Ads that don't sell anything

[StevieB]

Theory : Built a website that generates tons of traffic for a niche that people make a lifestyle of. Ideally one that's gone under the radar of large corporations but has a sizable following. Generate tons of traffic offering value for that lifestyle, such as artwork, videos, free games, a forum, and a social media scroll with 0 ads. Use paid traffic generation from existing websites in that niche and ensure the website is SEO friendly.

The idea here is the number ONE goal is NOT to sell them anything but bring in consistent traffic and capturing emails. No ads will keep more people coming back as opposed to other free sites that are ad driven. The objective is to have lots of people in a lifestyle niche frequenting your website that you have all the contact emails for. You want a place that LOTS of people "hang out" at in that niche. I believe with this type of ad campaign you are simply funneling in interested people to your website as opposed to trying to sell them something with the ad. If you try and sell them with an ad your taking a 'one shot' approach as opposed to if they bookmark your website they'll come again and again and maybe one day they'll be ready to buy.

Once you have all this traffic of people "hanging out" at your value packed website add another link with products. That's not to say I am going to wait until I get millions of visitors, but a decent amount of traffic. I don't plan on investing in products if my website can't even get traffic for free value. These people are buying this stuff anyway, and while they are hanging out on your website, oh look I can get this here now. Since you have all their emails do an email campaign packed with value and occasionally have products listed. Start a subscription based plan that will offer discounts at various levels depending on what subscription level they choose. And/or offer tokens that are good for 1 particular type of product (like Audible).

It always amazed me that high traffic generation sites such as forums, blogs, image hosting sites, etc... many times just decide to throw up ads as opposed to products.

This website will combine a forum, image hosting, social media scroll, videos, games, and products related to the niche... all in phases.

The 1st phase will be to host images, a forum and a social media scroll.

The niche that I have chosen the products are very popular in the US but actually somewhat difficult to get in the US.

I've paid for a domain name and webhost and am currently interviewing candidates for web design and programming. I've also done tons of research on this specific niche and found that website that only host images are bringing in upwards of 20 million visitors every 6 months. Google analytics also has searches for some things in this niche at 100k-1m per month. Yet interestingly enough there's only a very small handful of websites in the US you can purchase these products.

 

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[sparechange]

i have similar thinking, build a brand and soft sell.

 

[sparechange]

are you on fb/insta/twitter/youtube?

 

[StevieB]

are you on fb/insta/twitter/youtube?

I'm on FB/Instagram and will be building a twitter account.

 

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[StevieB]

Didn't get nearly as much as I hoped I'd get done because of my soul sucking job completely killed almost all my time over the weekend (quite literally on the phone almost 13 hours each day). Thankfully I was able to squeeze in an interview with the web dev's so at least they have an idea of what I want. They've built a lot of websites and actually said my idea was "very interesting".

Still waiting to hear some feedback on if my budget is set right for their talent. They're out of Ukraine. I also have another interview lined up hopefully tommorow.

I brainstormed a lot more idea's to add to the website, have a lot of possible suppliers listed, and a marketing plan to start pulling in traffic (also setup a twitter account). Next step is to start reaching out and getting the first phase of the website built. Since the products are digital and many of them are very small companies or even individuals I may just hire someone to start scanning and contacting them for me instead of getting bogged down in the weeds contacting everyone (I'm talking thousands of contacts here).

Thankfully I have a rental (soon 2) and my soul sucking job to help fund it. The more I brainstorm and look at the numbers the more confident I know I have a winner, just need to execute it correctly. Finding good web developers that are affordable will be key as well as a low customer acquisition cost since most of my profit will come on the back end. Your only as good as your weakest team member.

 

[scarface96]

Hello
So you are going to selling infoproducts or real products ? Its intresting for me , i also want to start something like you do with some information products , but in fact at the moment i dont have any content and idea what talking about. Im watching you have a nice day

 

[StevieB]

I will be selling digital downloadable software and physical products that pertain to the niche of the website. Also I will be providing a platform for independent developers to sell their software on a platform that they know is full of their targeted market. So I won't actually be creating the content, just providing the platform. This particular content has very few platforms available for them to sell on. But I'm not so much as thinking about that as I am about creating value for those interested in the niche. I'm not creating just a website, I'm creating massive value to a niche, that has been neglected by large companies, that will create a community that will generate repeated traffic. That is my current focus. I already know what the products will be, that's the easy part.

