How to earn 5,000€ a month from your website. (pt. 1)

September 15, 2011

Short-term goal #1: Determine your business model
The planning phase is the most important phase of the whole process.  Even if you don’t consider yourself entrepreneurial, if you don’t plan everything concerning your website in advance, you will make mistakes that will cost you a lot of time and frustration!

A real-life example:

  1. You’re inspired by a website about bars and, in a fit of passion, you ‘create your own blog’ in 15 seconds using the same platform as the blog that inspired you, and you begin writing articles about bars you’ve been to. 
  2. But you don’t have a logo or a name, which means you probably don’t have a coherent elevator pitch if somebody asks you what you do. 
  3. Since you don’t yet have a name, you don’t yet have a registered domain name if somebody asks you what your website is. 
  4. Since you don’t yet have a name you probably don’t have a facebook page to create a community around, which means nobody knows you exist, and people who do land onto your page see nobody else is following you so they are reluctant to follow you. 
  5. After you’ve written 30 articles you find another website platform that suits your needs better than the blogging platform you started with, so you have to copy/paste your first 30 articles onto your new platform, making sure the over 100 hyperlinks and image formatting works with the new platform.  
  6. Finally, one year later you’re frustrated because nobody seems to be reading your articles so you feel like your wasting your time, and nobody has yet to advertise on your website and your Google adsense balance is a mere $.28.
  7. Now you’re burned out and can’t understand how other people have managed to earn a living with their website.  Plus the time and money you poured into your website could have more prudently spent in your job for a promotion or looking for a new job.  
  8. You’re disgruntled.

1 Determine your business model for your website.
The third-party model is the most simpliest internet-based business model.  It is best if you’ve a hobby you’re good at and you’d like to make some money from it. Setting up this model takes minutes:

If later you decide to build upon this model by offering a product or a service, then upgrade to the freemium model:

The freemium model works when you offer a decent product or service your target audience would be interested in paying for. For example:

  • An amateur photographer could offer 5 photos for other bloggers who want quality headshots for their websites, resumes, facebook profile, etc. 
  • A person familiar with his/her city of residence could offer group city exploration tours where you take people to 8 different places unknown to major tourguides.
  • An expatriate university student could offer baby-sitting plus immersion in a foreign language for the parent’s child(ren).
  • A decent web designer could create and sell blog templates to tumblr, wordpress, etc.

The sky is the limit. Setting up this model (or expanding from the third-party model) is a little more complicated because you’ll have to integrate shopping, payment, and delivery software into an online payment system such as paypal. This is more complex and may require hiring a webdesigner.

But before you have a fit of passion and start your website, you must first…

2 Establish very specific objectives.
As explained above, the planning phase is the most important phase of the whole process.  If you don’t plan everything out in advance, you risk making mistakes that will cost you a lot of time and frustration!

On a sheet of paper, answer the following questions as thoroughly as possible:

Determine your target audience:

  • Who is your target audience? Age, marital status, income bracket, education level, location, language(s), nationality, background, hobbies, etc.
  • How will your target audience benefit from the free content on your website?

Determine your website image:

  • What will be the main subject of your website?
  • What could be any secondary-subjects of your website?
  • What will be your website’s image? Warm & friendly? Dark? Educational? Masculine? Minimalist?
  • What is your elevator pitch?

Determine your free content and product:

  • What product or service will you offer for free? 
  • What product or service will you charge for? If not now, in the future?

Determine your timeline and productivity:

  • By what exact date do you want to officially launch your landing page?
  • By what exact date do you want to officially launch your website?
  • By what exact date do you expect to have 1,000 followers? 2,000? 5,000?

Determine your sector:

  • What websites and companies have the same target audience as you?
  • Will those websites and companies see you as a threat or as a mutual friend?
  • What websites and companies have complimentary target audiences as you?
  • What can you offer that is different and/or complimentary to other websites that have the same target audience as you?

3 Determine your website content, name, and logo.
Now that you’ve thoroughly answered the above questions, you should have a better idea of how your website should  be structured, and you can now begin creating your website’s logo and name.

4 Purchase domain name. 
Once you’ve established your name, purchase the domain name.  If your domain name is already taken, then you would be better off finding another name. Your image must be 100% congruent. Which means you must also…

5 Register your twitter handle, facebook page, Google +1 page, email address, etc. Again, the objective is image congruency.  To avoid confusion, everything related to your website should have the same username, photo, and feel. 

6 Compare the different platforms
Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogspot, Weebly… and determine which best suits your long-term goal. Once you’ve decided on a platform, stick to it. When choosing your blog platform, remember that not all blog platforms are created equal. Refer to the If social media were a high school infograph by Flowtown to understand which platform attracts which kind of person.

However, if you’re website will be about bars you visit, Wordpress may be a good community because it attracts many ‘creative writers’, however you may decide that Wordpress is saturated with ‘creative writers’ and that using Tumblr orBlogspot, or perhaps you may want to be on the forefront of a new and developing platform such as Weebly to differenciate yourself from the others.

Research the different platforms and choose which is right for your target audience, image, and definitely your long-term goals.

By now you should feel confident about proceeding forward to short-term goal #2…

Short-term Goal #2: Launch your landing page.

Sources:

Because nobody is perfect…
If you have any sources, links, and advice to add improve these steps:

1. Leave it in the comments section below, and
2. Your invaluable advice will be incorporated into the above article, and
3. You’ll be referenced you as the contributor.