Post: #1

Hello,

This is my first post. I want to thank you all for the information that has been posted on this site.

I'm a traveling EFL teacher with a tiny bit of passive income from real estate. I'm interested in researching an internet business. I have no background in web development or web marketing.

Could you recommend a reading list? I'm interested in the basics, such as terminology, marketing, strategy.

I've already found on here "4-Hour Workweek" and "Crush It!" I'm acquiring those now.

My first idea is an ESL site with web 2.0 teacher training advice, material, blog, etc. It would be ran by myself and a web 2.0 teacher trainer. My goal is just to supplement my income while abroad. An extra couple hundred bucks a month goes a long way for me in Eastern Europe. Low investment, Low returns is fine by me for now. I know its not inspiring, but I'm just starting out.

Thanks in advance

~Fair

Post: #2

4-hour workweek is great for inspiration but low on practical/tactical strategies for executing a web based business. Definitely worth a read though.

"Crush It" is good for learning more about the various social media platforms out there and how to use them as a means of building internet brand equity.

Both of those books are not great if you are looking for highly targeted/focused and strategic advice on the actual operations of launching a business.

The ESL market is solid - assuming you know the specific solution/services the market is asking for and can reach your demographic. In my market research for my own line of career products, I keep coming across tons of keywords related to the ESL niche.

Post: #3

Thanks for the reply,

I chose these because they were mentioned on this forum a few times.

As far as techy and straightforward business stuff, I'm going to hit up the library and bookstore. I was hoping someone would recommend some titles/resources.

Perhaps most of you on here are way past the newbie books

Fair

Post: #4

Best way to learn web dev is to dive in head first and google like mad. Relative to other types of programming, it's easy enough to get started to where you can just go for it without a lot of education or reading up front. Going through a few basic online tutorials should get you going.

For a typical "web 2.0" website you'll need to be familiar with 5 things:

Front End:

HTML - Markup language, defines the structure of content on pages
Tutorial

CSS - Defines the visual styling and layout of pages
Tutorial

Javascript - For adding front end dynamic functionality, such as making dialog boxes appear or disappear, drop down menus, or AJAX
Tutorial
JS Library that makes most JS tasks stupidly simple

Back End:

Server side programming language - Most popular is PHP. This does the heavy lifting and processing in dynamic websites / web apps. This is the code that runs every time a page loads (so you'll never see it do anything after the page is loaded), whereas Javascript is code that can run after the page is loaded.
Tutorial

MYSQL - Database management, PHP has a lot of native integration with MYSQL and you see the two used together a lot.