April 27, 2008

Where are they now?

What's Walter working on these days, I wonder.

October 22, 2007

TECHNOLOGY NIGHTMARES

IN TROUBLE

I have been gone a couple of days from my blog because of a conspiracy of Apple, Google and Mozilla, the cause of which is my upgrade fever.

Migrating from Blackberry to Iphone was not so smooth as I thought, but let me spare you the details.
I do not know what Google is up to these days (or rather I do know what is communicated) but (as is debated on Google Forums) iGoogle betrayed me. I am no longer able to view iGoogle in four tabs and the company makes me angry every time I log on by re-arranging my widgets.
I started using Google Docs, but this also proves more difficult than the video. Sharing docs often meets with a 404 or an unrecognized page URL (when you send a URL to partners who have to ask for permission to read it). What is more, in one of my spreadsheets I mentioned a competitor and put the spreadsheet URL in my Google Presentations. The spreadsheet URL proved not to work but the text link ad underneath did, guiding readers to my competitor!!

At last, I downloaded the latest Firefox version but did it in Afrikaans which is the first language of the download. I have learned quite a bit of Afrikaans by now and it keeps being an intellectual challenge to find out what my machine really means when it returns Afrikaans processed by an English Textexpander and a French keyboard.

But tomorrow I am back. My woriirseser arere almmoset ovover.

Walter

October 11, 2007

100 WAYS TO MONETIZE YOUR MACHINE

TEN NEW WAYS TO MAKE MONEY USING YOUR MACHINE (41-50)

1. Teaching. Working at home is very efficient and leaves time enough to study again. Plan a teaching career, go back to university, take the degree and apply for a teaching position as a freelance professor. Here are some free courses. There is a big market out there for academics who want to be paid on invoice. Academia is opening up and degrees are going online
2. Hand holding. Do not say 'no' too soon when you are offered to do a project that is out of your skill zone. See it as an opportunity to learn. Find an expert and let him guide you through the motions, in that case you have a win-win: you have accomplished the project, it was done by an expert and you were taught on the job. I once did this with a project on financial engineering. After this assignment, I can do this project over and over again. It has become one of my assets. I have also offered the expert to do future projects together with me on a fifty-fifty basis and he agreed.
3. Structuring (sell and rent back). The trouble with starting a home business is that you need starter money equivalent to at least a year’s income. Lately I have seen a lot of people who have sold their real estate (their house) and rent it back. When they have successfully deployed a new home business, they buy another house or the same again.☺
4. Chase Subsidies. There are subsidies for almost anything when you start to look for them, there are even subsidy consultants who write the papers for you.
5. Tax Relief is also income: 46 Tax deductions Bloggers overlook.
6. Set up a Virtual company with a good domain name (and some email addresses), a logo and a simple website and then let them mature. These are called Shelf Companies. Maturity is good for credit rating. If you can, add a bank account. I normally use www.corporate.com as my agent. I take a resident agent and mail forwarding as extras. Sometimes even a receptionist who picks up the phone and transfers it to my mobile. These companies are hot items to sell.
7. Become a virtual assistant.
8. Become a Web 2.0 consultant. You would be surprised to find out how many people are still in web 1.0 time and how badly they want “the new stuff”. This is your pitch. Start with validating
9. Give a Talk. It is very hard I find to get real money paid to talk somewhere but I find it stimulating and the organizations always pay transport and hotel. It is good to be out of the pajamas now and then ☺
10. Trade services. Yesterday I talked about microjobs. Ask yourself what is added value to a solution. It is most of the time coordination, presentation and organization. Use microjob sites such as www.pajamanation.com, to outsource the assignments you bring in and oversee them. You will make a lot more money. Heard about Tim Ferriss Four-hour work week?

October 10, 2007

DOES YOUR JOB HAVE A FUTURE?

The Future of Jobs: Decentralizing the labor experience

Today is a theoretical day. Pause from practical examples (I know I owe my readers another 60 opportunities in order to win the challenge).

Employment is the biggest industry in the world and it is about to change drastically.

Globalization and decentralization go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.

Let me take you back to my field of study: semiotics, more specifically narratology, the study of stories. Everything is story; it is the social texture of our society. We used to live by Grand Narratives, stories that explained the world to us and which subdued all subversive voices because an industrial world where the engines of production where locked in a shed by employers, required standardization. Now that the people own the means of production and have access to a worldwide distribution network, things are de-industrializing.

It is a matter of common belief thatglobal grids are replacing the torn-down local grids, but just as on any building site, construction takes place at the same time as deconstruction.

The Grand Narratives are being deconstructed in:
  • Socionarratives (wiki’s)
  • Micronarratives (blogs)
  • Nanonarratives (tweets)
  • Femtonarratives (IM/SMS)

We are reconstructing this experience again via RSS feeds or Atoms. In my RSS reader (Google) I have different feeds which I can subscribe to via RSS daily. But these are only crude reconstruction devices.

