College student no $$$ Start-up?

[questrader]

What are some options available for college students to start their own business without any money?

I know that cafepress.com is one. Are there any others?

[cdnNick]

What do you enjoy doing? Do you have an skills that you could use? You will need some money to get started, it basically impossible to start with $0.

[north5995]

Good luck. Get a job, keep your own expenses to a minimum then either get a loan or use your own cash to start up. You'll need some $ coming in for any bank to talk to you or some collateral.

[wheel]

I sound like a broken record, but Google 'affiliate marketing'. Check out webmasterworld.com, syndic8, digitalpoint forums, and a bunch of others. There's a ton of ways to earn some decent to extravagent cash using nothing more than your computer and some spare time.

The basic concept is to set up a website. Then figure out how to drive traffic to it using either pay per click or getting listed in the search engines. Once you've got a website with traffic you can monetize it a million different different ways.

For example, lets say I have a site called atvinsurance.org. I get that listed in Google so it shows up when people search on 'atv insurance'. I put up a page where people can request a quote from an insurer. You can sell those requests for $3 a pop. 10,000 searches a month on the term say, I get 30 percent, so 3000. say 10 percent fill out the form. That's a grand a month. Entirely fictitious numbers, but that's the idea. Take your grand a month and set up a second site selling direct tv satellite subscriptions. And so on.

[Just Confused]

I think the key words in the reply from Wheel are "Then figure out how to drive traffic to it". To start up a website that attracts people to it and who then follow through on your "service" is not as easy as it seems.

[wheel]

lol. Sure enough, that's the crux. But it's both harder and easier than it seems.

Driving traffic on some terms is darn tough. In other things, it's dead simple. Part of learning the job is figuring out what is what. As well as what you're going to be an affiliate for, or market.

The good things about this market for a college student is that it's a high work, low investment, potentially high reward situation. It doesn't take much more than being reasonably sharp and working like crazy. Coffee and smokes all you want during the work though. It's good clean work :).

Websites are cheap. Figuring out how to rank or run a pay per click campaign isn't rocket science, and simply takes hard work and long hours to figure out what works (mostly by trying a lot of things that don't work first). Developing links to your site so that it ranks doesn't cost anything but an awful lot of legwork and some well worded emails.

The return can be enormous. Thousands of dollars a day is far from rare in that field (I know any number of folks that make that kind of money doing this) and once you've got the sweet spot, it's pretty automated.

But expect many months of all nighters working on your site, reading forums, developing links, tweaking, waiting, and so on, until you start seeing cash. Once you're there though, it's let that money machine run and start a second one.

I wish this stuff would have been around when I was in school. I'd have been all over it like a donkey on a waffle. Anyway, it's a fabulous opportunity for a young go-getter to get started, I always recommend folks without fear or concern of failure give it a try. Worst case, you've spent some time and learned some stuff. Best case, you're likely to quit school and retire young.

I'd further point out that as much as everyone around here thinks the internet is old news, the fact is, it's not. The market is still growing very rapidly, and even in competitive markets there's oodles of places to pick up some coin, places no one else has time to look at.

[Stilicho]

Hi all

I am following with great interest the answers to all threads related to new start-ups. Many of what were my intended questions are answered in the previous threads. I wanted to go still further in reading old threads but on manage to get the first 4 pages of this Forum and no way I can access the older ones.
Today I found an interesting article in the Globe and Mail “Accidental webmasters rejoice - help is out there” that gave me some links that I am exploring, as I am an “accidental” too in the true meaning of the word

I also read other threads about web-hosting companies and was surprised with some of the warnings given but I am happy I did read them, as I am certain I will avoid some initial mistakes.

Anyway I need to know something:

I am downtown Toronto and need to register some domains. For several reasons I want to avoid the use of the Internet for that effect. Is there a company with offices one could access, with reasonable prices, and if the domains were available have them registered on the spot ?

Any info would be appreciated.

[wheel]

What STINKS?

Oh, it's your linkdrop.