Anyone Developing at the moment?

[max99x]

Anyone one here spent this kind of money or a sizeable amount and was it money well spent?

No.... but when I was 15-18 I didn't spend more than about £50 on any site really including domain, theme, content etc I did it all myself and they make nice money .... few years later I stepped up and invested more money (£3k) into a site and the return was not a bad return monthly and I ended up selling for low £xx,xxx. Now this isn't always the case but when you put more time and money and act like its a full on proper business I see most people do lot better than doing lots of little 'hobby' site stuff.

I'm now investing bigger chunks in new businesses that I see have legs either on my own or with other people. It's more fun and you build proper businesses.

but "making a living online" can mean a lot of things. From living in a £5m house, fancy cars, holidays, awesome lifestyle and earning 6 figures a month, to still living with your mum and doing a little bit of affiliate stuff here and there to add to your Job Seekers Allowance.

In terms of people earning off the internet, it is very true, 'making a living online' can mean earning the same as min wage or millions. It's all relative, I spent 3 months working remotely in Asia last year (http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/general-board/123530-ive-moved-asia-3-months.html) and as soon as I was there I was essentially richer. I was spending around £16 per day to live, work, eat out for every meal, drink, relax and live in a nice hotel with a pool. I pay near double that for rent in London alone. The moral go live in Asia haha (no it's worth a visit if you have no ties to the UK tho, i'm actually heading back in a week for 5 week stint)

 

[ian]

Have any of you moved from affiliate to merchant and how has that been?

Technically speaking yes, moved away from affiliate based commissions to build a large ecommerce retail business which worked out very well, the margins (depending on industry) are of course much better than commissions, but there is one major downside (and many small ones); the biggest being that you have to deal with customers, and the many personalities! There wasn't however a link, i.e. wasn't promoting a product for a cut and decided to sell it myself, but it has certainly been valuable to see both sides of the coin.

I like the idea of building one huge site but I'm not sure how realistic it is unless you have a team of people. Of course some sites for whatever reason, grab peoples imagination/attention and fly but more of these sites with ambition seem to burn through extraordinary amounts of cash and still fail so how realistic is it for a one man band to build something big and how much do you have to invest before it either takes off or you hold your hands up and say it's not working.

It depends on timeframe really; if it is a long term view, and a willingness to learn, then quite a lot of the work can be done 'in-house' by a single person or small team, but when third parties are required, as will be the case with my project, it will start costing a lot, which is where planning is so important, setting an upper limit, targets (be that visitors or revenue). You can't do this with the 'one site a week' approach, but then the risk of a single large project is much higher. Many aren't however in a position to do it, but for those that can, why not. Life is a gamble!

 

[ian]

Can I just add I like these conversations, sensible discussion on high level business building; what so many of us are working (for the most part, solitary) towards.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Hardly any of your cost on a major project is going to go on design. You could easily get a high end designer to do a high end design of a typical style website and comfortably have change from £5-10k. Coding is all going to depend on the budget. But a lot of affiliate type business models, someone else has already done all of the real labour intensive coding work. Like Mobiles4everyone stuff for a phone site, or Pingtree for a payday loans one, etc etc. If you outgrow those middleman later on then its no big deal to spend £50k coding something up to remove them from the equation as you're already earning at that point.

The majority of your spend is going to go on promotion, advertising and branding really. With potentially a big one off lump at the start on a domain too.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Has this been critical to your success? By that I mean, would you still be doing okay without that level of spend on promotion?

I think if you are unwilling or unable to spend that sort of money on the promotional side of things, you're not going to make a success of working online. Or you're going to be a 'full time internet marketer' that barely scratches out a living while living rent free in parents house.

The above may not apply if you come up with something truly brilliant. The above certainly will apply if you're going to do something 'normal'. Like a car insurance, payday loans, thin flight school affiliate, voucher site, or one of SF's weekly sites etc.

 

[max99x]

Is that because you have spare cash? From what you read, many investors don't see a return on an investment for years. Is there anything in particular that you look for in a business before you invest, for example do they need to be profitable or is there a certain amount of speculation going on in the hope you've found the next Google?

Essentially yes but i'm not talking big sums, thousands creeping slightly into 5 figures. But ultimately it's investments in stuff that can make a good return quite quickly.

Sounds like you've read up on Venture Capital where someone or a investment firm invest £100k here, £500k, there, £2 million there, £10 mil there and do it 50 times hoping 1 or 2 will sell out to bigger companies for £100mil etc

 

[bonusmedia]

I think if you are unwilling or unable to spend that sort of money on the promotional side of things, you're not going to make a success of working online. Or you're going to be a 'full time internet marketer' that barely scratches out a living while living rent free in parents house.