Second-generation systems will be smarter to better manage the information overload. Features of these systems will be: double detection, summary, search features inside bookmarks, attention profiling, tag proposition, tag cloud organization, collaborative filtering and recommendation and extend to websites, publications, wiki’s, tweets, mobile, video and audio. In that way we will be able to digest thousands of ‘posts’ per day and socially reconstruct our own Daily Grand Narrative. Changing our minds will be the supertrend to follow which will create flash products, flash audiences and pop-up entrepreneurs and investors.

Now let’s use this trend towards jobs. The job-for-life (JFL) will be deconstructed in:
  • Sociojobs: social networks, volunteering, open-source
  • Microjobs: small jobs working with purchase order
  • Nanojobs: drone work such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk (US only)
  • Femtojobs: jobs only paid by the ticket
We will reconstruct this decentralized job experience via global job feeds which do not exist yet, and which is the mission of PajamaNation. The daily job experience will be a combination of sociojobs, interim jobs, freelance jobs, microjobs, nanojobs and femtojobs.

These decentralized jobs will result in a decentralized identity where people will have several emails, IP addresses, profiles, nick names, handles etc.. The analogy of Feedburner to the job industry will be a destination site where you can find these decentralized jobs and reconstruct them again using various identities.

In other words, people will be working online and aggregate themselves in several virtual entities (companies) often with no legal status. The purpose of these entities will be to take on more complex jobs and eventually compete with the brick and mortar world of cubicled corporatism.

Second-generation job feed systems will aggregate virtual identities in virtual keiretzu’s so that the boundary between the physical world and the online world will be blurred. Ontology will therefore be the science of the future and i-brokers, the powerhouse of the future. They will become more important than banks.

Does this make sense? If not, read my The Biology of Language, Tilburg University. I’ll send you one of my unsold copies if you want ☺

Walter

October 9, 2007

100 WAYS TO MONETIZE YOUR MACHINE

10 MORE MONEY MACHINES

Here we go from opportunity 31 to 40 today.

Maki’s Doshdosh survey was an inspirational gift from heaven. I learned about ten new money machine that had escaped my attention.

31. Only Marketing Survey Panels. Paid marketing surveys have always sounded a bit dodgy to me, but Jim’s idea changed my mind. "I have an IT background, and in my case I became interested in Market Research Surveys Online, after participating in several paid Information Technology Surveys hosted by Fortune 500 companies. I quickly learned that if you are knowledgeable, and willing to share your honest opinions, people will pay you for what you know. After joining several good market research panels, the light turned on: If I can make money taking surveys, I can probably make money promoting good survey panels."

32. Online Import-Export, according to Michael Walter, is not all that different from the real thing.

33. Build a Review Blog by Tobsy (and have ‘review’ in the URL). Focus on a broader niche. Like digital photography (it’s overrun, just an example). Write lots of helpful (!!!) reviews of products, websites, services,… Start monetizing right away. Put 8-10 125×125 banners in a sidebar, link to matching affiliate partners. When you get enough traffic, put up an advertising page and rent out the banners that don’t perform well. Look for affiliate partners for direct links in your reviews. If you’re offered free samples to review, take them. Write the review and give the sample away in a contest. If you can afford it, order reviews for your site. Be critical. If you promote crap, your readers will stop trusting you.

34. Options Trading. Apparently, it is easier than we think. The leverage is very high. Very low starting capital required. (You can start at as low as USD500) and generates an interesting passive income. But don’t do this at home ☺: you must have extensive knowledge prior to engage in real trading.

35. Invest in the Million Euro Wiki. An interesting suggestion by Matt Jones, Blogging Fingers) who auctions off his 'blogging page'

36. Sell Traffic, says Allan in Ideasbeta (a blatant act of self-promotion, as he calls it himself :-) His system seems sensible. If you generate 40,000 pageviews a day, you can make around $4,000 a month… I advise anyone who wants to quit his job to calculate his own target, and work to reach it. Believe it or not, but I first worked hard to reach that goal, and now I have the possibility to take a month off and go doing whatever I want. And those figures I’m talking about can even be higher when you start to optimize your pages and use affiliates instead of Adsense.

37. Buy Death. Dean Mapa, "One way I do it is watch out for expired domain names that are receiving traffic. I then purchase the domain name, build a website around it, build a bit more traffic to it, and then sell it through eBay.People like to see what they’re buying and it helps that a site is already up and receiving traffic even if I’m just selling the domain name."

38. Product in a Blog. An idea by Patrick Meninga of Spiritual River. Use your traffic and expertise to build a product and sell it via your blog.

39. Build Authority.
First and foremost, the bigger your site the easier to land direct advertising deals. And these are the best form of monetization.
Secondly, having 1 established site will give you the opportunity to launch many others, “lurking” into the success of the existing one. Just take a look at the “Crunch” network created after TechCrunch.
Finally, an authority website will also put some lights on your person, and you as a brand. This, in turn, can also give birth to many other wealth-generating projects.

