Forum Moderators: skibum
I'm a college student graduating in May. I've always been into owning my own business, starting my own projects, etc. I have an idea for a website but only know a minimal amount about website design. I've been tweaking with Frontpage to come up with a nice layout but am thinking about just purchasing a template that has already been made. Anyone think this is an okay idea? I want to make $ from my website, but my website has a particularly small niche, my college. There's 40,000 people that go to the school, plus alumni. Is this niche too small? I'm worried about after the site being established that the unique visitor rate will be low.
Also, when you guys earn revenue from your websites, are these just supplements to your main source of income (day job), or are you primarily living off of your websites for your income? Did you need to get a business liscense to do this once you started making legitimate income?
Another question. My site can be easily duplicated for use for another college under a different domain name. Say I went to Harvard and the harvard site did well so I made one for yale. Say website #1 gets 100,000 impressions/month and im already selling adspace on it and website #2 is new and gets 10,000/month. can i combine these two websites into a package (110,000 visitors/month) when selling adspace or signing up for a 3rd party ad service? (Rotate ads amoungst both the different sites) Or does this not work and both the sites are two different entities?
Thanks a bunch.
but my website has a particularly small niche, my college.
Facebook.comstarted as a way for Harvard students to look at one another before starting school. Now it's one of the largest college networks online. Beyond that, nobody said you had to have one site or even one niche.
when you guys earn revenue from your websites
Some here are part time. Some do this as a full time job. It's not as easy as it seems but not as hard as some believe.
Did you need to get a business liscense to do this once you started making legitimate income?
You don't need a licence, but it can have advatages. It's always best that if you make a somewhat significant amount of income from a venture, you should see an accountant who can help you decide what is best for your situation.
Or does this not work and both the sites are two different entities?
If you have a stable of sites, you can bundle advertsing as you like. But, you should probably look into the many, many options open beyond simply selling CPM adspace. For most cases, these other options will make more money.
Good luck in your venture!
Last year a buddy of mine and I sold T-shirts with designs we made up and didn't have a venue to sell them at, so I was hoping to get a popular website among students and then sell the shirts on the site as well for additional revenue.
How many websites all together do some of you run?
Then you have contextual advertising like adsense, chitika and Yahoo's contextual.
Ecommerce you can just do on your own too and pretty cheap. I personally have one little ecomm site that I just keep as a hobby.
If you take a pretty wide wander around this board you will find literally hundreds of ways in which people make money online. There's gold in them there hills. ;)
Number of sites is relative. With all the different approaches, you may have one person with 1 site with 100,000 pages while another person has 100 sites with 2-3 pages each. Each may be pulling a significant income or beer money.
