I’m a big fan of the saying “you make your own luck”, and today’s just a good as any day to start.

In the make more money department I have decided to resurrect photodailynews.com. When I started this site in the fall of 2008 I thought I’d scan the websites related to photography and link to news/stories and deals.All started OK, and by the end of 2008 I made over $1000 through affiliate commissions. But I got distracted with a few other projects and before you know it I haven’t updated the site. I tried some get rich quick stuff with it, and failed miserably.

The big reason for my failure with photodailynews was I tried to do it all. I tried to be a news site, and review site, and deals site. I found that I hated doing reviews as I don’t use half of the feature set on most cameras and could care less about a lot of the stuff available on today’s cameras. And, the shipping it back and forth was something I didnt’ enjoy either.

But I found I was pretty good at finding deals on camera gear, and I’m real good at comparing prices on memory, so for 2010 I’m taking the skills I have with comparing memory prices and applying it to phographic equipment. Why. I’m interested and passionate about photo gear. I’m sure I like the ‘gear’ part of photography just as much as the actual shooting part and I have the skills and tools to compare prices. The camera resellers pay about four percent on the camera gear. A point and shoot priced at $200, which earn me an $8 commission through Amazon and other resellers. A dslr or fancy lens can even earn a greater commission.

I’ve just changed the domain name over photodailynews.com and I have started to compare prices on a few digital cameras just to get started. It will take the search engines about a month to realize that photodailynews.com is all about photography and prices anyway, so this will give me time to work on comparing more prices. Amazon offers over 7000 different digital camera products on their site, and the prices change over time. New hot cameras are usually at list price, but the duds or discontinued cameras get priced at hefty discount.

It’s worth a shot. I’ll write about my failures with photodailynews here. I’ll share the good and the bad and the ugly, just as I have done with my ebay sales. The plan is take any earnings from commissions and put it back into the site by advertising. It’s a competitive niche, but it’s one I’m interested in and am compassionate about.The photo gear available and what it can do is quite amazing. Worse Case: it’s a story to tell. Best case, it’s a success, and a year from now I’m at my magical $100/day by working at home in my underwear. Probably the best part is that there’s always new products being released. If this is even remotely successful I can work on expanding and taking the profits and re-investing in the site. It really is just a numbers game. If I can figure out that I make, I dunno ten cents per visitor. I can pay up to nine cents to get that visitor and still be ahead of the game.

Another benefit of doing this is this will allow me to shop for photo gear, but not actually buy it. I get to scratch my shopping itch and I just might make a buck to boot. To me, more than half the fun is getting the deal in the first place. Anybody can pay MSRP, and with the internet there’s not much reason you should.

So for the first day of the new year, that’s the plan. Shop for camera gear, in the hopes of making a buck or two from commissions on sales. We’ll See..

Related posts:

1. How to save almost $500 a year by failing miserably.
2. I’m a Professional Photographer
3. Just Another Manic Monday. Day 48

Well, I think I’ve got that pretty much under control. Sure, I still waffle a bit and before you know it the invisible force field in front of the starbucks pulls me in and I’m handing over all of my money to the baristas and their green little aprons. But for the most part, I’ve got the spend less part pretty much down pat. I’m cooking at home, reducing my starbucks intake, and just generally being happy with the now, and what’ I’ve got, rather than chasing the next purchase or BMW, or fancy house. If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that money doesn’t really buy happiness. Enough money does. There’s the differnce. If you have enough money for your needs, not wants, the rest is gravy.

So, this leads me to the next part of the equation: How to make more money? There’s a myriad of ways to do this, but when it comes down to it there’s really only two ways:

1. Do it yourself. Work for yourself.
2. work for the man.

As my income is created from online ventures, I’ll talk about the the online methods today. I haven’t had a job in some time but it might be an avenue to explore.

How to Make Money Online By Working For Yourself.

The first thing you really need to do is just create value. That really is key. There’s no easy pill or ebook, or 12-step course that will provide you with the magic bullet. Believe me, I’ve tried. And with internet, and free tools from the web there’s no reason why you can’t create value too. Everybody is an expert at something, and you are too. Maybe it’s a website about all the different types of cables for your TV, or your gardening. What do you like to do? Can you write about it? Can’t write? Can you talk? Can you record a video of yourself? I worked with a sports editor who could rhyme off stats non stop about sports. If he started to share his knowledge online, over time the search engines and more importantly, other people would notice and he would be creating more value every day, with every little sports tidbit he knew.

Take ramseeker.com for example: I started ramseeker because I read somewhere online once that memory for a particular mac was hard to find. At the time, the only other site that listed memory prices, only listed the high/low/averages of computer memory but not the memory prices that the different vendors charge. And I thought that was kindof silly. That site was obviously tracking the prices anyway, so why not go the extra mile and list the prices? So I made a list. And value was created. People visited ramseeker.com because I had done the legwork. It wasn’t rocket science. I visited the online stores, checked out their prices and made a list of what I found.

Over time, the memory vendors that I listed for free started to notice that the traffic was coming from ramseeker.com. They started to write and ask how they could make their listing stand out? That was easy, I replied. Get your checkbook out and there’s a world of possibilities.
And, they did. And a few years later, I quit a perfectly good day job due to the fact that I created the value of listing and tracking the memory prices online.

Once you’ve got the value created, the rest just kindof takes care of itself. If you can create something that’s unique to you, and distribute it, then you can create value and profit from it. It’s that simple.

So the question I’m asking myself right now is how can I create more value? I’m doing it with this site. Now it’s only 28days old and truth be told there’s not a lot of value created. Yet. I’ve got 972 days to go to keep on writing, to keep on sharing you with my successes and failures and my ebay sales, and any other income I’m making.

In essence I’m telling a story. It’s unique to me. There’s no other Jim Fitzsimmons’s out there (Well, there are, but no sad sacks like me that are 28k behind the 8 ball). And it’s my story.

Tomorrow, I’ll explore how to make money from telling my story.

Sacrifice of the day

Three quesses what it is! That’s right, you win! More cables. I’m still sorting box after box of these things so we’ll be here a while doing this. I have some other more pricier things I can sell but this is a good way to test the ebay waters without losing my shirt. It’s a generic s-video cable today – 9 feet in length. The auction on eBay starts at $1 on this.

Updates

Not much to report today, except that I made somebody’s day. A buyer of my tennis string wrote to say I’m the best ebay seller he’s come across and he’s pleased as punch to get the tennis string and how happy he was with the purchase. This is something you can’t put a price on. Tecnically, I probably lost money if I researched how much I spent, and then what I spent to ship and what the auction ended at. But you know what? who cares? I’ve got a bit more cash flow, don’t have to deal with the string, and made somebody in the world a bit happier today. It’s been a good day.

Related posts:

1. How to Make More Money Creating Value
2. A year from today. Day 45
3. Ways to Make More Money With Your Blog. Day 29