Any affordable(low-cast) whitehat startups or methods?

I did web design from 2001 till 2015 or so, but suddenly, its been becoming harder and harder to offer with ai and point-and-click editors. Thinking about starting a separate gig other than web design. I could still do web design, but I would have to up my skill from junior designer to senior designer, which would require Rive.app, Unicorn.Studio, and other modern toolsets, as I still use Photoshop and Figma. Which is okay and can get you close; I just don't have the motivation right now, nor am I very inspired by the MidJounrey generations I've seen that could potentially be turned into an interactive site. One was inspiring, but it did not match my company name/vibe—I am usually much better thinking of things on my own.

Anyway, back to the topic. In 2004-2007, I had flash games sites, but around 2010, the SERPs became too hard to rank for and get decent traffic, unless you were full time in SEO, i.e., buying backlinks or doing shady things to promote via SEO. Which I am not a fan of. Are minigames any less competitive now than they used to be in 2007-2010 now that people do not really play them at school when they have phones in their pockets, or nah? When Flash died, I just scrapped the whole project. I rarely see HTML5 games online, and only a few sites exist—YouTube has a games section (is it adsense viable if you develop for YT games section or nah?). The games have no multiplayer leaderboards and feel like low-budget games; the iPhone has Gamespenguin, but dunno how you monetize, and only the top games seem to get approved. Then Pogo does not get all but 20k UV/day now days, when it used to get 200k UV/day.

What about a forum, like Gaiaonline or CarDomain/Sounddomain or IQ69 or any number of boards popular in the 2000s? Not that many people customize cars anymore or even have the capital to become a hobbyist P-Star site owner without good SEO and/or unique marketing strategies, but I find Reddit so hard to use. I've had an account since 2009, but because I only post occasionally when its important to me, I don't even have enough karma to post in any relevant subreddit when I really do want to post. I much prefer old boards. Which is why I don't understand why so many old boards that used to be so popular, like digitalpoint, have now died? Especially when Reddit is so dang hard to get into, I've considered paying $50 for an account with high karma just to use the system.

I do not really like pumping out AI content, like movie trailers or faceless YouTube channels; yes, it might be a viable temporary method, but I miss the creative aspect of thinking of ideas on your own and hand-building them. I am looking for something low-cost and long-term. It seems like ever since COVID hit, all the decent public methods have completely dried up, and you really have to think outside the box to make something work. Especially if it has a front-facing website and is white-hat. I am not a big fan of making social media bots or trading bots, mostly because trading and using bots does not interest me much, unless using them for a legitimate business, as long as its affordable. But many niches are not and require high capital just to test viability.

Any recommendations? Pls? Thanks. Feel like covid+ai has killed literally every affordable public method for those of us who are poor and have junior-level programming/design skills but still want to do white hat.

All help and recommendations appreciated, and thanks,
Fungames

With your background in web design, have you ever considered offering freelance services? Or you could explore creating online courses or workshops to share your expertise, this may works for you.

MajestySEO said:

With your background in web design, have you ever considered offering freelance services? Or you could explore creating online courses or workshops to share your expertise, this may works for you.

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Yes, it is still a viable method, I did freelancing from 2001-2015 but it’s getting harder and harder to get new clients. In 2016, I started outsourcing some and focused on gaining clients. Now, even offering it for free has become difficult. I rather offer my skills than make a course. I just am not a fan of the internet marketing required to build up clients now days. About the only viable public bot is Jarvee, and it does not generate good ai content and it’s very expensive. So you pretty much have to work a full time job, just aggregating and posting content; or go door to door to find new clients; which I’ve tried lately, even posting 5 posts/mo on CL used to get me leads monthly, it just does not work anymore. So I would definitely have to use some social media botting software to market myself. Which is a pain, because there really are not any auto pilot social media bots out there, that can create and manage ai content and build a following without hours of human management. There are some private ones and my friend was building one, but he is far too busy moving into a new home. If anyone has any private ai software I could use, open source, to only promote my 1 company, and not use it and abuse it with niches you are already using it for, that would be greatly appreciated if you can let me know, or share it, even if I could just speak to you, that would be invaluable. Also, I don’t know how to make that work, without it being closed sourced, because people would give your source code away, someone is likely to abuse it and steal your software, without a local notarized legal agreement for it. No one is just going to give you your software either, especially if it’s open source, not without being able to track it on in house systems only. I also would not trust closed source without a 10’ pole unless it’s Jarvee or some company with an established presence. Getting one developed could cost $10k or more for good talent and I simply don’t have that kind of $ right now. It’s cheaper to just use Jarvee, just don’t have the time to painstakingly baby sit Jarvee every day and do web design full time. It is almost like I need another employee to handle marketing, which I can’t afford currently. Not really looking for a partnership either, unless they are local and we have a contract. They never seem to work for me when working remotely or overseas, though maybe I’ve just not met the right people.

