Forum Moderators: mack
First of all, while i've been using HTML and making basic websites since the late 90's just for fun, I'm just now starting to realize all of the money making opportunities out there, as long as you know what you're doing. Anyway....
Lesson #1 - Come up with a solid plan, don't just rush into it
So after doing just a little homework, I decided to stop dragging my feet and just get something out there. I looked for templates for a long time before finding one that I liked...or at least liked the design. The layout, however, was impossible to work with for what I was trying to do. After spending hours trying to tweak it, the site looked absolutely horrible and butchered. I scrapped the template, took the $60 hit, and looked around some more. I eventually found one in a category I hadn't considered, and it ended up working perfectly for what I needed. Lesson learned, $60 wasted.
Lesson #2 - Don't get too anxious to start making money
If your site deserves to be making money, then it will...simple market forces.
After just a few days of work on my project, I got the domain, hosting, and whatnot together and decided it was time to get some real exposure. I joined a few cj programs that I thought would be relevent to my target audience, college students from a particular city.
I bought 200,000 from a very popular site among this demographic for a mere $.50 CPM for two of the affiliate programs, choosing to use up all of the impressions over two days so I could start making some real money. Well, those impressions came and went, 0 sales. Are CJ's stats delayed a while, or did I just choose a bad program/bad demographic/bad advertisement? I couldn't put the image tracking into the link, but my PID and AID were definately in the link. It shows I had zero impressions (obviously), zero clicks, zero sales. So theres another $100 gone, but another lesson learned. Education costs really are skyrocketing :-)
That's about it, I just wanted to share those stories. Any advice for me from some of yall that have been there and done that. Any help is much appreciated.
If your site deserves to be making money, then it will...simple market forces.
I don't agree. If your site hits a popular niche, and you find appropriate advertisers or affiliates, then it might make money, but 99% of web sites appear not to make money.
Investing in advertising is risky for any business. In the UK most small businesses fail in the first year, it appears they borrow too much and don't get the revenue. Start small, or better still, don't buy any advertising at all. Rely on search engine traffic to start with, then maybe join a banner exchange program.
Matt
