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"OK, you want my advice. Learn the sales business and get some good books on selling and human behavior from Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar. Spend $100 at amazon and read the shit out of those because your ass is going to become a saleman and a good one at that."
This is the best advice in this thread. You must understand that being intelligent alone means squat. If you're unable to present your ideas, and you don't 'see' things from the point of view of a business man, then you won't make much.
For example, I am an experienced programmer. I used to write malware, games, patches for apps, etc.. I coded for half a decade but I never thought about selling any of my software. I gave it away free (open source) because I didn't have a business mentality. I didn't see code as something people should pay for, much like books and access to the uncensored Internet.
I am also quite good at web design (AJAX, CSS2, etc). I can't design layouts, but I can take your layout blueprint and code it. I designed many small scripts and sites for my friends and me, but I never made them public. I coded many things for fun, which are worth billions today. For example, take YouTube. I coded a script that lets you upload videos and then displays them in Flash, because I use Linux and don't want to get all the codecs for Firefox, and my friends use different OSes. I wasn't the only one who coded such scripts.. there were dozens before YouTube gained popularity. The only difference is, the YouTube coder had a vision. He took a huge risk, quitting his job at Facebook and worked full time on promoting YouTube. He "saw" an opportunity and took it. You have to learn to take risks.
Point is, I don't make any money off my skills. I'm broke, and I _hate_ going to my 9 to 5 job (which makes no use of my technical knowhow at all). My successful friends don't really have technical skills, but they can socialize, and they take risks if they think an idea they have can be monetized.
I'm also looking for a continuous passive income. I've owned plenty of sites before, but I found it unethical to place ads on them unless I had trouble paying for hosting (which was free because I hosted them myself). I'm slowly getting back in the game, and hope to start some big projects soon.
Anyway, here's the only advice you need: Read. A lot. Read as many threads as you can on this forum, DigitalPoint, etc, and blogs. If you're unfamiliar with any concept or term, then you aren't ready to venture out yet. BUT, do start a site ASAP just for the experience. You'll fail and fail, but the experience is what you're aiming to get, not success.
After awhile, you'll start seeing things different. You'll overhear something and think "That could be a great niche!" and you'll start noticing how other people run their businesses and how people can fuck up their business.
There really is no secret to it. There is no way you can just spend 10 hours setting something up and then having it generate a passive income. This is what most of us come here thinking, but unfortunately, this is not true. It takes months of very hard work and a lot of studying. Pretty much the same as any other hobby. Money and time have to be invested, and you have to overcome obstacles, yadda yadda, you know this stuff.
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