INFORMATION IS MONEY

Making money is about people because it is other people that have the money you want. In a perfect exchange you would provide goods or services and receive in exchange an amount of money that was equal to your effort to provide it. Luckily, no one knows what equal is. Everyone has a different price in their head for what something is worth. Having information about what people will pay is how we can make a profit.
The usual way to make a profit is to create something, and then create demand for it. You manufacture your widget in vast quantities so that the per-item cost is very low, and then you generate demand by spending a small fortune on advertising. You put in a large amount of investment up front (or take on investors) and become dedicated to convincing people that your widget is important. If you fail to instill this information in potential customers then you have spent a ton of money on advertising and are holding a warehouse full of worthless widgets.

The internet has created a massive pool of buyers and you can see what they buy, and for how much. This information about people is free via sites like craigslist, eBay, etsy, and others. Using this information allows you to make money via arbitrage. You walk into a thrift store and pick out the best stuff and then sell it online for a huge markup (or on a larger scale buy a warehouse full of unsold widgets). Except of course everyone else is already doing that so the margins are thin because both the buyers and sellers are savvy. Everyone has access to the same information.
So how do you get better information? What is “better” information in this case? We’ve all heard the story of ‘Plam Pilots‘, but what’s the current information exploit that one can profit from?

Nothing beats hard work. The people who are out looking are the people who will discover the treasure. Eventually they develop an eye for value and that skill can turn into a real business. That business then gains a reputation which increases the value of the items being sold, and that reputation can then also be sold.