Other Businesses?

[TheSurfer]

Hi very interesting thread I'd be very keen to hear what other side businesses others on the forum have.

I'm very much with MarillionFan in that I keep coming back to contracting for the easy money. A few years ago I planned to stop contracting all together at some future point but now I plan to stay with it for part of every year. After 3 years out out of it at one point it took some readjustment to get back into it.

In terms of side businesses I've done I did what some here have thought of and started a small recruitment agency supplying staff to 2 clients I had a good relationship with as a contractor (could write a book about this experience but to summarise briefly hated every second of it but managed to sell out to my partner and the sale, paid out monthly, gives me a good side income at least until 2013).

Other things I've done: got an app in the Google Apps Marketplace which is now starting to give some income although it was a lot of work up front, both in development and sales/marketing. Also got a couple of ongoing remote support agreements and now as my focus is on developing semi-passive recurring income I'd like to start outsourcing some of this and try to get some larger deals.

[eek]

I've been working on a plan b for ages. Its a big data play pulling data from everywhere which companies can then use to identify how customers actually use their website and what steps actually occur prior to making a purchase.

The big advantage is that I can now throw an entire new set of buzzwords on my CV, hadoop, node.js, azure (pile of tulipe), aws..... so even if it goes tits up I should be quids in. And if it doesn't fail I will get a continuous revenue stream as managing the data collection systems is not for the faint hearted even without all the customisation work I and others can do.

As for why I'm mentioning this I need some more guinea pig websites to allow me to stress test the data gathering infrastructure and give me some valid data to use when creating some standard (real-time) google analytic type reports for demo purposes. Anything up to 100,000 pages a day is fine.

If you have a site and can help PM me and I won't charge you quite so much when it goes live.

[bluedrop]

Apps! That's very interesting!

Hi very interesting thread I'd be very keen to hear what other side businesses others on the forum have.

I'm very much with MarillionFan in that I keep coming back to contracting for the easy money. A few years ago I planned to stop contracting all together at some future point but now I plan to stay with it for part of every year. After 3 years out out of it at one point it took some readjustment to get back into it.

In terms of side businesses I've done I did what some here have thought of and started a small recruitment agency supplying staff to 2 clients I had a good relationship with as a contractor (could write a book about this experience but to summarise briefly hated every second of it but managed to sell out to my partner and the sale, paid out monthly, gives me a good side income at least until 2013).

Other things I've done: got an app in the Google Apps Marketplace which is now starting to give some income although it was a lot of work up front, both in development and sales/marketing. Also got a couple of ongoing remote support agreements and now as my focus is on developing semi-passive recurring income I'd like to start outsourcing some of this and try to get some larger deals.

[TheSurfer]

Apps! That's very interesting!

It's by far the most interesting thing I've done and starting to bring in some regular side income. The Google Apps Marketplace is is an interesting ecosystem to write software for and it's getting some big traction now that companies like SAP and salesforce are there.

My App is focused on Universities and just got into it randomly when I picked up a small project at a Uni from a contact....... so interesting for me as I knew nothing about this area. Most of the paying clients have been from the US but got a couple of UK colleges signed up now so just contracting 3 days this week then on my way back over to London to meet them Fri then check out the BETT Education Technology fair at Olympia Sat.

[eek]

Anyone looking at developing apps should probably be heading over to Android Design - Welcome for UI advice.

Personally apps seem to be a market with a few big winners and a lot of losers. To me unless you know how to market an app and have the cash to launch with a proper bang its a gamble I wouldn't want to take.

[TheSurfer]

Anyone looking at developing apps should probably be heading over to Android Design - Welcome for UI advice.

Personally apps seem to be a market with a few big winners and a lot of losers. To me unless you know how to market an app and have the cash to launch with a proper bang its a gamble I wouldn't want to take.

If your talking developing Apps for Android or Apple mobile I agree thats a tough market for sure and too B2C focussed for my liking..

What I'm involved in......'The Google Apps Marketplace' has nothing to do with Android or mobile. It's business/education applications that are accessible via a web browser on a PC that interface with Google Apps. I know quite a few people making money in this area.