I quitted my job 1 year ago and basically set out to make my own living on the Internet. I went from making an adsense-supported website offering free gift certificate templates to a Body Mass Index calculator with affiliate revenue, an online guide to help choose travel insurance, and now a SAAS offering for sending large files for small companies.
All of these websites make money to some extent. However I found the process of developing niche websites not to be too enjoyable (lots of focus on specialized content, nitty-gritty of building links for SEO etc) which is why I now try to focus on the SaaS file sharing solution.
If you want some money on the side, then niche sites are a good way to educate yourself on how to do it. On the matter of how to choose a specific niche, I found the ebook by Rob Walling (start small and stay small) to be a real eye-opener : http://www.startupbook.net/
Also, I would recommend you to check out http://www.flippa.com every week or so. You can see which websites are selling, and try to understand why they're successful and hopefully using this knowledge to advance your own ideas.
Flippa is useless and Lot of cheating happens. I am a victim of it. Will write a blog on it later. But stay away from it. IMO, warrior Forum and DP Forum are best places for buying/selling.
I haven't actually bought anything or sold anything there. But I check it once in a while to see how fast people have developed profitable websites, in which niche, using which link building methods, etc.
IMO it's valuable knowledge for somebody who wants to make money on the web.
+1 on Rob Walling's book. It contains brilliant advice in an almost formulaic fashion for researching, building and launching a software product for sale online.
All of these websites make money to some extent. However I found the process of developing niche websites not to be too enjoyable (lots of focus on specialized content, nitty-gritty of building links for SEO etc) which is why I now try to focus on the SaaS file sharing solution.
If you want some money on the side, then niche sites are a good way to educate yourself on how to do it. On the matter of how to choose a specific niche, I found the ebook by Rob Walling (start small and stay small) to be a real eye-opener : http://www.startupbook.net/
Also, I would recommend you to check out http://www.flippa.com every week or so. You can see which websites are selling, and try to understand why they're successful and hopefully using this knowledge to advance your own ideas.