Q: how do you make money? A: sell stuff

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Internet of Things products rely on hardware sensors. These are little devices that monitor things like room temperature, heart rate, compass reading, etc. Sensors need to be cheap and plentiful. Low prices mean ultra-low profit margins.

So how do you make money in the sensor business?

1. Only allow access from a front end you control, and charge for the front end.
2. Don't bother trying, let suckers eat the tiny margin.
3. Give away the sensor and own the data center and/or UI.

Those are the consensus as far as I can tell, anyway. But I don't know if I believe this is all you can do. So here are my contrarian answers:

4. Sell a lot. Win by brute force.
5. Raise prices. If your sensor is so valuable, why can't you charge for it?

Yes. Go to hardware store and look at light switches - they're amazing little things and they cost almost nothing. If you want to be in the light switch business, you've got to move tons of these suckers.

On the other hand, you can make a pretty damned good living out of being an electrician.

Speaking of making a good living as an electrician, blue collar professionals stand to be big winners on Internet of Things work. It's a blue collar bubble for once.

Related anecdote: I recently had the AC go out and called a service company in our area. A service rep came by, took one look at the wall unit and said "Your need a new thermostat. $127".

I said "I'd like to replace it with something that I can control from my phone." He got rather irritated and said "Those cost over $500 and you need to get someone to program your router!". I mentioned that I had seen one on sale the other day at Lowes for $250 and that I would be comfortable with handling the router configuration.

Without another word, he stormed out of the house.

The next day, I found a Honeywell Smart Thermostat at Ace for under $150. Physical installation was easy due to color coded wires and simple instructions. It turns out that you only need to configure the router if you want to control the system from outside the network and need to open a port.

Some blue collar pros will do better than others.

Excellent! That's a guy who's just annoyed at the whole thing. He doesn't care what happens as long as he gets home on time.

The white collar folks might have more of an appetite for bubbly froth.

Now the internet is the key to success so don't think about that guy and focus on what you want. Try to make money on your own. I know that now we are living in a hard period but I'm sure that everyone will manage to do something, of course, if you want that. Now on the internet, you can find everything. I inspired myself from this site themoneymix.com. There you will learn how to make money and also so ideas for the passive income. Wish you good luck.