I don't know exactly how you define "successful online business," but I am currently a university student making $500 - $2000 a month at about 5 to 10 hours a w

I don't know exactly how you define "successful online business," but I am currently a university student making $500 - $2000 a month at about 5 to 10 hours a week. Basically, there is a market for vintage computer hardware, so I post some adds offering to take away old office items they can't just throw away. Such as old keyboards, terminals, etc. and they pay me a nominal fee ($1 - $5 per item depending) to rid them of their "trash". I then resell those items after cleaning them up a bit for extremely high profit margins $35 - $120 for 20 minutes of work (since I was payed to take away the trash). One of the things I did was sold Model M keyboards which I made USB compatible: http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/ http://austingwalters.com/keyboards/ Another way I make money is by tutoring or helping out with programming, I use to help out local people, but I have since switched over to Google Helpouts. Usually, it's just explaining some algorithms and writing some C code. Pretty easy, no real upkeep, and I can set what ever hours I want.