This isn't true, there's lots of legitimate ways to bring in passive income if you know the right niches to explore. Look at this screenshot of my Adsense earnings for last month, where I brought in over $13,500!

"Learn the tricks to uncovering the top undiscovered niches for making a fortune! Click here to buy the e-book. Special offer for warriors!"

Fake product reviews are popular as well. They'll do a top 5 write-up where their product, or the one offering the highest paid commissions is first, followed by 4 real products in that niche that are well respected. For example, let's say teeth whitening. I don't know who tops the charts here, but let's say Crest Whitestrips is a big name. They'll list them as second, and say they're great. Then they bring in their loaded product for number one. "Don't get me wrong, Crest Whitestrips is one of the best products available, but I was completely surprised by XYZ. I have to say, after three weeks with the product, I think it offered similar results at half the price, and I found they better formed to my teeth, allowing for more comfort." Insert sales or referral link here.

I agree it's a skill, and hopefully over time you have a better understanding of what ideas are more likely to succeed. However, I don't think anyone out there can guarantee a great idea. How many times has Google failed again and again? Zynga is worth billions, and yet they're going to struggle to create another Farmville and they'll have difficulties staying relevant in the coming years. You can put the smartest minds on earth in a room for years with an unlimited budget, and they can't promise to deliver the next Facebook.

So, when you have that great idea, and you see it starting to grow, you better take good care of it. They don't come easy for anyone. That's part of the skill though, recognizing the good from the bad, and knowing when to jump ship, and most importantly, when to try again.

How is this a good thing? You want users to visit a promo page, where they're forced to retweet the content before getting access? This sounds awfully familiar to those sites that ask you to share a referral link with 10 friends, or complete a survey before receiving a free gift that doesn't exist. Also reminds me of the days of browsing warez online. Click these three links to vote for us on Top 100 sites, then you'll get access to the file. They're just taking people hostage and encouraging spam on social networks.

It could be useful if done right.

>> "before receiving a free gift that doesn't exist"

Presumably if this was done by someone like Coca-Cola you would receive something for sharing the page. The spam problem could be improved by asking them to tweet their own content + link rather than a predefined message. e.g. Tweet your favourite thing about [brand] and get [reward]. And the tweet would be [your message] + link.

These techniques could be used in interesting ways - most people just don't bother.

>> "You want users to visit a promo page, where they're forced to retweet the content before getting access?"

Also if the user is getting something of value I don't see the problem with asking them to do something to get it. They aren't being forced, they are being given a choice. Do this thing and get rewarded. Don't do it and life goes on.

You're basically buying tweets at that point, and I'm completely against the concept. I go the exact opposite route with my community and promise users they'll never have to jump through a single hoop. In return, I get a lot of respect and loyal members. People know when you're trying to use them. It leaves a bad taste in their mouth, and they don't forget. A good reputation is better than a few thousand likes or tweets.

Feels better. Not sure it's worth more.

This shit has been done before and it's never useful, it's fucking spam.

> They're just taking people hostage and encouraging spam on social networks.

Isn't that what social networks are for these days. They're just junk mail by another name.

It can be bait to incentivize people to more closely follow a brand. Exlusive, limited time offers for people that follow on twitter and Facebook.

How would this work though? If their secret message is a coupon code, or URL, they need to check server side the number of times it's been activated, or accessed. Otherwise, it's going to get mirrored and used 10,000 times instead of the intended 1,000 limited supply. If it's being checked server side, what's the purpose of using this site, instead of just sharing the code or URL directly with your fans?

It's an interesting concept, However, I'm struggling to figure out a situation where it would be useful. There might be something here, just not in it's current state, and for that reason, I don't see it going viral anytime soon.

He just misinterpreted the previous comments. When developers were saying 20% of their time goes to managing clients and 80% to coding, he thought they were implying stirring up business is easy compared to coding. However, they were simply saying 1 hour of searching for clients generated them about 4 hours of work. This means to have a balanced team, they'd need 4 developers for every 1 person on sales, otherwise, working equal hours, the sales person would be bringing in more work then the group can handle.

Agreed. How involved is he going to be outside of finding clients? Who's going to be the one going to meetings, drafting up invoices, working the phones, and constantly relaying updates? If he's just going to appear once a month to drop a project on your desk, of if he's going to scrap garbage clients off elance while dumping them on you and expecting half the profits, I'd be running.

Agreed. Go buy a cheap template, and set it up in an afternoon. If the site begins to gain traction and has potential, then invest in something a little more customized. This only applies if the design and layout of your site isn't one of the main selling factors.

I mean, if you're setting up a blog, and people are going to love it because of your incredible sense of humor and unique style of writing, then a template is perfect to get up and running. If your site is about food recipes, where there's a million sites as competition, but you've thought out a unique method of navigating and displaying them to users, then you need a custom solution right out of the gate.

Thanks both of you! That's what I am going to do. Get a theme and rebuild the landing page.

I stumbled into a lucky situation maybe 5 years ago. I posted a topic on a development forum mentioning my services and linking to a couple of examples. I received a few responses, people wanting work done for a couple hundred dollars, which would basically be a waste of time. Anyway, I get caught up with other projects, and a few months down the road someone sends me a message on AIM, saying they saw my post, and needed a quick project done in the next couple of days. Turns out they're a huge firm in New York with a bunch of Fortune 100 clients. Why on earth they sent me an instant message on some half-assed forum post, I'll never know. I ended up working for them for years and 80% of my work originated from them. It launched my career, and I quickly went from being a freelancer picking up scraps to working on big name projects and networking with tons of great people. All thanks to a random forum post, one of the few I ever posted during that time.

I think that is generally how it works. Big companies don't all operate through ossified HR departments, and even the ones who do still have rogue elements who are responsible for most of the productivity in the company. If anything, I'd probably make it a rule to only work with people who do not try to make me go through HR hoops to work for them.

I don't think of it so much as luck as "having many irons in the fire". None of the opportunities you will end up pursuing will be that good of a chance of coming through, we just kind of delude ourselves into thinking certain ones are better than others. It just becomes a game of stacking up enough low probability opportunities that eventually one of them comes through.

Try releasing early. When I work on personal projects and drag them out to perfection or until they have every feature I originally envisioned, they never get finished. I redesign them half a dozen times throughout their development, recode bit and pieces, etc. However, when I hack together a project over a weekend or week, toss it online and it gets a little traction, it's good motivation to continue. You have users behind you providing feedback and ideas, and it's fun to push out little updates every few days when you have people excited to see them.

At the same time, it prevents you from becoming too involved in a failed concept. Release quickly, if there's an audience, keep polishing the project and grow it over the coming years. If the interest just isn't there, well you wasted a week, learned a few things, and move on.

Yes, I think early release is critical. It keeps momentum and lets you hear feedback while you're still fresh in dev mode.