It's the time tested saying impact millions and you'll make millions. Focus on generating traffic (through value) and you can always find a way to monetize. Many people just use advertising but I have something much different in mind. Mind you if you have billions of users you can make billions just in advertising alone.

Update : Interviewed 2 more candidates for the website developers. One stands out slightly from the other two. I have most of the details for the website documented and have begun creating the wireframe for the developers. This won't be completed until next week because I have a detour in Florida purchasing a rental property this weekend and my soul sucking job continues to waste my time.

 

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[StevieB]

A quick update :

So far I've gone back and forth with a couple of different companies based in Ukraine about programming the website. The wireframes will be ready Monday. I can throw up a wordpress site easily but this concept is going to require some heavy coding so I need to outsource to someone who has a lot more coding experience than myself.

I've solidified the concept and documented it. Now I just need to put it on Upwork and takes bids. Even though I've spoken to a few companies I haven't committed to any contracts just yet. My resources are limited so I'll only have one shot for a while at making the code right.

I've removed some of the wording, but here are some of the notes and concepts behind the website..


Functionality :


- There will be different levels of Admins. The ‘main webmaster’ will be the one that sets up the bank account links that transactions go to. This is only admin who will have access to the financial accounts. This is also the only admin that can authorize other admin accounts. Other admins can make adjustments to categories, featured ---------, ban / delete / add users, add and delete products, -------------


- Security; I certainly do not want this to be subject to attacks such as mysql injections, etc.. I would like some assurances that security will be kept in mind while coding this website and it won’t be vulnerable to many attacks.


- Users “power users” who are authorized will be able to upload ------------- to their own profile that will show up in the category they chose, at a price they choose. They will also be able to choose what tags are attached to that content. Power users will have to be approved by admins. Each power user will submit what they would like to be authorized to upload, such as ------------- etc.. All content that users upload will have to be reviewed by an admin before being posted. Other “regular” users will be able to “follow” these power users.


- Users who upload content will have a profile that all of their content will be attached to. In this profile they will have a blog like home page they can post updates, link to content, have a donations link for their profile, and have followers who can support them with recurring contributions such as having access to exclusive content for a monthly fee. This exclusive content will only be accessible to those who pay the monthly fee. This is similar functionality to websites like -------------. This profile will also enable them to do a live video feed and have contributions sent to them while doing the live feed, the live feed will have a chat window they can interact with those who chose to enter the room. ------------- There will need to be a way to adjust the % of each transaction that will go to the content creators and the main website admin. Such as 30% of each transaction will go to the main admin and the remaining 70% will go to the content creator or “power user”.


- Product check out will also list below “users who purchased this also.. Purchased” - if there is no data available for that product of what others purchased then a random product in the same category will be shown.. Up to 3 other products. There will also be an offer on 10% off if they bundle in more products. There will be a subscription offered to each user of various different tiers -- such as they pay $20/month and they will get 10% off each purchase, if they pay $50/month they will get 30% off each purchase, etc… Or they may be offered 3 free products for a monthly subscription fee. This monthly subscription fee will need to be tweaked by Admins. So it may be changed from a % off one month and the next month it may offer free products in exchange for the subscription.


- Analytics - Each customer purchase will need to be tracked and where that customer came from. IE they found the website via google search, made a purchase, how many purchases, etc.. and the average transaction amount made, as well as overall average that a single customer has made. The analytics I’m looking for here are average customer lifetime value, average transaction rate, and also how many people have made a purchase vs. how many unique visitors use the website - customer conversion rate. Utilizing pre-existing tools such as google analytics to achieve this is acceptable, I just need a way to do it.


- Search function - each category will be searchable via the search field. Forums will search through posts / user ID’s.


- Ecommerce - initially the website will only have digital products, but will be hosting physical products. The ecommerce store will need the capability for shipping / downloading products / taxes. Also see above about the checkout upsell functionality.


- Forum - users will be able to ‘like’ other users posts. For each like it will build up ‘reputation’ that’s listed under the user's avatar.