40. Real Estate Income. This is an old-school idea. Buy a cheap property, renovate and rent it out.

Tomorrow, we are going to see the end of the first fifty opportunities for our directory of online money.


October 5, 2007

100 WAYS TO MONETIZE YOUR MACHINE

MONEY MACHINES : PART THREE

Just a quick list of the first 20 money strategies for workers from home linked to a machine (let’s call them micropreneurs).

1. Blogging.
2. Mobile consulting.
3. Get Paid Per Post.
4. Navizonate.
5. Wiki journalism.
6. Investing on the Stock Exchange.
7. Create your own magazine
8. Publish offline and online (lulu.com)
9. Set up your own Fedex-clone.
10. Freelancing
11. Paid Advice-over-Paypal
12. Pre-legal work
13. Domain names brokerage
14. Broker eMail folders
15. Writing a Facebook app and selling it on Ebay
16. Setting up a business and selling it on Ebay
17. Do business on the Amazon marketplace
18. Mash up a widget using the Intel Mashmaker and monetize the widget on a network
19. Launch a Podcast.
20. Become a movie producer of Youtube videos


Do you remember Dosh Dosh, I talked about in my earlier blog. Well, Maki just started a global survey: the best way to make money online, this will help me in my challenge to come up with 100 ways. Here are the next ten.

1. Making fApp (Facebook app) with Facebook venture money

2. Become a digital lobbyist. Organize petitions and signatures as lobbyist for a company using Livepetitions.

3. Become an internet board member. Find a non-exec directorship in an internet startup by mailing around to any company that seems interesting to you and which is in your neighborhood. Information junkies on web 2.0 are precious to a board meeting, look for a non-executive director board function. It normally pays 10K€ a year for 10 meetings and you are enjoying the acoustics of your ideas spread in a meeting with Luddites ☺ We all need an audience.

4. Write Business Plans. People hate writing business plans. Do one for them using this software for instance.

5. Make pre-order lists. One of the key disruptions of web 2.0 is that everybody seems to set up websites where you can leave your email address and when the list is long enough they start developing the project (don't call us, we'll call you). I am sure if you would set up an advanced order list for a sexy product, where people could sign in for free, you could sell that list when to anyone who wants to build it.

6. Become an SEO. It is just a matter of the right toolbox. You can send potential clients a free assessment using Website Grader.

7. Introduce widgetBucks into your content. WidgetBucks is a shopping widget that you can place on your website or blog. You earn money every time someone clicks on it. Widgetbucks is contextually based according to your site’s content. From there, readers and site visitors can see various information regarding certain products, such as the lowest price available, and from which online retailer.

8. Virtual franchises. As there are more and more virtual companies, there are more and more virtual franchises which you can do from your home with a machine linked to the internet. But first read these expensive mistakes to avoid.

9. Firesales. Let people know that you are to do a fantastic job in 48hours without any sleep if the money is right. Show them also that you have complex skills. I do about three of these every year and they make my year. I have specialized in one niche: I write circulars and private placement memorandum completely with quantitative marketing research, legal documents, marketing plans, financial spreadsheets and all done in perfect printed book quality together with spreadsheets and PowerPoint's. It is a hell of a job (and I outsource to other specialists) but nobody wants to do that. If a company or VC wants to start raising money, the amount that is paid to you is peanuts. Remember that people who have the purchasing power for your services are people who are very good at sales but who cannot sit still for more than 15 minutes to produce something coherent.

10. Clothing Label Crafter. Webworkerdaily helped me on my last opportunity. Third party fulfillment services for items like t-shirts: Cafepress . But given the explosion of blogs dedicated to the subject and the now universal acceptance of purchasing things online, small boutique shops can thrive. And a degree in graphic design isn’t necessary to make something that sells.

October 3, 2007

THE MONEY MACHINE


THE MONEY MACHINE


As promised here are the second ten ways (11-20) to make money with a machine on the net.

(I am keeping my best tips till last :-)



  1. Advice-over-Paypal. You can now get paid for Expert advice using services such as Bitwine,
  2. Pre-legal. Most business transactions are document-based and entrepreneurs hate docs, so they normally overpay overqualified lawyers for this. You can do Pre-legal work and reduce the legal costs to a bare minium using one of the free docs site which you customize.
  3. Domain names. Invest in domain name portfolio
  4. Broker eMail folders. Organize your email in folders and maintain them well. Here are some tips to start off. Alternatively, lists are getting more prominent on the net, look at Listphile and listsofbests.
  5. Writing a Facebook app and selling it on Ebay
  6. Setting up a business and selling it on Ebay
  7. Do business on the Amazon marketplace
  8. Mash up a widget using the Intel Mashmaker and monetize the widget on a network such as Wildfire that will allow widget producers to directly embed their widgets into the bigger social networks (MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga, Blogger and Tagworld are currently supported) or WidgetAvenue which has a new product called the Shaker.
  9. Launch a Podcast. Akamai has a nice brochure here
  10. Become a movie producer of Youtube videos; now you can even use the Flip Youtube Camcorder costing merely 100$