How can I achieve my desired service-based website?

[Texxip]

So I'm currently 20 years old in college and have been trying different side hustles and businesses throughout the past 3 years but recently I have realized I need to think more with the intent to scale limitless.

I have a concept for a service-based website that I'm passionate about however I have questions on where to start. The purpose of the website would be to provide PC part recommendations to people. They would input their PC parts list OR if applicable, input their url link to their prebuilt PC and from there, set a budget and desired part they wish to upgrade, which would finally result in a part recommendation with a commissioned affiliate link to said part (Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg, etc...). I post here because after reading TMF and UNSCRIPTED I have taken great influence to make sure my ideas are scalable and more full-proof.

My question is how can I achieve this desired result? I have made a Wordpress barebones website and purchased a domain, but before getting too far ahead I started to wonder if Wordpress would be able to do the services I described above even with plugins. I made a reddit post basically asking this same question and was met with answers saying to either learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, which would take years; or met with answers saying to hire a web developer who is much more experienced (I am in college full-time working part-time to barely make rent).

Any advice, recommendations, reality checks, or really anything valuable is appreciated in my scenario. I want to work my a$$ off on this project, but I want to make sure I am on the right building block first.

 

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[Bounce Back]

In 5 seconds googling "pc part recommender" I see many many websites that do this. But I am not going to say that means you shouldn't do it - just that if you haven't thought to do that you may want to slow down and reevaluate your business opportunity identification process and how you act on ideas before diving into either learning to code or paying someone to code it.

 

[Texxip]

In 5 seconds googling "pc part recommender" I see many many websites that do this. But I am not going to say that means you shouldn't do it - just that if you haven't thought to do that you may want to slow down and reevaluate your business opportunity identification process and how you act on ideas before diving into either learning to code or paying someone to code it.

I've seen those websites. They seem to do some but not all of what I wish to achieve. pc-kombo.com will provide a PC build based off a budget, no other factors. Logical Increments provides a list of parts per budget. PCpartpicker offers the holy grail of making your own PC build or recommends a PC for a budget. But nothing seems to offer upgrades based on a users existing part list. And I know the market is there for it because I lurk on many PC related subreddits seeing many people daily ask "What ___ (PC Part) should I upgrade? Here's my spec list/PC link"

 

[Bounce Back]

First thing is draft some super conservative estimates of how much it would even make. Get some stats on web traffic of some of your competitors. Try to find some estimates of how much amazon affiliate ads convert to a sale for general tech websites, etc. Then figure out how much an amazon affilitate sale is even going to give you. If you capture 10% of your competitors traffic how much would that net a year?

What will it take to maintain it in time and money? Is it worth the time?

If you get past the above part:
Now if you sink 6 months - 1 year of your life/freetime into this and start getting some traction and then one of those competitors simply just adds this to their existing tool can you see yourself giving up? Need to gut check yourself now because this isn't the sort of thing that is so complex it would be hard to copy and you are starting with the disadvantage of learning to code/being slower to react.

If you get past the above part:

If you can build it quick (doesn't sound like you have the technical chops yet) then you could crank out a minimum-viable version and get some feedback.

As you can't do that then next best thing would be go validate it by other means in your control Use some drag and drop website maker that can accept an email address. Pitch what the tool is going to do and say it is "in development" and sign up for release email. Run ads on that or spread the word and see if you even get anyone to sign up (compared to visitor count). Etc.

If it is wildy successfully then up to you at that point if everything above is worth ~6months - 1 year it would take to learn to code from scratch (depending on your own knack).


Gotta use your brain a bit here and get creative.

 

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[Texxip]

First thing is draft some super conservative estimates of how much it would even make. Get some stats on web traffic of some of your competitors. Try to find some estimates of how much amazon affiliate ads convert to a sale for general tech websites, etc. Then figure out how much an amazon affilitate sale is even going to give you. If you capture 10% of your competitors traffic how much would that net a year?

