Money makers

[admire_linux]

Hello fellow-techys:

I wasn't sure where to put this. There wasn't any sort of "General Chat" available. Please move if need be.

I was curious how some of us make money. Many people work a position to make money. They will work 40 hours for a paycheck at the end of the month. Some have big paychecks others might wish theirs were bigger! However, with technology today we now have much greater opportunity to generate an extra paycheck for ourselves. I am curious how some of you guys do this.

I'm not talking about gambling online or joining some sort of online business MLM. But generally, speaking some people might run a website where they have affiliates who pay them to allow advertising on their site. This topic is leaned more toward technology and how we as Linux/Windows/Mac users can put the abilities that we have to work and to share ideas of how we might be able to better ourselves. Let me know what you guys thinks. I hope this is beneficial to all out there who are looking to bring in a few extra dollars. Please don't post with, "This is how you can make one million dollars in 1 years" type posts.

Try to answer the following questions:

How do you make money?
What would it take for someone to do what you do? (ex, Experience, knowledge)

Enjoy!

[admire_linux]

I will start off:

I've been doing some research recently on affiliate marketing. Basically, affiliate marketing is where an advertiser will pay an owner of a site to advertise their material for them. The owner of the site then gets paid in different forms. Some of these forms of payment inlcude(taken from www.hotstuffworks.com, give them credit):

* Pay-per-sale (also called cost-per-sale): Amazon.com's affiliate program is an example of a pay-per-sale arrangement. In this arrangement, the merchant site pays an affiliate when the affiliate sends them a customer who purchases something. Some merchant Web sites, like Amazon.com, pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale and others pay a fixed amount per sale.

* Pay-per-click (cost-per-click): In these programs, the merchant site pays the affiliate based on the number of visitors who click on the link to come to the merchant's site. They don't have to buy anything, and it doesn't matter to the affiliate what a visitor does once he gets to the merchant's site.

* Pay-per-lead (cost-per-lead): Companies with these programs pay their affiliates based on the number of visitors they refer who sign up as leads. This simply means the visitor fills out some requested information at the merchant site, which the merchant site may use as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead.

It's very interesting. If your someone who is interested in either posting material about a computer, investing, sports hobbies, books, and so much more you can take advantage of affiliate marketing. Some good techniques website owners use is they try to place an advertisement on their site that relates to the information that the user is viewing. The user is more prone to be interested in something that is relative to what the site is about (what got them their in the first place was the material on the site). Ofcourse, there are some other avenues to use in affiliate marketing and its certainly not "UNSAFE" or "RISKY" but, you can certainly tailor it to your own needs. I would check out the following site to find out more about how it works and how you get involved if your interested in making a few extra dollars:
http://money.howstuffworks.com/affiliate-program.htm

Enjoy!

[bob]

Well, I'm the fool who's always donated my services - want to keep my amateur standing in case computer repair ever becomes an Olympic event. However, a friend of mine has a nice little side business in his basement fixing Windows machines; mostly cleaning viruses, spyware and reinstalling OS's. He charges $25/hr. and has a $60 charge for a virus/spyware sweep & cleanup. Of course, he handles 2-3 machines at the same time, so the hourly rate he receives is much higher. There's also the perk that badly broken machines are usually given to him by disgusted users, so he parts them out for additional profit.

[admire_linux]

Thats a good side business income. Especially if he has consistent clients he can assist. I guess I could help other people with their machines and cleaning out viruses but, I'd like to try and make more things automatic. I like the idea of automatic. Something that isn't complicated for people and just simple. I'm kind of brainstorming right now and I like all ideas. I certainly thinking along the lines of fixing machine, however. Performing some type of service that to people whether online or offline but, I prefer online.

[admire_linux]

I read an old associated topic and someone had the question of being able to use linux and sell it. They weren't sure what the policy was for selling linux. But what do you guys think about being able to make an extra dollar from linux and doing what? For instance, redhat gives away free software but, they sell support and all kinds of little trinqets and toys for profit.

[bob]

I'd stay away from selling linux, since you'd be profiting from the hard work of people who've donated their time. It's been done, but those who do so are generally not welcome.

