ta12121 Wrote:Yea I'm trying to stay away from "How I learned Japanese" blog, as there is seriously way too many out there.

you could make a blog about learning english in japanese too btw.

Or collect ideas from blogs and perhaps not even make a blog but something totally unique and fascinating ( maybe not even in the text format), based on your experience and knowledge of what there lacks in the today's japanese learning world.

You know, the thing that's very unique and hard to do but excites you the most might be the right choice because that will be your own playground without rivals and you will get to express yourself. Basically you get the best at the things you are interested in the most, right? Especially geniuses. So perhaps follow your curiosity and if you will find the right field and right path you will eventually definitely find a way to make money as a matter of course.

My advice: Don't copy. Collect information and knowledge and create something unique based on that.
Less rivals, more exciting, will stand out.

jettyke Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:Yea I'm trying to stay away from "How I learned Japanese" blog, as there is seriously way too many out there.

you could make a blog about learning english in japanese too btw.

Or collect ideas from blogs and perhaps not even make a blog but something totally unique and fascinating ( maybe not even in the text format), based on your experience and knowledge of what there lacks in the today's japanese learning world.

You know, the thing that's very unique and hard to do but excites you the most might be the right choice because that will be your own playground without rivals and you will get to express yourself. Basically you get the best at the things you are interested in the most, right? Especially geniuses. So perhaps follow your curiosity and if you will find the right field and right path you will eventually definitely find a way to make money as a matter of course.

My advice: Don't copy. Collect information and knowledge and create something unique based on that.
Less rivals, more exciting, will stand out.

That's definitely some good piece of advice. Don't copy but rather, collect,research,incorporate and make something original. I am taking my time with this but if I do work on this more and more, I should have something working by the end of this month.

Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation. The catch? I worked from Dec 29th to July 1st without taking a day off when I was running mine.

It's possible, but you have to have enough gumption to actually pull it off, or you're gonna crash and burn. Also, the easier it is to get into a specific business, the harder it is to make a living as you have a more competition. And starting a blog is pretty damn easy.

Also, it was easier for Steve Pavlina to make a blog as he had income from his game plus investments to keep his bank account filled while he started the site.

KMDES Wrote:Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation. The catch? I worked from Dec 29th to July 1st without taking a day off when I was running mine.

It's possible, but you have to have enough gumption to actually pull it off, or you're gonna crash and burn. Also, the easier it is to get into a specific business, the harder it is to make a living as you have a more competition. And starting a blog is pretty damn easy.

Also, it was easier for Steve Pavlina to make a blog as he had income from his game plus investments to keep his bank account filled while he started the site.

Thanks for the comment and yea I can agree with what your saying 100%. If I do start a business, I will most likely be working on it on a daily basis. Right now I'm in the planning phase still but I'm still thinking of ideas

KMDES Wrote:Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation.

Assuming you're successful. Most small businesses fail and leave the owners in debt.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation.

Assuming you're successful. Most small businesses fail and leave the owners in debt.

They say that 90% of businesses that start, end up failing. So 90% of the people who start a business fail and only the 10% succeed.

ta12121 Wrote:They say that 90% of businesses that start, end up failing. So 90% of the people who start a business fail and only the 10% succeed.

The actual numbers are nowhere near that bad, as reported by business associations - of course, not every self-employment/home-business attempt is reported like that.

I don't remember the reported numbers of the top of my head, but I have a feeling it's close to a 60% failure rate in general (and close to 80% for food-service, since the numbers I'm not quite recalling are what I was exposed to in my culinary school restaurant management classes.)

It is, however, true that in any startup endeavor failure is more likely than success - but in no category is it statistically as bleak as the '90%' that is commonly quoted.

(Of course, that 90% is commonly quoted out of laziness to remember and look up correct statistics just as I'm being too lazy to do more than recall that I noticed that fact in the past and -also- not look up correct statistics )

(Oh, yes, failure is also a matter of definition - the author I was reading was defining it as eventually making an overall profit in a fiscal year rather than a loss. An individual might, however, not feel it worth putting in all that time to make a modest profit and shut down a 'successful' business in order to stop working 80 hours a week and make the same money working 40 hours a week as a mere employee ... if you count that kind of thing as 'failure' the statistics shift dramatically!)

