• If you build it, they will NOT come. If you build it, you need to work at getting new visitors and maintaining the ones you already have. Your website will not become universally reknown as it leaps onto the world wide web.
• Your ideas will not always be as viral as you think they might be. They will need a big push from you.
• Advertising dollars don’t add up to a whole lot. Period. You need a lot of traffic to make it worth your while. This will take time.
• Online communities don’t simply begin with the touch of a button.
• Growth is exponential, and doesn’t happen in a month. Expect commitment to succeed.
• For every successful website, there are likely dozens that didn’t succeed. Why? the concept and execution were poor.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news on Easter, but I am just trying to help.

Click here to see the Guild Wars Damage Calculator.

I had some time on my hands, I skinned it really quickly, and started spreading the link. I figured I had nothing to lose. I hosted it on my portfolio’s domain name so there wasn’t any additional cost to host it.

The way I look at, any advertising revenue generated will be more then if I had watched a movie instead of skinned the site.

What I Had

• I had a tight budget. I didn’t want to spend a cent, but was willing to invest some time.
• I created a php script that did something useful, something that I couldn’t find in the community, and if you could find it, mine was updated and performed better.
• It was online, which is a clear advantage over executable based programs.
• I had a few hours.

Strategy

• Utilize the fact that there are more then enough advertisers for the keywords “Guild Wars”. Relevant ads mean more click-throughs.
• Use AdSense meant that I didn’t have to maintain the site and sell advertising. Next to no upkeep.
• Host the calculator on my domain so people that are interested could clip off the folder name and end up at my portfolio.
• Present a large link at the footer that would direct people who’d want to know more or contact me to my blog.
• Use forums as a strategy for spreading the link. Fansites typically love resources or any kind of content on their site. This will work to my advantage.
• Use rich keywords to link to my calculator in attempt to get some leverage on a SERP.

The result has been overwhelmingly positive. What I did was similar to hosting a free e-book. People see someone genuinely trying to be helpful and hopefully, bookmark the site for its usefulness.

If you’re interested, you can check it out here.

Step 1 – Brainstorming

Brainstorm your idea. You need to either:

• Solve a problem
• Make someone’s life easier
• Be better then the competition, if they’re present
• Do something new

Using techniques like mind-mapping can help you think of ideas you wouldn’t of otherwise though of.

Read the article »

Step 2 – Develop Ideas

Critically look at every idea, does it have potential to have a revenue stream? Show it to a friend or relative, ask them what they think. Can you explain it well without speaking for half an hour? Do you have the resources at your disposal or the ability to get these resources?

Read the article »

Step 3 – Choose Your Idea

Pick your idea and run with it. If you aren’t confident with your idea, what will motivate you when it comes to finishing it a month later? You should be pleased with your idea
Read the article »

Step 4 – Plan Your Execution

Give yourself a goal and set realistic milestones. Look at what you have to offer in terms of skills and time and gather needed resources.
Read the article »

Step 5 – Execute

You made your milestones, respect them. Find the right balance between getting your project done and rushing it. Plan for obstacles, and get them out of the way quickly. For example, if you know you’re going to need an item that needs to be shipped or processed, do it early.
Read the article »

Idea

The general idea was to pull data from normally unspiderable business databases. These databases would contain business information on smaller cities and smaller markets. These cities and towns don’t have business directories because the normal web entrepreneur doesn’t see a market for a potential reach of 1000 people. The data would be manually enhanced and individual community websites would be launched automatically from the backend.

Resources

• Great backend. Databases could be launched in a second and full sites can be generated given that the data was present.
• Great frontend. Nice looking front-end gives the site more credibility

Why It Worked

• Untapped market
• Easy to launch multiple websites once the data is mined
• Not-so-net-savvy users means high CTR on ads
• Hitting a huge database is like hitting a goldmine
• Ethical content. The content you’re using isn’t copyrighted
• Individual websites for each businesses is great in terms of SEO

Why It Didn’t Work

• Getting the data and developing scripts to mine the data is time consuming
• Low inbound links means it’s difficult to get Pagerank, you need to start with high Pagerank, or buy links
• Finding the databases is difficult

So…

Given that information, what would you do?

At first I was thinking of avoiding a simple “Now do your project!” article, but after some reflection, I, myself, have problems with execution. I’ll go into details regarding some things to keep in mind that can help you get your project done and out the door.