[wdgiles]

I've been in the break/fix business for 11 years, on-site and in-shop work for Macs, PC's and the occasional linux based router. I freelanced for a few years. While I was freelancing I developed a scheduled service concept where I showed up weekly or monthly to take care of any problems they had. Even if everything was working fine, I still got paid my minimums and the customer stayed happy. I now work for an Airline (guess which one?) doing mostly the same thing. The problem I had working for myself was paying for healthcare - I worked about 30 percent of my time to just pay for insurance. Now almost all of my insurance costs are picked up by my employer.

Bob, you're friend is not charging enough for his time. But that's just my opinion.

Maybe selling "linux" isn't the right approach. Selling your service to get it up and running to their specs would be a better angle. I can see offering a service to maintain their machine, but couldn't rightly charge for the operating system itself.

[Firewing1]

I hate to advertise, but if you want to know.... I also have a little side-business, Diffingo - It's in my signature link. I use it for programming / computer repair and cleanup services, similar to what Bob was saying - but it also hosts my Open Source applications and diffingo-repo, which has the newest nVidia drivers for both FC5 and development kernels.
Firewing1

[Dan]

Originally Posted by bob

I'd stay away from selling linux, since you'd be profiting from the hard work of people who've donated their time. It's been done, but those who do so are generally not welcome.

Hmmmm. I guess that depends how you define "Selling Linux."

I install a lot of Linux on customer machines these days, (The word is getting out. ) and, unless I get badly suckered by a unique sob story, I do charge for doing the installation, and regardless of the sob story, I also charge a materials fee for the Linux Operating System.

It's just way too much fun watching the look on someones face when they hit the "Replacement Operating System" section of the invoice, scan the right column, and see $2.00~$7.00 (depending on the distro, and therefore the number of disks.) on that line. Of course, I do include a set of burned iso disks and a rescue disk in the "You too can fix this it at home!" package.

I Don't feel a bit guilty about doing that.

And I don't intend to quit any time soon either.

Dan

P.S. My installation rates are my business, and are determined by what the market will bear, if not the manners and bearng of the customer. (Yes! people who are grouchy, arrogant, sneaky, dishonest or well practiced idiots, or yuppies who have buried themselves in the role, will get charged more. There are several other shops in town, and I don't want that kind of customer to come back to my humble enterprise!)

However, I do not practice the black art of dual-billing hours. It's not so much that I have any particular moral stand against it... It's just the fact that every time I try, something gets FUBARed, and I end up spending twice as much time fixing it!

D

[admire_linux]

How about webbased stuff. Does anyone do any type of online business such as affiliate marketing or selling books for amazon? Humor added... but still all technical

[mcds99]

Originally Posted by TangledWeb

Hmmmm. I guess that depends how you define "Selling Linux."

I install a lot of Linux on customer machines these days, (The word is getting out. ) and, unless I get badly suckered by a unique sob story, I do charge for doing the installation, and regardless of the sob story, I also charge a materials fee for the Linux Operating System.

It's just way too much fun watching the look on someones face when they hit the "Replacement Operating System" section of the invoice, scan the right column, and see $2.00~$7.00 (depending on the distro, and therefore the number of disks.) on that line. Of course, I do include a set of burned iso disks and a rescue disk in the "You too can fix this it at home!" package.

I Don't feel a bit guilty about doing that.

And I don't intend to quit any time soon either.

Dan

P.S. My installation rates are my business, and are determined by what the market will bear, if not the manners and bearng of the customer. (Yes! people who are grouchy, arrogant, sneaky, dishonest or well practiced idiots, or yuppies who have buried themselves in the role, will get charged more. There are several other shops in town, and I don't want that kind of customer to come back to my humble enterprise!)

However, I do not practice the black art of dual-billing hours. It's not so much that I have any particular moral stand against it... It's just the fact that every time I try, something gets FUBARed, and I end up spending twice as much time fixing it!

D

You are not selling Linux. You are selling your experence with Linux, installation, configuration, trouble shooting, etc...

I've tried the home business thing, not for me, I like my space to be MY SPACE.
The wife lets me have a corner of the basement for my cave/dog house.

[Firewing1]

Oh - And answering the question what it takes to do your own business thing - That really depends on you. What I can say is two things:

(1) Fool around. The more you fool around, experiment, tweak, the more you learn and therefore the more people are going to want your help. If you're scared about messing up the computer, then add in a 2nd HD for 150$... It will be a good investment!

(2) Find something you like. If you like your work AND get paid for it, it's makes it all that much better!

Firewing1