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:

ta12121 Wrote:They say that 90% of businesses that start, end up failing. So 90% of the people who start a business fail and only the 10% succeed.

The actual numbers are nowhere near that bad, as reported by business associations - of course, not every self-employment/home-business attempt is reported like that.

I don't remember the reported numbers of the top of my head, but I have a feeling it's close to a 60% failure rate in general (and close to 80% for food-service, since the numbers I'm not quite recalling are what I was exposed to in my culinary school restaurant management classes.)

It is, however, true that in any startup endeavor failure is more likely than success - but in no category is it statistically as bleak as the '90%' that is commonly quoted.

(Of course, that 90% is commonly quoted out of laziness to remember and look up correct statistics just as I'm being too lazy to do more than recall that I noticed that fact in the past and -also- not look up correct statistics )

The number is lower, which is a good thing. I will definitely be starting an online business+blog(as a marketing tool about myself). It's better in terms of convenience, as I could work on it worldwide, no matter what country I am in. Although I will keep in mind that, it will be hard for the first year. It usual get's easier after the 1st year of starting out but it all depends on what you provide and how successful it becomes.

Jarvik7 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation.

Assuming you're successful. Most small businesses fail and leave the owners in debt.

Well, what usually happens is the new business owner follows their business plan they had before they started a business to a T. What long time business owners usually say is 'A business plan never survives the real world." So your usual business owner will follow their plan straight into debt, without altering course. Instead of thinking "This isn't working, I need to do something else' they think 'Hey, if I keep doing this, it'll succeed eventually! Because I had a great plan!'

When I had my business, if I followed my plan I had before I started my business without changing, I would of ended up bankrupt. Because I changed my course with the business I ended up making a huge chunk of cash compared to what I was making at a job.

KMDES Wrote:

Jarvik7 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:Having been on both sides of the coin, I'll tell you right now, having your own business is going to make you a heck of a lot more money than having a job unless your're a investment banker or CEO of some big corporation.

Assuming you're successful. Most small businesses fail and leave the owners in debt.

Well, what usually happens is the new business owner follows their business plan they had before they started a business to a T. What long time business owners usually say is 'A business plan never survives the real world." So your usual business owner will follow their plan straight into debt, without altering course. Instead of thinking "This isn't working, I need to do something else' they think 'Hey, if I keep doing this, it'll succeed eventually! Because I had a great plan!'

When I had my business, if I followed my plan I had before I started my business without changing, I would of ended up bankrupt. Because I changed my course with the business I ended up making a huge chunk of cash compared to what I was making at a job.

@KMDES
Mind telling me what business you got into and any solid advice you would pass onto others? Anything would help (actually you did give good advice before and in this post).

I ran a computer sales and repair shop, though by far most of the money came from sales.

As for solid advice, I think look before you leap, and then when you go to leap, don't leap and look again. I blew $12,000 my first month of being in business that I could of just saved and made my start quite a bit better.

Also, get all the help you can get from other instead trying to do everything on your own.

Insert other advice when I think of it here.

KMDES Wrote:I ran a computer sales and repair shop, though by far most of the money came from sales.

As for solid advice, I think look before you leap, and then when you go to leap, don't leap and look again. I blew $12,000 my first month of being in business that I could of just saved and made my start quite a bit better.

Also, get all the help you can get from other instead trying to do everything on your own.

Insert other advice when I think of it here.

Good advice and I am asking/researching before I start. The most important aspects I have gotten from people who have started there own business(online) is: before you start, invest the smallest amount of money or nothing and see if you can actually make money online(see with your own eyes). If it works, then start investing a bit more and see how it goes but initially, invest a small amount to just get started(registering a domain name+creating websites doesn't cost that much money nowadays. Unless you have really have traffic numbers and a strong user-base).

I know what it takes to succeed but time will only tell if I will succeed for the long-term.

Like others have posted, I think the boat has sailed regarding easy ways to make money online.

The best hope you have is to leverage your time and skills to sell a service; freelance Japanese translation seems the logical choice!

Well paying freelance translation isn't easy.
Easy freelance translation isn't well paying.