What will it take to maintain it in time and money? Is it worth the time?

If you get past the above part:
Now if you sink 6 months - 1 year of your life/freetime into this and start getting some traction and then one of those competitors simply just adds this to their existing tool can you see yourself giving up? Need to gut check yourself now because this isn't the sort of thing that is so complex it would be hard to copy and you are starting with the disadvantage of learning to code/being slower to react.

If you get past the above part:

If you can build it quick (doesn't sound like you have the technical chops yet) then you could crank out a minimum-viable version and get some feedback.

As you can't do that then next best thing would be go validate it by other means in your control Use some drag and drop website maker that can accept an email address. Pitch what the tool is going to do and say it is "in development" and sign up for release email. Run ads on that or spread the word and see if you even get anyone to sign up (compared to visitor count). Etc.

If it is wildy successfully then up to you at that point if everything above is worth ~6months - 1 year it would take to learn to code from scratch (depending on your own knack).


Gotta use your brain a bit here and get creative.

Did some more digging based off your reply.

Being super conservative one of my biggest competitors pulls in about 700,000 visitors a month. Lets say I only can reel in about 30,000 a month and of that 30,000, only 10% decide to actually buy using the commission links. With the average commission rate on electronics from these big retailers being 1% - 2.5%, and again being conservative lets say its on the lower end of 1% with a budget PC costing $800... could generate ~$24,000 monthly.

I'm not aware enough to give myself a proper estimation of time and money to maintain and upkeep a website of that scale, but based on some Googling, being conservative... a few hundred $ a month?

First Part Done

It's hard to see out if a competitor takes my concept and adds to their own website... how much traffic would I lose? I don't see myself giving up because I'm determined to talk out my success story here on this forum in 5 years with this idea.

Second Part Done

I like the idea of trying an email sign-up on a drag and drop website. With that said, do you think the website to be a just barebones email signup with my entire plan of what the website in development will do? Do people even go through the email-giving process for free services like this?

 

[perchboy]

You can build it with a slow wordpress website using 1000 plugins but @Dockid is the GOAT of websites that actually convert visitors to buyers

 

[Texxip]

You can build it with a slow wordpress website using 1000 plugins but @Dockid is the GOAT of websites that actually convert visitors to buyers

See there is no way that I can raise enough funds to hire a developer though for my scenario, even though I'd love to. Funds are limited as almost all my income goes towards tuition, rent, gas, or groceries.

 

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[Dockid]

You can build it with a slow wordpress website using 1000 plugins but @Dockid is the GOAT of websites that actually convert visitors to buyers

Thank you Perch.

 

[Bounce Back]

The "coding" part of this is actually rather easy. What I was getting at with the maintaining is if you don't find a roboust parts + their compatability API for the parts you are looking at a full time job just maintaining the data of parts for this to work because you are making recommendations after all so they kinda have to make sense.

 

[Texxip]

The "coding" part of this is actually rather easy. What I was getting at with the maintaining is if you don't find a roboust parts + their compatability API for the parts you are looking at a full time job just maintaining the data of parts for this to work because you are making recommendations after all so they kinda have to make sense.

Is this API attainable by learning "on the go" or is this something I will need to research and hopefully find or have to possibly outsource?

 

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[Bounce Back]

Is this API attainable by learning "on the go" or is this something I will need to research and hopefully find or have to possibly outsource?

You'll have to understand there is maybe a dozen or so people in the world who have ever built one of these sites and I doubt one of them frequents this forum. So while I don't know for sure if one of those APIs exists I am going to guess if it does it most likely is going to have its access sold by one of your competitors but you'll have to explore and find.

When I say API by the way I mean a service that has an endpoint you hit in code that returns back the data you want in this scenario. So you don't have to live and breath computer part minute details for the rest of your days just to make the site even functionable.