Respect Your Own Milestones

In the previous article, we set milestones each accompanied by details that would help you set them. If you don’t respect your milestones, who knows where your website could end up. Worst case scenario is you might end up not only losing your time, energy and money, but other people’s time, energy and money. You don’t want to upset business partners or clients, you just might need them for your next website project.

Don’t Get Sidetracked

Focus. A lot of people, including myself, suffer from never-finish-itis. As we’re working on a project, we can get an idea for a different project and it suddenly consumes our train of thought. There’s nothing you can do about getting ideas, but you can tell yourself that you need to finish your current project before you start another project and the entire situation will work out for the better. The other project may seem better or more interesting, but one complete project is better then two incomplete ones.

Keep Monetization In Mind

Since one of the goals of your project was most likely to make money, keep that in mind. Does your web designer need to know to give leeway in the right navigation for ad placement? Are there any advertising programs (e.g. AdSense) or local businesses that would benefit from being contacted now, instead of when the project is complete, regarding advertising?

Anticipate Problems

Ackknowledge problems and foresee upcoming problems. One of the worst things that can happen is that your milestones (or entire project) get thrown out of whack because of a simple problem. If one of your contacts hasn’t been getting back to quickly, or is on vacation, keep that in mind. If it took longer for ISPs to refresh your DNS or to get your web server up, keep that in mind. Build around the problem.

Build Up Hype

It’s never too early to start advertising your project. Community forums are a great way to promote yourself, but be sure to keep your posts sincere or you risk having forum users see through you and call you out on what you’re doing. Talk with your friends, talk with your family and talk with your network. You have nothing to lose if you say you have something big coming soon, something important or something that they will want to know about when it happens. The more people you can get on your bandwagon before your project is even released can only be beneficial to your venture. This goes along with the next suggestion…

Be Wary of What You’re Saying and Who You Talk To

It’s likely that you network with like-minded individuals. These same individuals may want to start their own website or are looking for a new business venture and aren’t afraid to push friends under them in the process. When talking to people who you don’t completely trust, be vague, be general, don’t be exact.

In fact, I’ve been doing that very thing since I’m working on a project myself and don’t want to discuss it too in-depth until it’s done.

Hope that helps. If you’re new to the series, I’ve been going through the steps of developing your own website driven by ad revenue in a weekly series.

This week, we’re going to talk about planning the execution now that you’ve narrowed down and chosen your idea for your website.

Set Milestones

Milestones are a wonderful thing. They help motivate but also allow you to manage your time correctly. I found that a work-until-it-gets-done attitude usually ends up with my mind running astray and I begin to work on different or more interesting projects. Give yourself general guidelines that you can follow, example:

September 4th – Logo Design
September 8th – Site Design
September 18th – Content Management System Development
September 24th – Web Development
September 30th – Implementation
November 10th - Marketing

If this is something you’re having trouble with. Think to yourself: What is standing between me and success? Work backwards from your due date as well as forwards from the present.

Plan The Details

This is an extension to the milestones, it goes into a little more detail. This helps you identify problems or delays before they occur. This will end up saving more time then this process takes. Your details may end up looking something like this:

September 24th – Web Development
- Need MySQL server
- Need Hosting
- James, our programmer, doesn’t work on weekends

Gather Your Resources

These are the preliminary things you can take of. Take care of them, It definitely helps to get the ball rolling knowing you’ve already started to take care of things. Examples include:

• Buying the domain name
• Calling up your programmer to see if he’s up for the task
• Buying hosting or appending your existing hosting account
• Buying the required software, eg. Adobe Photoshop and/or Adobe Dreamweaver

Draft an Information Architecture

What is an Information Architecture? When speaking in web development terms, an information architecture is a diagram illustrating the structure of your website and all its components (such as pages or password protected areas). This helps you realize the work that’s ahead of you and helps you better plan your execution. Here’s an example of an Information Architecture that I did for a client:

It doesn’t need to be pretty, or digital for that matter. The best thing about it, is anyone can do it, and it will save you from some long-term problems you can run into.

Draft a Wireframe

What is a Wireframe? When speaking in web development terms, a Wireframe is a diagram representing a specific page and generally lays out how it’s going to work and where things will generally be placed. Like Information Architectures, you don’t need to be good in design or good at computers. These can work just as well on computer or a whiteboard. Here’s an example of a Wireframe that I did for a client:

That’s all for now, if you’re new to the series entirely, you can have a look at the entire section devoted to developing your ad revenue driven website.
Good luck, hope that helps.

Here are a few additional questions you can ask yourself before you go with an idea:

How Much Time Can You Put Into the Project?