If you are very skilled (as in your product is fast, accurate and well written) at general translation you can just do extremely high turnover with limited self-review, but at that point your limitation is finding enough clients with steady enough work. When I still did a lot of freelance I achieved spurts of $70/hr or so, but never had anywhere near enough clients to maintain that over a sufficient number of hours per week. If you're a beginning translator with intermediate Japanese and no training, expect to get paid less than you would at McD for the number of hours you put in.

In other words, not easy money/get rich quick.

For the OP in particular, you really should not be taking money at your level (Japanese/English/translation skill). If you are serious about translation, find someone who will mentor you. Typically they will give you some work from one of their clients, you will translate it and they will fix it and give feedback before sending it on to the client. They will usually keep all the money (unless you're lucky like I was). Do that for a year or so (not full time obviously) and then you should be ok to step out on your own.

instead of making a blog and getting advertising money off of it, i think it's far more effective to make digital products which people buy online. i'm an indie game developer and make a living (although not a good one, yet) by creating games and selling them online, mostly on my website

so one thing you might consider is doing something like coding a learn japanese software (if you know how to program); it'd have to actually be better than the free stuff though, and that's pretty hard

also, i actually know pavlina indirectly; he used to run the dexterity.com forums, which were a forum for indie game developers back around 2000-2004. i definitely don't think he's a scam artist: he really believes what he's saying, he's an idealist. i like a lot of his articles, particularly his early ones, but a lot of what he says lately feels like imaginary rationalizations (particularly when he gets into stuff about the supernatural). some of what he says is true and useful, but a lot of it is pie in the sky stuff. it's always good to take what works for you and ignore what doesn't, please don't treat all his articles as gospel, i don't think even he'd want that

another thing to note: a lot of pavlina's money comes from affiliate sales. in other words he sells products other people have made, and gets a cut. he acts as a "publisher" so to speak, because a lot of people read his blogs. this was true even back when he was an indie game developer: he made most of his money in 2000-2004 by selling the games of *other* lesser-known indie game developers, not by selling his own games. he's a "middle man", so to speak. and that works for some people but it also feels a bit parasitic: i feel it's better to create products (or render services) than to make most of your money from the products of others

Jarvik7 Wrote:Well paying freelance translation isn't easy.
Easy freelance translation isn't well paying.

If you are very skilled (as in your product is fast, accurate and well written) at general translation you can just do extremely high turnover with limited self-review, but at that point your limitation is finding enough clients with steady enough work. When I still did a lot of freelance I achieved spurts of $70/hr or so, but never had anywhere near enough clients to maintain that over a sufficient number of hours per week. If you're a beginning translator with intermediate Japanese and no training, expect to get paid less than you would at McD for the number of hours you put in.

In other words, not easy money/get rich quick.

For the OP in particular, you really should not be taking money at your level (Japanese/English/translation skill). If you are serious about translation, find someone who will mentor you. Typically they will give you some work from one of their clients, you will translate it and they will fix it and give feedback before sending it on to the client. They will usually keep all the money (unless you're lucky like I was). Do that for a year or so (not full time obviously) and then you should be ok to step out on your own.

May I ask how you find your mentor you helped you out? The only thing I can think of is: there is a Japanese program at my school that due have fully bilingual Japanese Natives. I could ask them but I'm not in that program at the moment. I have a strong feeling I should wait till I can call myself fluent in all skills before I go and ask them to be my translation mentor. I think the best thing I can do now is, improve my japanese, improve my english and improve my translation skills (over 2-3 years).

