you the opportunity to see what running a business like this looks like from the inside, and access to basically a community that lives this stuff. You'd probably find your own idea from there.
Caleb Stewart
"Best" doesn't mean most gay" you complete homo
Luis Price
Do you have any advice on growth hacking? I'm currently 23 living with my mom dropped out of uni bc it became too expensive but I'm now pursuing a niche of building influencers. I currently have two people under my belt that are going to be my prototypes and they will have they own niche; I am skilled in graphic design, photography, video, editing; am basically a jack of all trades at these skills and can create professional quality content with the small amount of resources that I have. Essentially I want to build these personalities as much as possible to attract companies to sponsor them for cross promotion content. My two influencers fall under the lifestyle category and I'm mainly going to create content for instagram, pinterest, and youtube.
Right now I'm also learning AdWords, Local SEO on Lynda.com ; is there any other things I should be focusing my attention on?
Zachary Parker
OP, your post couldn't have been made at a better time.
I'm a 24 years-old unemployed male living in a "third-world" country with an undervalued currency and little to no job opportunities. To make things worse, I also live in a small city where every job opportunity consists of working 10 hours, including Saturdays, to make what would amount to 300 US dollars.
Since there are no job opportunities around here and my currency is severely undervalued, working online while being paid in euro/dollars seems the way to go. I'm already making ~600 dollars working with Appen and Leapforce, but those contracts aren't everlasting.
What would you recommend me to do? I was thinking about freelancing while also doing a few affiliate marketing websites, but all I have is a fondness for writing and a fair grasp of the English language.
Doing some freelancing gigs as a writer/translator while studying coding and doing some affiliate marketing websites, does that sound like a good plan? I'm asking for some input in this matter because google always gives me conflicting answers, as in, I'll either waste my time doing this, or I'll make six figures. There is no middle ground.
Godspeed, OP.
Daniel Lopez
>Why do I never see lifestyle / online businesses discussed here? >digital marketer
These are all of extreme interest to me. Bump.
Evan Howard
Pretty solid advice if you ask me.
1. OP, what will set your digital assistant apart from others (OK, Google, Siri, Cortana)? 2. Did someone squeeze that woman's waist until her ass expanded? 3. You mentioned the podcasts link isn't best source. What else do you have?
As far as lifestyle, I'm 40-hour workweek shlub making enough money that I can set about half aside and still afford comfort. I'd like to start a business on the side.
Thanks for info so far.
Jonathan Thomas
I was going to mention that very few people actually live a 4 hour work week consistently. Would you actually want to? I don't.
It takes a lot of work to get something off the ground but the general consensus is, no matter the industry, once your business is running it takes a significantly smaller time investment to keep it going.
My grandfather rents to a weed grower (California) and I know this guy has been in partnerships where he literally does no work. The guy doing the work, whom he crop shared with, didn't even seem to do much work.
The idea with entrepreneurship is that your building equity, which has its own value.
Anyway 1. First of all, like I said, I would just be building this to build it / as a 'resume' to get a job or into a coding bootcamp. Other than that, I'm mostly building it for myself. Try telling Google to set alarm for 530am on every week day. Try telling it to cancel the alarm for monday. To list your alarms.Etc
The DA's available are pretty limited, and the back end code to make them more powerful is actually easy (and fun to do). I originally planned on doing this with a Raspberry Pi to give myself a 'smart room' and I made this, very quick non-recursive code to ask someone if what I wanted was possible - because no one seems to be doing it, I was genuinely curious. And it is.
To my knowledge, the offerings are all very bare bones, the hardest tech (Speech-to-Text) has already been done and there's pretty much no innovation going on to actually make it useful.
Everyone seems to be focused on the hard problems with this kind of thing. The company I mentioned earlier actually chose to make this problem even harder by building an essentially useless robot. lol
It'll just be very interactive in regards to simple time management. Reminders and note taking are bonuses.
Cont.
The fun part will be to port it to a Raspberry Pi and make it an audio entertainment center, creating scripts that would have it search
Joshua Barnes
Cont.
The value from learning about lifestyle businesses is gained by digging your heels in and consuming.
I think the best podcast is tropicalmba.com/podcasts/ These guys started a business selling valet podiums and portable bars, which they had manufactured in China. They sold a little over a year ago and still currently run a 'mastermind group' for entrepreneurs. You'd probably get a ton of info from being in the mastermind but the requirement to join involves already having an online business that makes at least $5k a month. They're the guys that put on the event I mentioned in this post They cover many, many topics throughout the podcast. I've learned in depth about more than a few of these businesses, and I probably have a bit to share on that front but the most general question is always going to get the most general answer.
