From Nothing To Something: A Case Study
Even though I really try to save this blog from falling in the category of a “make money online” site, making money online topics are what I get emailed about the most.
I’m not an expert and mostly everything I know about earning online income came from trial and error.
I recently got an email asking for an example of starting with nothing and turning it into something. I will track all expenses and income from one website that I’ve just created over the next six months.
The website is http://www.flipminos.com
Date purchased: 5/23/2008
Cost: $5.99 from 1and1
Why did I purchase it? The Flip is a very popular, low end, usb camcorder that has been used by many bloggers, tweens, teens, early adopters and video journalist over the past year. Two days ago, using twitter, I overheard that a slim version of the flip should be entering the market place early in June. The new cameras are rumored to be called Flip Minos. My chance of failure is 50/50 but that’s what domaining is all about. You see, this is just a rumor and what if the camera is called something else? ... FlipMinos.com will become dead space.
Before I do anything with a site, I site down and open up notepad and then I take project notes. I need to determine what I want out of the site. Do I want to make it a fan site for enthusiasts? Should I cover tips and tricks? Do I want a forum or a blog? How much time do I really have to devote on this one site?
These are all serious questions that shouldn’t be taken lightly. If this is your first site, I suggest going all in. The next set of questions I put out is, how will I monetize? For electronics I usually run with Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates and Buy.com.
The next step is building up the site. I know that it’s old school but for a one page site (what I plan on using) I still use frontpage.
I aim for a lot of key words and clean crisp images.
After I publish, then I start marketing. My short term goal is to get to the first page of google using desired keywords.
I’ll be back in a bit to let you know how I’m doing.
May 29th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
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