The above may not apply if you come up with something truly brilliant. The above certainly will apply if you're going to do something 'normal'. Like a car insurance, payday loans, thin flight school affiliate, voucher site, or one of SF's weekly sites etc.

Once you have money it makes sense to throw a bit at speeding things up but others can still get there with time and effort alone. Still plenty of room to break into loads of markets. Maybe not car insurance.

That flight school affiliate is fattening up nicely, it may be a slow burner for now but it has a good shot at being the biggest channel in the market one day.

People will always say things were easier/better before they had to adapt to change. The internet is really still in its Wild West days and there's no shortage of opportunities.

Essentially yes but i'm not talking big sums, thousands creeping slightly into 5 figures. But ultimately it's investments in stuff that can make a good return quite quickly.

Sounds like you've read up on Venture Capital where someone or a investment firm invest £100k here, £500k, there, £2 million there, £10 mil there and do it 50 times hoping 1 or 2 will sell out to bigger companies for £100mil etc

Seedrs.com - anyone can play venture capitalist for pocket money now.

 

[BeachLife]

Can I just add I like these conversations, sensible discussion on high level business building; what so many of us are working (for the most part, solitary) towards.

+1 This is the best thread on Acorn for a long time.

 

[cc976a]

The truth is many of us (me included) were waiting for Google to rank us top for a great EMD, where the affiliate commission (with zero risk) meant we could lay on the beach watching the pounds roll in.

It's still possible to create a site in a week and earn, just as it is to spend six months on a large scale business filing a specific need - the end result will be how good a marketer you are.

If you can build a site that delivers 'something' that you understand fully, people want - and you know just how to reach them, you will stand a much greater chance of success then moving on to your next site hoping Google is going to rank you.

I'm sick of 'content'. Sometimes there are only so many ways to write about something you don't have much interest in...trying to get to more than 500 words, so Google will notice you. I'm probably not creative enough to put a great newsworthy spin on the niche of the site.

I'm no longer churning out site after site but concentrating on one big development (that I'm hoping will be the big one) - but I am thinking about marketing, advertising, branding, PR visual engagement, great editorial writers and above all a product I feel passionate about and want to get out there and promote.

To keep writing 1,000 words a night on a topic that barely interests me, waiting for Google to come along and make me a millionaire (or whatever your goals) is more likely to be a waste of time now, than it was 10 years ago, and energy that could be spent building a profitable business.

 

[accelerator]

My biggest headache is not knowing what to invest my time into. Most companies struggle to build one successful business/web site so building shit loads of them because I have the names seems a bit pointless, arrogant and counter productive.

Why don't you let the forum know what names you are considering developing, and we'll give our opinion on prospects? I don't think you need to worry too much about letting potential competitors know, it's all about execution now.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

Can I just add I like these conversations, sensible discussion on high level business building; what so many of us are working (for the most part, solitary) towards.

Yes, well said.

 

[BeachLife]

Why don't you let the forum know what names you are considering developing, and we'll give our opinion on prospects

I can't help but feel this is a reflection of the domainer's mindset from the past. The domain name in some ways doesn't matter. In fact, if you are talking EMDs they in some ways count against you. The development costs are the same irrespective of domain. The marketing costs are substantial for any domain, unless you are very clever. It has been said many times that a killer EMD is now very expensive to market.

We should be asking him what niche he is looking at, and how he intends to develop a business in that niche. The domain for it can be decided later.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Once you have money it makes sense to throw a bit at speeding things up but others can still get there with time and effort alone. Still plenty of room to break into loads of markets. Maybe not car insurance.

That flight school affiliate is fattening up nicely, it may be a slow burner for now but it has a good shot at being the biggest channel in the market one day.

I think the big risk is you get caught in the meantime before you fatten it up. Its going to be impossible to justify any sort of value add when you have 2 sentences of unique text on a page and you're an affiliate of an affiliate.

From Googles point of view, what exactly have you added to the user path that couldn't have been achieved by going to the 'real' affiliate of Wish.co.uk or whoever in the first place?

If you can't answer that then you have a business model Google hates and you shouldn't expect any mercy via algorithms, or manual reviews.

I don't know what the answer to that question should be - there isn't any obvious standout as to how you add some actual end user value here.

