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Ask HN: Is there any other web-business as easy as online dating and blogging?

4 points by popat ↗ HN
I was studying about the online businesses that has lowest amount of hassles; one that doesn't require anything other than building a web-app and your business is on with money coming in ... no purchase of any goods, no inventory, no shipping, lowest customer service headache, no returns, no coordination for selling 3rd party stuffs etc.

Do you know any business that is as easy as online dating and blogging business?

13 comments

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smoody
User-submitted news sites that allow people to vote articles up and down. ;-)
ideas101
you mean something like HN?? and how do you make money (from Ads may be??)
josefresco
If you want no hassle, affiliate sites are the way to go as you only generate the sales lead and they do all the rest. Once you find something that works, you just replicate. CJ.com is a good place to start.

I'm not sure what you mean by "blogging business" though, you mind elaborating?

Social sites where the users generate all the content are good as well, look into scripts like Pligg which are easy to install and customize to suite your niche.

ideas101
blogging with ads related to the article that makes you money ... write an article on shoes & perfumes, get some ads displayed (thru google and yahoo network) and females will go crazy by clicking you money-in :-) --- though you require good advertising to get high traffic for your blog... but not impossible.

regarding affiliate sites; you need to have a good content on your webpages, because google (search and ad program) discourages sites that only displays ads to make money.

josefresco
No money really in blogging, unless you own a network or are a complete blogging whore/pro like John Chow. AdSense pays shit and if you run any other ad network the Goog will whack your PR and drop you from search results.

You're right on about affiliates, I'd combine your idea with my suggestion, start a blog and instead of running AdSense use affiliate links. Remember the more focused your niche is the better.

gaius
But the people making money in ANY business are the ones who aren't looking for something easy. As PG says, they're the ones looking for an opportunity to get rewarded for working harder than their competition. This is truer than ever on the web. Sure match.com or whoever may have cheesy ads but in the boiler room there will be talented geeks working their asses off.
babul
Most service based business like this have been done e.g. fininding jobs, houses, love.

If you want to go that route, just do what many others are doing - use web 2.0/3.0 tools to do them better and play the niches.

noodle
drop shipping on ebay, i would argue, is easier if you have a good product to drop ship.

blogging requires effort to write content. online dating software requires effort to build the community and improve the site to a level that makes people actually want to use them. both require active work on the website that doesn't necessarily pay off, at least initially.

with drop shipping, you find your source and post it on ebay. the item sells, order an item and send it to them.

pg
To make a successful web startup you have to deal with problems much harder than pedestrian ones like inventory and shipping.

Creating a successful dating site "doesn't require anything other than building a web-app" in roughly the same way that being a successful novelist doesn't require anything other than writing a novel.

ivankirigin
But good people can have insight into these problems. Most people probably don't have any intuition for how to partner with a manufacturing firm in China.

I agree that product design is non-trivial regardless of context - but some problems are a superset of the problems faced by web companies.

byrneseyeview
Why would you deliberately look for low barriers to entry? If it's so easy that people will do it for free, you may have some trouble making a profit -- especially if your motivation is to do a minimal amount of work.