First Money Making Ventures

[Keith]

I've been on the web for a long time, but always did websites for fun with minimal Adsenese/Private Advertising profits. Money has never been my priority for building sites, I did it as a hobby on things that I enjoyed.

The last year I've been casually selling small sites/domains and turning a few dollars. Now I am seeing a lot of people my age basically living off their web profits (some can, but still have day jobs). I want to get serious and work towards those goals now.

So my question is....yes...finally...

What would be a first good site (subject/category) for someone who isn't new to designing, building and maintaining, but new to trying to turn a profit off it? I realize I need to get into some type of ad program until I get enough traffic to sell ads privately and somehow get mass traffic.

Any help or discussion would be great.

[Nomar]

I am a starter to... I guess its all up to yourself.. what do you enjoy the most.. make a site about that and turn it in a site that makes you money :)

[Keith]

Thanks for the reply Nomar.

I've been reading around some blogs of people who make revenue off websites lately and have decided on a few possibilities. Just need to decide who to go about them as one of them is a fairly big project.

Good luck with your ventures, Nomar.

[Nomar]

Thanks Keith,

I am starting a Video site soon with a partner, i like funny videos and videos are the future in my opinion..

i wist you good luck either :)

[Kenny]

There`s not really a answer to what a first/good site should be.
Be creative, get audience and pr :)

You can still make money from making sites about your hobbies - you just have to be a little unique in your thinking, and then again, thats probably the tricky part.

[LaneyHosting]

There`s not really a answer to what a first/good site should be.
Be creative, get audience and pr :)

You can still make money from making sites about your hobbies - you just have to be a little unique in your thinking, and then again, thats probably the tricky part.

Don't really agree with you about the Page Rank thing. It is highly overrated.

[Submerge]

PR is really important IMO. Site link exchanges are usually based on PR, and site link exchanges are a great way in bringing new traffic.

[Tyler]

PR is valuable, but I don't deem it really as important. Especially not a thing that webmasters should be working on achieving when starting out on a new project.

The biggest factor in relation to PR would have to be on how it raises your SEO real estate in terms of selling textlinks, etc. So, PR is definitely valuable, but it's importance has been dwindling over the years.. kind of how Alexa has as well... (even though Alexa can be manipulated far easier than PR, but that's another story...)

[Submerge]

I think PR helps motivate younger webmasters however. With PR, the higher it is, the more inbound links you have coming towards you. It also depends on the website, I have websites that depend on inbounds links, I have some that don't. So in essence, PR does and doesn't have importance. Overall, I think PR establishes credibility of a site in most visitors minds. (who check it) That's why I try to establish a minimum of PR5 on my sites, which I've been easily able to do.

[Sam]

Sorry to use this kind of language, but I think Pagerank is absolute bullshit, I have sites with very low Pagerank which get around 1000 uniques a day from search engines alone and sites with high Pagerank which get 100-200 uniques a day. So I must agree LaneyHosting on this one, it is highly overrated.

[iworkforthem]

Think everyone is moving away from the topic already. :eek:

My take is really to do something you really like. Take for example, if you like gardening, consider starting a book on it, when you are almost done for publishing... Start a blog to do some PR work to generate some interest on it.

Freakonomics is a good example of this. Even before the book is launched, there's a blog doing it, the guy is around places doing interviews, blah blah, blah...

After you got your book and blog, start your own shop, selling some of your best tools, etc... License it out... Make some royalties. blah blah...

Hm... get the picture... Do something you like. That's the best start ever! :D

Why am I not a millionaire yet!?!?? :D

[Kenny]

Don't really agree with you about the Page Rank thing. It is highly overrated.


Actually, I dident PR as in pagerank, but like in Publicity ( get your name/site out there, like in local newspapers etc )

[Submerge]

Actually, I dident PR as in pagerank, but like in Publicity ( get your name/site out there, like in local newspapers etc )

I would experiments with it first. It depends if the community would have an interest in the topic. Try it for a week/month and see if it converts. If it does, try it out more. I'd assume if it was a community site it would be a good idea, but it also matters on the demographics your aiming for. Do the demographics you're aiming for read the newspaper? Maybe a niche magazine would work better.

[Eric]

What would be a first good site (subject/category) for someone who isn't new to designing, building and maintaining, but new to trying to turn a profit off it? So your skills are designing, building and maintaining websites? I'd say you have plenty of subject/categories to explore.

If you are inclined to write about those things, start a blog with content around those things and, if your content is useful and unique, you'll get the traffic you need to make money.

If you can design, why not create templates to sell for vB or Joomla or WordPress or just in general? It would be easy for a good designer to tap into a few of those markets with unique content because a lot of the template sites have the same templates for sale...

If building and maintaining websites is your gig, why not get some web building work for companies and organizations? There's plenty of building and maintaining to do in that arena. You can also post "Web developer looking for work" ads on your favorite web forums.

Eric

[aloksingh]

I think that anything that interests you or anything that you think will interest you should be your site topic. Keep browsing these forums, if you are new to webmastering. They have a lot of useful information.