Most people start off by creating a niche site either reviewing or talking about certain products and offering an amazon affiliate link to buy. You essentially do the content marketing and collect a commission for selling.
Unless there's a specific product you're interested in, I'd actually advice against this. You're not going to make a lot of money and no one wants to spend a lot of time talking about something they don't care about.
People that make money from blogging are typically lifestyle bloggers with a passion for what they're talking about. They'll have an ebook available that's a condensed version of some of their topics and they'll make the occasional product recommendation.
Blogging is probably the lowest common denominator as far as lifestyle businesses go. You'll make money if you stay consistent but who wants to go through that effort?
DangerandPlay is an example of this. I'm sure he's made some nice money. Because of his blog he's gained an audience and he's directs his audience to anything else he becomes involved in.
Cont.
Brandon Nguyen
I think having a goal of simply building an audience is probably the best reason to blog. Modern marketing is content marketing (to market with content) and many people have gained success by building an audience around themselves and marketing to that audience.
He failed. He then mostly forgot about the product. He then doubled down on his efforts. Now the business makes well into 6 figures a month and just took on a $1.8 mil investment.
A better case study in this kidn of thing is: empireflippers.com/wpcurve/ Dan Norris had many business attempts that he marketed to the audience on his blog. He kept at it until he found a product that had traction. The interview is pretty entertaining and worth a listen.
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Another way to make money is to - drum roll - sell stuff. Many people 'private label' products from manufacturers; they order small batches and have the manufacturer make minor adjustments (which can include putting your own label on it). They then sell them on Amazon. tropicalmba.com/amazongold/ One of the guys in this interview talks about how he browses the 1 star reviews for products looking for easy fixes, then he private labels them and sells them with success.
A lot of these guys find random products and make money because they have a portfolio of products they sell.
They're a good example, because they took it a step further and bad a brand out of it. That's probably the best way to go.
Pic related made millions doing this Cont.
Nathan Cooper
Sophia Amoruso started selling vintage clothing on Ebay when she was like 22. She'd see vintage clothing go for a lot of money and, because she had access to vintage clothes irl, she decided to start selling them.
She'd market to girls on Myspace and created a lifestyle brand. She quickly started her own site nastygal.com and now, 10 years later, she's become very successful.
She's about to have a Netlfix show about her life.
A product that seems cool to sell is E-cig Vapes. The lifestyle marketing around this would be fun to do. You can also make your own liquid. If it weren't for new regulations fucking this whole industry up, it would've been easy to start private labeling your own products.
A friend of a friend recently went to china to do this. No idea what he's doing about the regulations. He runs TKOVapes - 5 mall kiosks that he owns. Last I checked he was looking to sell the kiosks and do it purely online.
Another product is aeroponic grow systems. Pretty much everyone I've talked to that grows weed has brought these up as the most advanced form of growing and yet no one I know is using them. Hands down I can tell you there is opportunity here in branding alone. ----
Kind of bored typing now. I've been kind of just riffing on 2 of the 3 main types of businesses. The third being a service. If anyone wants to ask more about something then go for it. Starting an 'online' business looks the same as starting any business. I don't know if that seems boring, but that's how it is. It's not boring to me.
If you've got any ideas you want to bounce around, then go for it. If you want to hear some of my ideas then ask, but in general know that ideas are just a starting point.
Uber, Slack, Instagram and AirBnB all started out with biz models that look very different from what they look like now. The value, from what I understand, comes from getting in, then learning the market, then iterating from there.
Brayden Bell
Search fast lane forum "100k a year from instagram" to learn about instagram bots. I'd imagine utilizing bot accounts would be a nice way to growth hack natural followers (simply showcasing the legit accounts to the bot's followers).
I think your idea sounds cool. You see a lot of girls that probably could be social media famous if they were a little smarter.
Other than that, let me just tell you about Gary Vaynerchuck - >started off in his families liquor store >at 22 he took over and rebranded it into a wine store >took it from 3mil a year to 60 mil >started a wine show on YouTube >became one of the first people with a ton of followers on Twitter >became an early investor in Twitter, Facebook and Uber among others
Now he runs a digital marketing agency called VaynerMedia. I actually worked near their SF location and I've talked to some of the people that work there (Just a cool fact, yes I'm a fanboy) and he runs a VC fund which recently raised 100+ mil.