 

[StevieB]

Progress update :

Total estimate cost for the website (heavy programming involvement due to unique functionality and website flow). This took longer than I wanted due to time differences, thankfully I found someone willing to talk on weekends (really, some contractors on upwork take off weekends? wow)

~ 10k and around 3 months. I expect this to overrun around 20%.

Got 3 wireframes completed. The rest are being worked on. Sorted out almost all of the concepts and exactly how it's going to work and how I'm going to monetize it, what's going to make it different from competitors, and why people are going to stay there and make a purchase.



Thoughts :

This is turning out to be a fairly complex project. The reason being is I'm using my knowledge in human psychology of answering many questions before going into this, along with what I've learned from some prior failures.

1. Why will people visit this website?
2. How am I going to drive traffic to the website? What's the marketing strategy?
3. Why will people bookmark this website?
4. Since I'm not creating the content, why are content creators going to come to this website? How will I get them to come in the first place?
5. How am I going to start off with lots of content when the website launches?
6. How is the website going to be monetized? Repeated subscriptions?


While really thinking through how the UI is going to work I had a huge eureka moment.

The concept model that I'm emulating here is Amazon, Patreon, YouTube, etc... Other people create the content and I provide the platform, I just need to drive the traffic to the platform (which the free content will help a lot with). They create the content and the website takes a small cut.

Anyway the eureka moment is going to change the way this particular type of niche works when people view this type of content. Typically they just view images/videos but this will as default when they register, have a feed of content posted by users they follow. So only content they choose will show in their feed and it will automagically update when the users post new content. Instead of sifting through tons of images/videos they'll be served with a feed of content from users they chose to follow.

Interestingly enough the programmer I'm working with has a lot of business knowledge and I can tell I've seriously peaked his interest in this project. I just hope he doesn't run off and do something himself like what happened with Facebook.

I found a website that is *sort of* similar to what I'm going to create but their problem is they don't know how to monetize it (they just threw up some advertising) properly nor have they implemented this new way of serving the content that I'm envisioning, nor do they have as many products that I will be providing. This website had over 4.5 million visitors last month alone. Over time if I could duplicate that type of traffic, which this website will be far superior so I expect to surpass those numbers, even a 5% conversion ratio would put me in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a month arena.


This is starting to get exciting but the best is yet to come. I have a solid marketing strategy to drive traffic to the site, it'll just be a matter if people end up sticking around.

I estimate the website to be done in 4 months, and traffic to start ramping up by this time next year to start making a profit.

 

[Andy Black]

Skimmed the thread. Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs.

Wondering if you're able to put more emphasis on marketing and getting visitors *now* rather than have so much emphasis on building and developing the site and backend?

I had a couple of calls with @Scott that you might find helpful.

From my own experience I've found it helpful to talk to people asap and build what they ask me to build.

Are you able to send visitors to a page this week and start capturing emails or leads so you can contact them straight away?

If paid visitors, then how quickly can you recover the cost of the ad spend?

The obvious worry is that you spend 10k+ and 3 months before engaging the market...

 

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[StevieB]

Skimmed the thread. Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs.

Wondering if you're able to put more emphasis on marketing and getting visitors *now* rather than have so much emphasis on building and developing the site and backend?

I had a couple of calls with @Scott that you might find helpful.

From my own experience I've found it helpful to talk to people asap and build what they ask me to build.

Are you able to send visitors to a page this week and start capturing emails or leads so you can contact them straight away?

If paid visitors, then how quickly can you recover the cost of the ad spend?

The obvious worry is that you spend 10k+ and 3 months before engaging the market...

My primary focus will be on getting the website up with valuable content, that should only take 3-4 weeks (or less).

Adding all of the functionality that I envision is going to take upwards of 3 months, but yes I do plan on having a functioning website much sooner so I can start capturing emails of interested prospects (I actually already have a landing page but have not started marketing it, I would at minimum like to have some content before then).

For this type of site I know it's a risk because it won't start turning a profit until much later. This is actually a market I feel is seriously underserved with a huge fan base, so a Patreon page may also be an option.

There's a massive subculture in English speaking countries that's frothing at the mouth for this content that large corporations have largely ignored, so I plan to move to fill it. When I told my programmer the numbers of users that visiting the 'sort of' similar website (that sucks at knowing how to monetize it) he couldn't believe it.

But yes you are 100% correct and I should think more about how to start capturing leads now.