 

[Texxip]

You'll have to understand there is maybe a dozen or so people in the world who have ever built one of these sites and I doubt one of them frequents this forum. So while I don't know for sure if one of those APIs exists I am going to guess if it does it most likely is going to have its access sold by one of your competitors but you'll have to explore and find.

When I say API by the way I mean a service that has an endpoint you hit in code that returns back the data you want in this scenario. So you don't have to live and breath computer part minute details for the rest of your days just to make the site even functionable.

Would you say this is attainable to make myself or is there just too much for my current knowledge level to do ANYTIME soon?

I found a similar website that claims to do what I want but has very little traffic with no recent updates; seems abandoned: envybits.com - build your custom computer

Only thing I would do different is allow a section to paste a URL to a prebuilt PC and have some kind of code to extract the part list from the link and paste in the sections.

 

[Bounce Back]

Would you say this is attainable to make myself or is there just too much for my current knowledge level to do ANYTIME soon?

I found a similar website that claims to do what I want but has very little traffic with no recent updates; seems abandoned: envybits.com - build your custom computer

Only thing I would do different is allow a section to paste a URL to a prebuilt PC and have some kind of code to extract the part list from the link and paste in the sections.

Maybe you could contact them and ask about the site - see if they'd transfer/sell it to you if you think you could market it better. Don't know.

If your question is just on building an API on your own to do this? Yes this is maybe a ~4-8 month grind on your own to learn from scratch depending on your aptitude. You'd have to learn a backend language, play with a database, and mess with hosting services eventually to make it real. You'd then also probablly end up wanting an interface for you to maintain that data which is already going to be time consuming enough, etc.. May be some new age no-code api server creators I don't know about though - I just do things the "real" way (not that that makes it better).

If you question is learning to "consume" or hit an API from the front end - no - if you find one worth its salt it should come with documentation (they want you to use it after all as they most likely charge for it). You would still need front-end skills to do that but that level most find easier because there are more user friendly tutorials and sites usually for each little thing on the front end. (This is where the JS/HTML come in to play).

 

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[Texxip]

Maybe you could contact them and ask about the site - see if they'd transfer/sell it to you if you think you could market it better. Don't know.

If your question is just on building an API on your own to do this? Yes this is maybe a ~4-8 month grind on your own to learn from scratch depending on your aptitude. You'd have to learn a backend language, play with a database, and mess with hosting services eventually to make it real. You'd then also probablly end up wanting an interface for you to maintain that data which is already going to be time consuming enough, etc.. May be some new age no-code api server creators I don't know about though - I just do things the "real" way (not that that makes it better).

If you question is learning to "consume" or hit an API from the front end - no - if you find one worth its salt it should come with documentation (they want you to use it after all as they most likely charge for it). You would still need front-end skills to do that but that level most find easier because there are more user friendly tutorials and sites usually for each little thing on the front end. (This is where the JS/HTML come in to play).

Admittedly, all this newfound knowledge is very, very overwhelming and makes me question my next step.

I'm debating on whether I should take this as a sign to find other ways to "Fastlane" myself or if this is a sign to stick out because the hard things in life will be the most profitable...

 

[RicardoGrande]

Bruh I'm sorry to do this but you just basically described pcpartpicker.com which I've watch grow from an html page to a dyamic, multi-level pc building experience in the past 13 years commanding absolute respect from the hobbyist/enthusiast and even business level PC user segment. Do you have what it takes to uncrown the king?

 

[Texxip]

Bruh I'm sorry to do this but you just basically described pcpartpicker.com which I've watch grow from an html page to a dyamic, multi-level pc building experience in the past 13 years commanding absolute respect from the hobbyist/enthusiast and even business level PC user segment. Do you have what it takes to uncrown the king?

pcpartpicker.com does not have any upgrade feature from what I've seen. And I've used that website for years. Nor do they have a dedicated "input your budget, needs, and here's your part list."

They seem to be the "if you know what parts or what to look for in parts, use me" website

 

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