While investigating SpacedEd’s site, I learned that they are seeking new courses.  In fact, they offer of a $100 royalty advance and 60-80% royalties for courses added to their site.  Conveniently, they also posted a list of the courses requested most often by subscribers.

I do not feel particularly interested in preparing such courses, but I am interested in hiring someone to write them for me.  So I threw together a quick job offer and posted it here on Craigslist Manila.  My hope is that in the next few days someone will respond with course proposals.  I will turn around and submit them to SpacedEd.  If SpacedEd accepts them, I will pay the proposer to complete the course, which I will then turn over to SpaceEd.  In the short run, I will net $75 per course, since I am offering $25 to the course writer.  In the long run, each course should become a small source of residual income that requires little effort to maintain.  I will continue to publish updates on this experiment as it progresses.

Initial investment:
Time: 1 hour
Money: $0

Current return:
$0

Got a comment?  Please share it!

I never mentioned it on the blog, but I have applied as a transfer applicant to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology);  I’ll find out in May whether I have been accepted.  Either way, at MIT or here at Columbia, the prospect of completing my breadth requirements and getting into the major is exciting.  I’ve been constantly thinking of ways to apply the skills I am gaining in computer science to entrepreneurship and creating value (and thus profit).  Below is one idea I had recently:

On-demand foreign language recordings

Problem:

• Pat wants to learn Ukrainian independently over the Internet or through a CD/DVD course.  Unfortunately, Pat lives in Podunk, Missouri, where Ukrainian speakers are rare.  Even if Pat knows one, she does not want to bother him, or is too shy to ask for help with pronunciation.
• Pat’s Internet/CD course has sound recordings of general-interest words, but if Pat wants to know how a native speaker would pronounce any arbitrary word from the dictionary, she is out of luck.

Solution: On-demand foreign language recordings

• Pat comes to my website, where she enters the words she wants to hear pronounced (“??, ?, ??????, ?? ????? ?????? ?”).
• Pat pays $0.25 for each word (a total of $1.75, in this case).
• *hidden magical business process*
• Voilah! Pat gets an email with a link to my website, where she can download an audio recording of a real, live native speaker of Ukrainian saying, “??, ?, ??????, ?? ????? ?????? ?.”
• Pat can now sing part of a Ukrainian folk song!  Yay!

What do you think about this idea?  Please leave comments to this post and/or complete the survey below!

Chris

[Update: Removed the form for aesthetic and performance reasons. It's here if you are interested.]

Best course I am taking: Object-oriented programming with Java. Yay!

Worst course: Gateway engineering lab. Freshman have to endure this course almost as a rite of passage. I’ll try to make the best of it.

In other news, I have found an investor who is willing to provide capital (and assume the risk of losing it) for one of my business ideas: buying, renovating, and eventually reselling websites. Strictly speaking, I don’t need an investor, but I would rather have 0% chance of losing money that should be used for tuition, at the expense of 35% of the profit. After my first successful website sale, I will be able to provide my own capital.

So the real question is: Will I have the time during this semester to learn and do everything necessary to succeed at this? That is the question I am asking myself.

Any thoughts or comments? Please share them!