rinkuhero Wrote:instead of making a blog and getting advertising money off of it, i think it's far more effective to make digital products which people buy online. i'm an indie game developer and make a living (although not a good one, yet) by creating games and selling them online, mostly on my website

so one thing you might consider is doing something like coding a learn japanese software (if you know how to program); it'd have to actually be better than the free stuff though, and that's pretty hard

also, i actually know pavlina indirectly; he used to run the dexterity.com forums, which were a forum for indie game developers back around 2000-2004. i definitely don't think he's a scam artist: he really believes what he's saying, he's an idealist. i like a lot of his articles, particularly his early ones, but a lot of what he says lately feels like imaginary rationalizations (particularly when he gets into stuff about the supernatural). some of what he says is true and useful, but a lot of it is pie in the sky stuff. it's always good to take what works for you and ignore what doesn't, please don't treat all his articles as gospel, i don't think even he'd want that

another thing to note: a lot of pavlina's money comes from affiliate sales. in other words he sells products other people have made, and gets a cut. he acts as a "publisher" so to speak, because a lot of people read his blogs. this was true even back when he was an indie game developer: he made most of his money in 2000-2004 by selling the games of *other* lesser-known indie game developers, not by selling his own games. he's a "middle man", so to speak. and that works for some people but it also feels a bit parasitic: i feel it's better to create products (or render services) than to make most of your money from the products of others

You got me thinking, I'm actually working with a someone to make a transcription type service for Japanese but user based. It's a way for learners to understand Japanese via text and audio. I'm still thinking of making my own site but I may just put all my energy into that. I was also thinking of working with the anki author and helping him get anki more users and help him gain more people. That would definitely be affiliating but that isn't a bad thing(I love Anki and wouldn't mind seeing it develop even more)

I have read his blog(quite a lot of posts on there) and I like a lot of what he says, as it is true when you think about it. I'm basically taking all the things that helped me succeed and I will use the ones that relate to me the best and how I can use it well.

aphasiac Wrote:Like others have posted, I think the boat has sailed regarding easy ways to make money online.

The best hope you have is to leverage your time and skills to sell a service; freelance Japanese translation seems the logical choice!

I'm working on getting translation work coming in but most people said, I should do free-translations for people who need it or improve your skills well enough to do sample translations for potential part-time employment. I still have a lot of work for my Japanese but I expect the next 2-3 years will see my fluent in speaking,reading and writing. That's 4-5 years(which doesn't sound that bad to me as some people will take 10 years but it all depends on the person's goal)

When it comes to business, working with others, even if the others seem to just be profiting off you with very little work can be a good thing. I had a situation where another computer tech had a need for $50,000 worth of hardware for a customer and had no easy means to get the hardware. So we made a deal, I gave him 10% of the profits and did all the work to get the customer the hardware. Now while he didn't do much work in terms of the hardware part, he did get me the sale which made me a killing at the time.

One thing I do suggest is to build up a nice nest egg worth of money in an account earning interest (6-7% is usually a fairly stable amount). Once you build up enough money to live off of, you can go full force with your own business. If you're constantly relying on a job or something to make ends meet, you may end up not having the motivation to do what needs to get done. When you stick yourself in a do or die financial situation, you'll find you'll work a lot harder to achieve your goals instead of the 'I'll get to it later, I have all the time in the world." you have when you hold down a job.

Also, when you do start making money, find out where you can defer taxes when you can. I'm not sure of the best ways in the US are, but in Canada you can do things like receive $50,000 in income tax free if you make it all in Canadian dividends, you can stick money in a Tax Free Savings Account, or you can buy certain stocks and such which ends up being capital gains tax, which is 50% less than what you pay on income tax normally.

Another thing is, you can be the best at what you do, and still end up making no money. If you want to make money off a site, off a business, or a hobby or whatever, the main thing people completely disregard that when you want to make money, you are now in the business of making money. Which basically means you have to learn to make money to succeed. Steve Pavlina mentions this when he said he was making games and he was making the games as best as he could and put all his extra efforts into it, yet he wasn't any more money. When he'd make a good game and instead of trying to make it better, he's spend his time publicizing which made him much more money. What he used to think that buy making the game even better, the sales would automatically go up, but by changing his focus he ended up succeeding far more than if he was just game focused. It's the analogy of the best selling author vs the best writing author. The best selling author may not be the best writer, and the best writing author may not be the best selling.

And stuff.

KMDES Wrote:When it comes to business, working with others, even if the others seem to just be profiting off you with very little work can be a good thing. I had a situation where another computer tech had a need for $50,000 worth of hardware for a customer and had no easy means to get the hardware. So we made a deal, I gave him 10% of the profits and did all the work to get the customer the hardware. Now while he didn't do much work in terms of the hardware part, he did get me the sale which made me a killing at the time.