Thanks again,
Fungames

Since you are not a fan of traditional internet marketing, have you considered starting a YouTube channel to share your web design knowledge? It’s a great way to build an audience over time, and once it gains traction, you could monetise through ads or even offer courses directly to your viewers. It might be worth exploring!

Every niche & every method you've mentioned are still working and driving some really good ROI for many people,
I'll be honest with you, It seems like you're the one giving up too soon & too easily, just throwing everything away whenever something is not working,
You just want easy work with good earnings, no struggles, no downsides, no competition, no skills, etc...
It's the same case with the majority of people, every person doing any type of similar work will feel the same, it's the choice that makes the difference,
SEO back in 2010 was almost the same as Bitcoin back then, a really simple & easy way to make massive ROI,

The thing is, for most stuff online, there's a small percentage of the total people that are banking,
You have to make a proper plan and find the niches that you can actually compete for based on your available resources,
Then you have to invest more money, work & time to expose yourself and be able to compete, focus on the ROI to be made, investments are not lost,
It's okay to be desperate for now, it's not okay if you don't deal with it or just give it up and assume "everything doesn't work"

hideath said:

Every niche & every method you've mentioned are still working and driving some really good ROI for many people,
I'll be honest with you, It seems like you're the one giving up too soon & too easily, just throwing everything away whenever something is not working,
You just want easy work with good earnings, no struggles, no downsides, no competition, no skills, etc...
It's the same case with the majority of people, every person doing any type of similar work will feel the same, it's the choice that makes the difference,
SEO back in 2010 was almost the same as Bitcoin back then, a really simple & easy way to make massive ROI,

The thing is, for most stuff online, there's a small percentage of the total people that are banking,
You have to make a proper plan and find the niches that you can actually compete for based on your available resources,
Then you have to invest more money, work & time to expose yourself and be able to compete, focus on the ROI to be made, investments are not lost,
It's okay to be desperate for now, it's not okay if you don't deal with it or just give it up and assume "everything doesn't work"

Click to expand...

I am just a fan of the old days, back when Google would rank you based on the quality of your content. I do not like that people get higher on serps through buying backlinks. It was better before this became easily done and popular. When people would rank naturally/organically around 98-2004, the content on these sites was so good and not written for adsense/serps that these writers who use backlinking and mass article writing use now. Now, with everything, you have to use some type of automation, which everyone does, and some of the worst content is created by the people who use these systems. I am not against traditional marketing, or anything you said basically, just against the new age stuff that has occurred in the name of profit and ruined basically every industry—not just internet marketing. You can mostly blame Google and other corporations for these changes, not the end user. Which is unfortunate.

We see it everywhere, from software to sports to food products. It is really quite disgusting how companies are squeezing profits, effecting our end products—so much so that the end user has to adapt their strategies, putting more time into marketing, giving them less time to create quality content. It's not; if you build it, they will come anymore, on the world wide web like it used to be. Even if you make the best product in the world, you still have to market with bots, backlinking, paid ads, shoutouts, etc. It's really unfortunate for people who work by themselves; finding a balance between quality of content and enough marketing to promote your content is very difficult and something that my belief systems go against completely. Good content should market itself, and it simply does not work like that in the modern era. It's not that I am giving up or can't do the work; its that this type of marketing goes against my belief system, as its a corporate/capitalist type of belief system. This way of marketing is 100% created by big corporations.

That is not to say, there are some methods that do not use these methods, but they are rare. For instance, on YouTube, you can create a high-quality channel with no automation or marketing, and likely pop-off, but YouTube is not really my thing.

MajestySEO said:

Since you are not a fan of traditional internet marketing, have you considered starting a YouTube channel to share your web design knowledge? It’s a great way to build an audience over time, and once it gains traction, you could monetise through ads or even offer courses directly to your viewers. It might be worth exploring!

Click to expand...

I have considered it, as it seems to be one of the few methods that do not require marketing. However, I do not think YT is my thing. Possibly faceless, but I am not sure. Still pondering what to do.