I was really hoping to start off with a well defined plan of attack, something I could use to hit the ground running and begin making money right now. However, college football bowl games ruined that. I have a few ideas, but honestly, I spent most of the day watching football. This is not the best way to start out.

To get things going quickly, I will be hitting up eBay hard. This sounds a little like cheating given that I am a software developer and I plan on using a platform that already exists that requires no development. However, I have a good reason why it’s not cheating. That reason is, eBay is my testing grounds.

Quantity vs Price

Do you want to sell a lot of cheap things or a few expensive things? There’s always the happy medium, but what if you could change the happy medium to be on the cheaper side? When you get the “your item sold” email, you take the item, chuck it into a envelope, slap a label on it, and take it to the post office. Doesn’t matter if it was a $1 item or a $100 item. The work after the sale was the same.

That work is reason why quantity isn’t the perfect answer. The amount of work goes up with more items sold. Pat Flynn has mentioned why some of his products failed was because he was changing money instead of solving a problem. My plan is to create the same problem other people have and then solve it. The actual selling isn’t what I need to focus on, it’s what comes after the sale. eBay makes it easier to get the sales coming in.

Subscription Services

Another way to generate income quicker is my providing solutions. The original theory was more about how-to articles and guides, but since I am a better coder than writer, I am more likely to come up with tools that will be available on a monthly subscription basis.

I haven’t actually come up with all the details on how to structure it, but the general idea is come up with a membership-type site that provides solutions to some problem. The memberships will start off cheap (or free) and then go up in price as the site gets more mature. That should provide monthly income and then I will likely sell off the site.