Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Link to ShoeMoney Internet Marketing Blog

What niche is most profitable to make money line?

Posted: 30 Oct 2012 05:28 AM PDT

I get a lot of questions from people through our contact form, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever with the same thing. ”I just stumbled across X product. What do you think? Do you think its a scam?”.

These can be somewhat loaded questions cause I never know if its the person who owns the product and is just looking for me to review it or if its a spam bot or if its someone who legitimately is asking.

So just to cover all bases I have a canned response that I reply with… and its really for ANY product INCLUDING my own stuff.

I thought this would be a short post… but then I started expanding.

Here is the short version:

My hobbies have turned out to be my most profitable (and only successful websites). Every time I have chased the new most profitable nitch I have lost money on it. That is all I can pass on from my experience. Good luck.

Here is the longer version:

Hi,

Let me first preface this with the fact that I do not consider myself a guru and do not like to tell people what to do. I will however share my experience and if you find that of value then great. I also follow this philosify with all of my own products. I have put a lot of time into producing videos where I will share with you exactly what I do/did to make a living on the internet. These are much more in depth video’s then what I could publish in a blog post.

But to answer your question more directly – this really depends on your current financial position. I allocate about 15% of my monthly online revenue to purchase products. I don’t think that I have ever NOT learned something from an info product. It is really hit and miss. I will tell you that I have gotten more value out of some $9 to $99 e-books then $2,000 products. For me in the current position that I am in, its more about time then anything. I honestly would buy every product on the internet that deals with making money online if I had the time to actually consume it.

A very very very small tip that I can pick up directly or indirectly from these products, even if most of it is complete crap, can pay for these “How to make money online” products for a lifetime.

But again I look at it as a educational expense and I allocate no more than 15% of my net monthly revenue for this.

When I got started I could not afford any products. I spent a ton of time online researching on forums. I recommend the Warrior Forum and Terry Kyle’s Traffic Planet. Those sites are consistently well moderated and have good people that really are trying to help others. It was at a forum just like that where I first discovered eBay arbitrage. A person had written a guide about how he went from living in a car to $500,000 within 2 years doing eBay arbitrage.

This is probably a good time to state one of the biggest lessons I have learned. Every time I have tried to do exactly what someone else tells you they are doing to make money its been some of my biggest failures. Mostly because it was something that I was not interested in. But remember how I said that I learn a lot of things directly and in-directly? This is one of those times.

I looked at what I was doing and interested in. I loved building my own computers. I loved taking apart computers and figuring out what did what. This is something I did as a hobby. It was not work to me at all.

Long story short I discovered this company called Redemtech. They are a computer recycling company. Basically when a company like Wells Fargo buys a nationwide chain of banks they send in Redemtech to strip out all of the infrastructure. Phones, wires, printers, and best of all computers. Then they sell these computers… usually by the pound. Trying to keep this story short I purchased computers from this company that were in “unknown” condition. But they were so cheap…. it was lI think I got 10 computers for $100 or so. They arrived on a semi in a wooden crate. The box was ripped and inside most of the computers were smashed in. I thought I just totally wasted a hundred bucks.

But Then I took them inside and pulled them apart. I looked up all the part numbers and tested each piece and put a detailed listing on eBay for each. Started the bidding at $1 for each auction. By the time it was over I had made over $300 on my $100 investment. Buying in bulk and parting out has been profitable in about anything since the beginning of time.

There is a reason I did not link to Redemtech above. Mostly cause I am worried you are going to read this and decide this is for you. This was TEN years ago.

Here is my experience with guru’s. When they openly talk about how they made their fortunes its because it does not work anymore…. or it never worked in the first place. My thoughts about guru’s is listen to everyone but don’t follow anyone. Take items from their experiences and apply them to what you are doing.

I know SO MANY people who want to buy the latest product cause its promising them the magic bullet to make a living online. OR they heard there is some new hot niche like ringtones, FOREX, weight loss, or whatever that people are making SO MUCH money on… so they chase it. They lose there asses. They end up like Salty Droid, or Pace Latin who are bitter because they have failed miserably at internet marketing and now they are going to “expose” all these guru’s. Saltydroid has done really well with it. Pace Latin has so many skeletons in his closet that he has been dismissed. (see all the recent published reports of his criminal record and him owing 6 figures in back child support.

Well again I know I sound like a broken record but you don’t have to buy anything. The keyword being have. Like I said above I buy a lot of products but I don’t need them or have to have them and I certainly know they are FAR FROM a magic bullet that is magically going to make me money.

Whenever I speak… and I mean EVERYTIME someone always asks me what niche should they get started in if they want to start making money. I always tell them the same thing. I have no clue. Again I like to speak from my experience and not from some theory so with that the answer is pretty cut and dry… All of my success comes from building websites and services that I want to use and then opening them up to the general public.

Here is my HUGE secret on why all of my companies have been so successful. Ready for this? You sitting down? Here it comes – I am about to pull back the curtains and REALLY tell you the truth!

The secret is I do what I love. I don’t do it for the money. I do it cause its fun and its like a hobby to me.

I wrote a computer program that converted wallpapers to the right format for phones. Then I made it so others can use it. That little thing made me a fortune.

One day I wanted to display my own ads that looked like AdSense but that I had full control over and could put my own affiliate codes in. Then I made it so others can use and put in eBay. This became AuctionAds and within 4 months of its operation was grossing over 2 million a month in revenue.

This blog, ShoeMoney.com is a another great example. I do everything that “experts” say not to do. I can’t spell worth a shit, cuss, and don’t do any SEO that does not come installed with wordpress. I have fun with this site. I enjoy writing it. I wrote it when nobody read it and someday when nobody reads it again I will still be here with my 1.2 posts a day.

So anyway I hope that this post makes you look at what you are doing, or what you are thinking about doing and gives you some value. Again for the last time I will stress that you do not need to buy anything.

Looking for an SEO service that won’t get you banned?