He definitely does a lot of what he does for the vanity / ego boost, but he's legit. He agreed to have a meeting with a guy over losing a rock, paper siccors match. In this meeting the guy pitched him an idea like yours for Vine and Gary funded him $50k grapestory.co/
If you're interested in social media marketing, then Gary is the guy you want to listen to
i have a youtube channel with 200k subs, and it's useless since the views pay too little and kids that watch my videos never click on my g2a affiliate link
Adrian Collins
also i hate the idea of having to become a walking meme to make money
how do i make 3k a month while remaining anonymous? im too dumb to code so that's out of the question, plus millions of pajeets are doing it already so its pointless
Ryder Collins
I gave my opinion on niche sites, but it's obviously different for you considering the cost of living in your area.
For now, niche sites probably aren't a bad idea. But I'm sure you want a path to something with more substance than that. Go to tropicalmba.com/podcasts and start listening. Create a blog and share your goals and progress. Talk to other people doing the same thing you're doing (redpillreviews.com. If you want to share self improvement stuff and have people read your blog, then go to the GoodLookingLoser.com forums - this is where I met the redpillreviews guy when he just started his site). I'd do this stuff to help improve your English and to get connected with others like you.
Overall though I'd try to get a job at one of the lifestyle companies that run in the tropicalmba circle. Get an apprenticeship.
also inb4 OP owns those sites and he is just promoting his sites
John Adams
So after all of your Tumblr-esque spiritual journeys, the best you could come up with is a dumbed down virtual assistant?
> SirI > Cortana > Google Now
All of them have the features you're going to go bankrupt trying to create.
Jaxon Long
He did say " I'm just going to use it to get accepted into the best coding bootcamp"
Thanks for typing essays just to respond to me. Gives me a lot to do.
Matthew Sullivan
>everyone is already doing everything Well that's not true. If you're talking about making money by being e-famous that's potentially more true, but it's still not the reality. I can talk about a few gaps in that market.
I don't have a ton of outright business ideas to throw at you because I naturally think of things that I specifically can do well, but there is opportunity out there.
The one type of business I haven't talked about yet is a service business. growthninja.com/ This is a business that handles facebook advertising. Aside from a retainer fee they get paid a percentage of what they make for their clients.
contractordynamics.com/ This company basically does marketing for construction contractors. They make a website (wordpress means no coding required), give it a few custom blog posts and handle the social media.
firegang.com/ These guys do the same thing for dentists + paid advertising
tropicalmba.com/pickle/ This is a podcast interviewing a guy that made a successful design shop
Search 'productized service' under tropicalmba for more talk on these types of businesses.
All in all though, starting a business isn't an easy thing when you're just a guy on a computer. That's why I'm also recommending getting a job at a small lifestyle company. Once you're in this community business ideas fly around and you have access to potential clients and partners. Growthninja was started by an apprentice for a website business marketplace: empireflippers.com/
Isaac Brooks
What features? Like I said, the only thing technologically hard about what they do is > Voice Recognition (speech-to-text) and Voice Synthesis (text-to-speech). And even then most players in the space are utilizing either one of two companies to do this (Google or a company called Nuance, which the iPhone uses) That and obviously the search engines they're connected to (Google and Bing)
The DA's themselves don't do much but I'm curious what you think would bankrupt anyone trying to build one.
Tell Siri you want to cancel your 6:30 alarm. For Google, that leads to a Google search. It's unable to do that. Do you think that's because it's hard to program? It's not.
If you were in a competition to beat Apple, Msoft or Google for the best Digital Assistant chances are you'd lose. But I'm saying they're not even competing.
Adding voice functionality to an app that Sirri doesn't support is as easy as using the app's API or digging into something like this: heliumhq.com/. This is all free.
This isn't my 'big business idea'. This is a coding project. Something more fun than making an alarm clock application. I'll even say that the business ideas I do have don't sound super exciting. I'm still on my journey.
Do even the most moderate due diligence and see how impossible that would be.
Wyatt Gomez
Hey OP - Justin w/ Empire Flippers here. Thanks for the mention/shout, btw.
You seem to know our space pretty well! (DCBKK mention/shout, WP Curve story, Design Pickle, etc.) Have we met or do we know you? :-)
Lots of of online business models out there to work with. We put together a nice little write-up on the 11 types we see the most you can check out here:
If you find one you like, click through a little further to find out some specific information about that model to see if there's a fit for you.
I don't have a horse in the race - our model is based on working with those who HAVE made it and are looking to sell (or buy) one of those online businesses.
Ian Jenkins
Hey! This is the second time someone claiming to be Justin appeared after I linked EF. Is this policy?
And no, I don't know you guys. I am in the market for apprentice work, however...
