I’m a PHP/Javascript programmer. My marketing skills aren’t great. And I have virtually no money to invest; I’ll have to rely on my labour creating the value. But I’m hoping there is some sort of web application I could make to make a little bit of money. I’ve had a number of ideas, but they all have huge problems.

1. URL shortener. Too many sites already exist, they’re very popular, and offer most of their services for free. I don’t know how I could cost effectively attract people to pay for the paid services since so few people would pay.
2. Survey website. Too many sites like Google and Microsoft offer free survey web apps already. There are some paid ones but most people use the free ones and I don’t know how I could compete with the large companies that are either free or offer extensive functionality.
3. Cryptocurrency poker website. I’d have to comply with all the gambling regulations of all the countries I want to operate in. Legal costs would be enormous. At least $1m.
4. A web application that gives educational organisations an online exam-taking facility, with time-limited exams that can then be graded by an examiner. The problem is marketing it, firstly, and secondly, fulfilling all the requirements of the organisation. They probably all already have such a system, and I’d need a very good reason for them to choose my system instead, and I’d probably have to write a system that integrates with all their existing systems. It would be an awful lot of work for one person, I don’t think I can do it, even ignoring the marketing.

And a big barrier to almost any idea I have is marketing and advertising. SEO is very difficult. Extremely competitive. It’s extremely hard getting onto the top page of Google, and I don’t think I can achieve it for any keywords that bring paying customers. And as for advertising, it’s so expensive. Untargeted advertising requires your product to be applicable to a large proportion of people. And targeted advertising is incredibly expensive. At least $0.50 per click typically, sometimes going up to $20. I don’t know how I can possibly turn that into a profit for any idea I’ve had. I’ve also tried promoting on social media, but I have a very small following and have not been able to increase that. Word of mouth could work, assuming I get an initial userbase that grows naturally. But that requires an initial userbase, and a whole load of tricks to encourage people to share my site with others. The only other idea I’ve had for marketing is to implement an affiliate marketing scheme where I pay people commission for every customer they send me. But then some how I need to find affiliate marketers! I don’t know how to do that cost effectively.

If anyone has any ideas for web applications I could create, and not have too much trouble marketing, I’d love to hear them.

I don’t really care how much money I make, as long as it’s profit. This would just be a side project. I’m on disability payments long term so have a roof over my head however it goes. I just don’t have much money to invest, at all. Just my time.

Thank you so much