My plan for the coming year

[Lunarion]

Hi everyone,

I'm a teacher from the Netherlands and enjoy my job, but want to be able to work more in my own time and preferabbly work hard the next few years to be able to work less later on. I've been thinking about a couple of ideas to work on this, and I'd like to know if people on this forum can help me determine whether or not I am being realistic. So far I've got two plans that I think can be monetized.

1) A website with Pilates excercises for people at home. The website is already online and I try to write both background articles and complete training programs. Once I've developed a rather steady flow of visitors and a lot of content, I will create an e-book and sell it on the website. I might also create a membership-website where people can get more personalized training programs.

2) A website for maths teachers with activities for in class. Bilingual education is growing very fast in The Netherlands but good material is lacking. I've got both the contacts and the resources to develop these materials and would like to create a website where people can get these activities from. I'm still thinking about how to monetize this.

I want to focus on idea 1 for now. I did some research and am already climbing in the Google-ladder. Within half a year, I would like to earn 400,- per month with this website. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it here, so if people are interested in the link, let me know.

I'm also very interested in musicals and am producing a musical on my school right now with more than 50 pupils performing. I'd really like to do more with this, but don't really know how to handle it. I'm sure people would want something like that, judging from the amount of interested pupils at the start of the project, but to earn money with it is something else.

Am I being realistic with the money goal? Does anyone have specific tips on how to cope with things or what I should look out for?

I'd be really gratefull for any advice that people could give!

 

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[MCD]

Could you PM your link. Any plans for monetization besides the ebook? Generally with content based sites such as your own, advertisements are incorporated into the site for a steady income stream. Make sure you build a list with your site, so that you can pitch new products and affiliate products with ease.

 

[Lunarion]

I PM'ed you (is that actually a verb?) About the advertising, I did put some Adwords ads on the website, but I don't want to be totally dependent on that. Furthermore, I think too many ads might make the website look less professional.

 

[MCD]

I PM'ed you (is that actually a verb?) About the advertising, I did put some Adwords ads on the website, but I don't want to be totally dependent on that. Furthermore, I think too many ads might make the website look less professional.

I completely agree with your opinons on advertising. Advertising is hard to get right, you need enough to make it a viable source of revenue but not to much that it scares away readers. Right now I think your site would work well with text link ads from adsense below each article but above the comment box. One thing you could do is match the colors of the ads to the colors of your site. Your CTR (click through ratio) will be lower but your site will maintain the clean professional appearance you seek.

A huge problem I see with your site is that I can not find any option to subscribe. An RSS feed is a must if you want to be successful. You can set one up easily with a service like www.feedburner.com or any other service you desire. Your RSS feed should be easy to locate on every page of your site, this is because an RSS feed is vital to having a responsive, trusting audience.

I would strongly suggest you get a service like Email Marketing Software & Email Marketing Services from AWeber and start building a list. What a list is, is a collection of email adresses that belong to people who are very interested in your niche. This list is ideal for promoting affiliate products on clickbank and other sites. I would say that 90% of sites like yours make most of their money through pitching to their list. Also when you release your ebook sales will come much easier if you have a huge list to promote it too.

As far as content goes you seem to be doing a good job but I would work on consistency. People want to be know that when they come up you will have a new post up. Decide a schedule and stick to it. Wether it be every day, every week, or every moth doesn't matter, (although the more frequent your posts are the higher you're chance of success) just post consistently!

Thats about all I have to say just keep doing what you're are doing try to incorporate some of what i said and don't give up without a fight.

 

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[Lunarion]

Hi again,

I inserted ads below my articles, but they are not text-based ads. I'll try to see to that. Furthermore, I added an RSS feed now. I will start with Aweber in May, because of the cheap month you get when you start and I want to be able to use it to its fullest and post more frequently than. Thanks for your help, I speeded you for it.

I'll continue with what I'm doing right now, but any tips or hints are welcome of course!

 

[Lunarion]

Hi everyone,

this thread kind of failed as a diary when I stopped updating it, so I decided to revive it by admitting that I have failed to make the website a succes. After doing SEO work, writing articles, getting backlinks and putting quite some effort into it, I somehow failed to get it working. I tried to learn from it and started a second website, but that one also never got to the level that I predicted. I lost my motivation and stopped working on it for a few months, and decided to get back on track a day ago. So, here I am again, with hopefully some new website ideas in the near future!

 

[Thrive]

A good thing to do would be to look back deeply and try to figure out what you did wrong. Experience is priceless only if you learn something from it. :smxB:

 

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[Lunarion]

Just today I had a look at the two websites that I build before, and found that one of them had been steadily attracting 130+ visitors per month without me even looking at it for almost 5 months! That surprised me and is prove to me that something in this area is possible, I just have to find ways to increase the value of the website.

To go into detail: 24 posts have been made so far, ranging from specific training programs to background articles. I inserted an RSS feed, but won't get a lot out of that if I don't regularly update. Furthermore, the idea a Aweber sound promising and I have considered that, but it Aweber asks a montly fee and I want to start with that after I got some money from the site, so I know that it can be leveraged.

As for a planning, I want to write some more articles for my second website, which focuses on running. I find that I have more passion for this, thus I should be able to motivate myself easier to keep it up.

I'll let you guys know what happens...

 

[Lunarion]

A good thing to do would be to look back deeply and try to figure out what you did wrong. Experience is priceless only if you learn something from it. :smxB:

Absolutely true. I think the reason it failed is because I gave up. I got lost in the huge amount of information on the internet about SEO and such and just focused so much on the details that I lost the passion to write the articles.

I will start with writing, something I know I can do, and look into SEO optimizing later on.

 

[Thrive]

Which website are you going to rework?

 

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[Lunarion]

A website about running, focused on keywords that I know can attract a lot of visitors. I can come up with more content for that website and make it grow more, compared to the Pilates website where I have done pretty much all that I can. Furthermore, the running website has a greater potential due to the better keywords research and domain name.

 

[thesaintv12]

Don't give up too soon. Websites can take a long time to gain traction unless you have a good start up budget.