 

[martin-s]

I think the big risk is you get caught in the meantime before you fatten it up. Its going to be impossible to justify any sort of value add when you have 2 sentences of unique text on a page and you're an affiliate of an affiliate.

There's plenty that could be done to fatten this site up - and it's a great name. Like you say, the risk is that the site grows too slowly and gets overtaken.

Ideas:

* A course of articles taking you through the typical process of learning to fly (edit: I see there is already a ground school - exactly the sort of thing, just needs a lot more content)
* Video explanations of flight effects
* Q&A from flight instructors
* Series of expert interviews with flight instructors

There is plenty to do on conversion too.

 

[SF]

Keep it all in this thread...

 

[Edwin]

A very interesting discussion!

Another goalpost that has moved recently is the 'mobile' aspect of site development. Google has put webmasters officially on notice that they're going to start using mobile friendliness as a strong ranking signal (for mobile searches) from April 21.

So anyone who learned how to make old-style static HTML sites in the "olden days" of tables or fixed-width CSS design (or who is monetising the same) is going to have to work out how to make them mobile ready/responsive or face a potentially major loss of rank.

And that's likely to be a completely new skill set for many, and one that's much harder to pick up than CSS/HTML was...

There's more info on Google's upcoming change here:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4739412.htm

 

[ian]

I couldn't agree more, domains are my achilles heel. I own what I consider to be some nice names but I've always tended to focus on finding a domain to buy and then thinking of a business to build around it. I wonder how many of you do the same, see an interesting name and think of a reason why you should buy?

Yep, reason I came into domains was for inspiration through domain names available. Unfortunately the few that have inspired me have either been excessively expensive, or caught by someone else (which leads back to the first reason).

 

[Retired_Member38]

It must have dramatically increased costs for businesses that outsource their development and who don't have the luxury of being able to use templates.

We just had a responsive version of a big site created. It cost a one off $1600. Site looks exactly the same as normal on desktops, but displays responsive in mobiles/tablets. Whether it looks 'better' or not is debatable but it does have the 'mobile friendly' tag next to it in Google now, which is effectively what I was buying.

As a one off cost I don't think its that bad. I'm happy enough for Google to put hurdles in place like this with the threat of hurt rankings if you don't pay the toll. As its not going to take many competitors to not pay (or make a mess of it) to see a ROI on £1000 or so.

 

[Retired_Member38]

For whatever reason, be it protecting a revenue stream or not wanting to brag, people are often reticent to share their success, whereas people who have failed or are failing seem to be more willing to share their story - often to the chagrin of Invincible.

I try to convince myself that I'm a realist in the hope that I've not become a pessimist but whatever the truth is, I enjoy it when people open up about their success - no matter how great or small. It gives a bit of belief to those of us who struggle with this nagging doubt that you're wasting your time

I'm far more open about my failures than successes. As if a specific site has failed, and a general business model has went down along with it, then I have basically nothing to lose by saying I did this or that and this happened and I lost $x and learned y.

If I'm still in the game with a specific domain, or a general idea, then there is pretty much nothing to gain by sharing it publicly. Like for example Sean the one I mentioned to you privately... it would be pretty dumb for me to post about it publicly.

If I ever sell out for 8 figures and have nothing to lose at that point, I'll come back and make a thread about it :lol:

 

[Systreg]

Another goalpost that has moved recently is the 'mobile' aspect of site development. Google has put webmasters officially on notice that they're going to start using mobile friendliness as a strong ranking signal (for mobile searches) from April 21.

I only look in webmaster tools if I go to add a new site, I logged in yesterday as I'm putting a new site on WP, and saw 6 messages about mobile visitors to some of my sites, which are old html sites. I wont be doing anything about most of those as I'm not interested in how those rank, apart from one that gets 500 - 1K (sometimes 1.5K) uniques a day, so I may transfer that one to WP instead.

What does annoy me is, Google sites like Adsense and webmaster tools don't work properly in Opera browser, they don't support it, yet they preach about making sites usable for visitors

As I understand it, if you make a WP site, it's automatically mobile friendly, yes?

I started making a car hire site on WP yesterday, I was wondering if anyone else has a car hire site and what your conversion rate % is like compared to number of visits?

On the AffWin site it says that EasyCar has a conversion rate of 14.39%, and Nova Car Hire 9.07%, though I expect figures will be a lot less than that. I have another hire domain that has averaged 19 uniques per day for the last 15 months as a holding page with noting on it, I'll 301 that to the new site to hopefully pick up some sales/commissions.