Is this a baby you can nurse until it’s successful? Do you only have the summer off, and return to school come September? If your site will need a community to sustain itself, it is important that you’re present to make them feel heard and solve any problems they might have. Otherwise, they will feel neglected and move on to different websites.

Set Your Goal – What Is Success?

Also important, what is success considered for you in terms of this website? Are your goals determined by your number of pageviews? Are they dependent on how much revenue you get each month? Set yourself a realistic goal, and if you’re more of a keener, set multiple goals for different time frames.

How Are Your Social/Business Skills?

This is a key one to look at. The technical people that I know (eg. the people that can do the dirty work, programming, etc.) typically don’t have social and business skills as their strongest points. If you think this is a problem for you, do you need someone representing you? Do you need a second voice to your website?

If you want to go out there and develop a forum community, do you have the social skills and the likability that will get people to stay at the website?

If it’s the case where this isn’t your strong point, consider set-it-and-forget-it websites. Examples include: file-upload websites or one-pager where users can create a custom Flash picture viewer for example. This, of course, doesn’t mean you’re exempt from inter-personal skills. You would still need to market/advertise your product and that does involve some communication.

That’s all for now, if you’re looking for the rest of the articles in the series, you can find in the Ad Revenue Driven Websites Category.

By now, you should have a piece of paper (or .txt file) full of ideas. Not everything you written down is specific or well-thought out. This is the step where we do just that. You should have a look at each and every single item you wrote down. Take a serious look at it. You can develop your ideas by asking yourself some of these questions while having a look at each individual idea.

Does This Already Exist?

This is one of the biggest questions you might have. You could have the best idea in the world, but if someone else already does it, you might have some tough competition.

If it already exists, will your website do what they do, but better? Will it be better enough for a user to give up their loyalty to the other website? It takes a lot for people to break from their routine, you’d better have a hell of a lot of a features or a great selling point.

Is It Simple?

If you need a long winded explanation to detail what your site will do, maybe it’s not worth it. A visitor to your website will only dedicate so much time to figuring out what it is you do. Will a website visitor understand what your website does quickly? or will they become confused or bored and continue on with their internet browsing experience.

How Big Is The Market?

What percentage of web visitors will find your website useful? What percentage of web visitors will be likely to return? Are there a lot of people out there that will find your site useful? Your revenue is often proportional to your website traffic. A bigger market means the potential for more traffic. More traffic means more money.

How Will It Make Money?

Money should be a big factor. Especially if you don’t have the capacity to put out a lot of money upfront. Will you have enough money to make server payments? Will the ad revenue easily offset the bandwidth costs? If you’re considering hosting videos or applications for people to post on their MySpace page, where will your money come from?

Can You Make It Happen?

Will you need a developer? Will you need a designer? How do you plan on recruiting one and paying for one? Think of all your resources, do you have a friend in mind from college that you think might want to partner with you? Would they design you a website in return for a case of beer? Would you split the revenue with them?

That’s all for now. If this is the first time you visit this website, last week, I talked about Step 1 of developing your own ad revenue driven website, Brainstorming.

Brainstorming can undeniably be one of the longest lasting steps. It can take months to be suddenly hit with a great idea for a website.

Solve a Problem

Like any other real-life inventions or businesses, websites built with the intention of making money online are no different. One of the key things your website should be doing is solving a problem.

Analyze YOUR web browsing experience, what would make your life easier? Analyze a friend’s web browsing experience, what do you think would make their life easier? It always helps to talk to people, anyone. You should never limit yourself when brainstorming.

UPDATE: Jay Hamilton-Roth suggests that: “Solving a problem might be intimidating for some people. Simply reducing someone’s (physical, psychological, business, financial) “pain” is sufficient. To know pain, you need to know the market you’re targeting.”

Don’t Restrict Yourself

Another great rule of brainstorming. Never think that anything can’t be done. Don’t limit yourself based on your strengths and/or weaknesses. Think beyond the internet if you have to. What if you incorporated real life?

As an example, I remember seeing a campaign spread through the internet like wildfire. It consisted of an online application that let you design the front of a postcard, input a recipient and a message and your recipient would get it at their doorstep. Now that’s innovation.

Don’t Worry About The Little Things

This kind of goes with not restricting yourself; don’t start worrying about how you’ll make money or any other little details. Brainstorming is about transferring what’s going on through your head onto paper without worrying or thinking.

Next article, I will discuss narrowing down your idea. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Step 2 looks at what questions you should ask when critically looking at the ideas you’ve brainstormed.