Forum Moderators: phranque
Background:
I am working towards a getting a triple major at the University of Miami and hopefully will be going for my PHD in Humanitarian Aid. So this might be what is clouding my perspective.
I am also work on a very large content site in a decent niche which will hopefully be able to fund my daily living expenses (not including tuition). The site has 100 articles now, but I have 400 articles waiting to be published when in 2 months (waiting for articlelive php version to come out). The goal is to have about 1500+ articles when I go to grad school.
My parents are paying for my undergraduatate education, and therefore I have 2 more years (I'm a junior) of relatively little trouble money wise to get my site up and profitable.
My plan (I started 1 year ago) is to work very hard at school and very hard on my site NOW, so that in 2 years I will be in the phd program I want (UC Berkeley if you wanted to know) and have an income that doesnt require me to be working at Best Buy 30 hours a week on top of school.
Question:
Doing three majors is a crazy ammount of work in itself, but then addded on top of that building a great site is rather hard too. I go out on friday and saterday I try to make it to the beach, but a majority (not all) the rest of the week is given over to school or website.
I was wondering those of you who have been through university and live off your own sites, has it given you more free time? Do I have something to look forward to at the end of these 2 years? Does running a successful content website give you more free time?
Edit: Oh 2 things I wanted to add:
1. I am not considering leaving school or don't worrk.
2. Despite how the post sounds I am in fact quite well rounded individual with a excellent social life. :)
However if you intend to sell a product / service you shold consider the workload involved.
The most important thing to consider is long term maintainence of your site. Clearly you intend to keep building on it, but will your site be reliant on this?
Will your content grow old very fast (meaning if you slack off on updating the site, your income could drop dramatically)?
I started a content site 2 years ago with all the best intentions but there have been times where I simply havent had the motivation to update it. Where I started writing articles daily / weekly I now only update reciprocal links once or twice a month and cover the forum.
Best intentions are great now, but keep in mind you are going to be entering a tough time of your life over the next couple of years, so ideally you should be looking to create a site that can be left alone for weeks or even months at a time without it losing any value to your users.
That all said, even if it doesnt make enough to live on, it will make *something* which as a student, is always a bonus! :) And it will be great experience!
Some things I would strongly recommend:
> Do as much as you can while you are motivated and have the time - you will be thankfull of it later on.
> Get a solid, reliable host that doesnt cost too much. A hard thing to find, but if you will be relying on your site as your income, then it's very important.
> Ideally you want some kinda of user-contributed content (article submissions, discussion forum, etc) so your site can continue to grow even without your input.
All the best!
Scott
I starting answering each of your point, but decided to put them all together.
My goal (warp forward two years) is to let me be involved only in the most minimalistic way (I can get more involved when I have the time or inclination).
This will mean:
1. Articles will not be time sensative, they will be "how to" articles, not "this is new and important now" articles. 10 years down the line I feel these articles will be just as relevent. But thank you for reminding me to make sure of this. :)
2. I want to be competely disconnected from revenue generation. Adsense, Cj.com, and a good fully automatic banner advertising script (accepts payments, places ads, tracks etc...).
3. I want a opowerful user permission system to allow people to submit their own content and articles (currently they submit it to be). This is the reason I am waiting for articlelive to go gold. There asp version (with I am assured is identifical to their php version) puts a great deal of emphasis on who the author is (via an author info box, list of author's articles etc..). I am hoping this will get people interested to write for a backlink (which they do already) or just to see their name in lights. I currently use mambo, but honestly it is not where I want/need it to be right now and I dont want to be updating and updating until they get there. I want to install, set, and forget.
4. I found a great hosting company, I don't know if I am supposed to say it here. I really cannot rave enough about them. I am lucky.
Basically, I want to be able to write articles when I feel like it and not have to deal with advertising, scripting, revenue, etc.. etc... This way I can be as involved or uninvolved as I feel like, even if that means I not bringing in as much money as I could.
Convenience for me over Profits.
To this end I am doing quite a few things very moderately, such as SEO. I dont want to be number 302 in the SERP yesterday, 1 tommorrow, but 392 the week after. Instead I want to be 7 for the next 5 years.