One thing I do suggest is to build up a nice nest egg worth of money in an account earning interest (6-7% is usually a fairly stable amount). Once you build up enough money to live off of, you can go full force with your own business. If you're constantly relying on a job or something to make ends meet, you may end up not having the motivation to do what needs to get done. When you stick yourself in a do or die financial situation, you'll find you'll work a lot harder to achieve your goals instead of the 'I'll get to it later, I have all the time in the world." you have when you hold down a job.

Also, when you do start making money, find out where you can defer taxes when you can. I'm not sure of the best ways in the US are, but in Canada you can do things like receive $50,000 in income tax free if you make it all in Canadian dividends, you can stick money in a Tax Free Savings Account, or you can buy certain stocks and such which ends up being capital gains tax, which is 50% less than what you pay on income tax normally.

Another thing is, you can be the best at what you do, and still end up making no money. If you want to make money off a site, off a business, or a hobby or whatever, the main thing people completely disregard that when you want to make money, you are now in the business of making money. Which basically means you have to learn to make money to succeed. Steve Pavlina mentions this when he said he was making games and he was making the games as best as he could and put all his extra efforts into it, yet he wasn't any more money. When he'd make a good game and instead of trying to make it better, he's spend his time publicizing which made him much more money. What he used to think that buy making the game even better, the sales would automatically go up, but by changing his focus he ended up succeeding far more than if he was just game focused. It's the analogy of the best selling author vs the best writing author. The best selling author may not be the best writer, and the best writing author may not be the best selling.

And stuff.

Good advice and I will definitely take into consideration about the Tax Free account (I live in Canada actually). I read that post on Steve Pavlina blog and definitely got what he was saying and you are saying. There's always two sides to the coin. One that concentrates on making money, while the other concentrates on making it good. That right there teaches me that I have to concentrate on building a user-base(audience if you will). People actually like to be able to join in on conversations with author(if possible). I've seen forums for a site that helps other people create on-line business(and making profits). I heard he replies to any questions,email messages and participates in the forums actively. That shows that he's not all about the money but about the community.

That's why I love social networking as it makes answering questions and joining conversations with ease worldwide. (Twitter,Facebook,Youtube are key to this and now google plus as well). I won't start making any new accounts with the social networks just yet, as I want ot wait a bit to see how my site does.

KMDES Wrote:One thing I do suggest is to build up a nice nest egg worth of money in an account earning interest (6-7% is usually a fairly stable amount).

...where do you find 6% interest savings accounts these days??

pm215 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:One thing I do suggest is to build up a nice nest egg worth of money in an account earning interest (6-7% is usually a fairly stable amount).

...where do you find 6% interest savings accounts these days??

Didn't say savings account. Stick it in an account you can get mutual funds/stocks/etc in, usually fixed income funds will be what you put your money into if you want it relatively safe. The Canadian Tax Free Savings Account you can actually do this, and it's the only savings account I know of.

Leaving your money in a regular savings is just asking for it to get eaten away by inflation. The only reason you should have a cash savings account is for an emergency fund.

Ah, right. (To me "account earning interest" means "(cash) savings account" rather than some kind of fund or stock investment.)

ta12121 Wrote:May I ask how you find your mentor you helped you out? The only thing I can think of is: there is a Japanese program at my school that due have fully bilingual Japanese Natives. I could ask them but I'm not in that program at the moment. I have a strong feeling I should wait till I can call myself fluent in all skills before I go and ask them to be my translation mentor. I think the best thing I can do now is, improve my japanese, improve my english and improve my translation skills (over 2-3 years).

My mentor was my former translation professor after I graduated. Other places to find mentors are translation forums like proz.com

There is also a Japanese translation mailing list on google groups somewhere.

(I don't participate in either.)

pm215 Wrote:Ah, right. (To me "account earning interest" means "(cash) savings account" rather than some kind of fund or stock investment.)

And that's also a good reason why so many people are broke. They get a job, pay huge chunks of their money to taxes, bury themselves in high interest debt, leave what they do have in a savings account that actually devalues it's self over time and then they start occupying wall street because "SHIT IS bucked UP AND BULLSHIT".