Starting an internet Business (Help?)

[CraigD]

Hey guys, me and a friend have come up with an idea to start a website (Dsiclosing what type). We havent started any of the programming yet (We have the C+ and HTML code skills to make what we need). But as any new business person would know we have questions! Ill list them off so maybe you guys could help us? Positive feedback would be a great help .
Questions:

When we make this website will we have to trademark our logo then seperately have to copyright the sight? How would we go about doing this? Legalzoom a good option?

Me and a friend were pondering the thought of how to get traffic to our website without mindlessly spamming forums such as these to advertise our website. We dont want to pay the sites that you need to pay for traffic, all they do is ping the website making it seem as though people are actually accessing your website. Any thoughts/help?

Advertisements? How in gods green earth are we going to get the banners on our site for money? We were looking into Isocket.com? Is this worth it or can we save and do it on our own? Also we know we are not going to overload the site with ads and leave it dormant, we are going to actively pursue this site and keep it up to date, we want people to enjoy our services!

We want to (at some point) make a membership option for the site getting rid of ads from videos on the site as well as ads on the actual site. So lets say a non member buys a membership, how would we make there account see no ads etc?

There will be more questions in the future and im sorry as this may seem like a leacher gimme gimme bullshit message. But I come to you guys wholeheartedly, im extremely young and my parents think this is a pipedream, so help isnt at an available hand all the time. Thanks guys i really apprecciate.

-CraigD

 

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[Paul Gallo]

HI Craig -
you have a lot of great questions - and its awesome that your starting out young-
just keep this in mind as you start your entrepreneurial journey... research, research, research.
Do a search and look at previous posts.... you"ll find a ton of answers and a ton of value in this forum- but
you have to search it out....

Also, i think specific questions yield targeted help... ex. I tried PPC with xyz and it didnt work...
i've researched this and hit a brick wall... any suggestions??.... like that

I'm new here myself, so I definitely don't have all the answers either, just thinking a little research would help ya...

good luck

 

[Knowledge Kick]

Hey Craig,

Rather than just give you a bunch of answers that will probably lead to more questions, I'm just going to suggest you check out warriorforum.com. If you want to do anything internet related you will find the answers there. Sign up and search through their threads.

 

[kwerner]

When we make this website will we have to trademark our logo then seperately have to copyright the sight? How would we go about doing this? Legalzoom a good option?

It depends. I'm not an attorney, so these are my non-legal-advice answers -- trademarking the logo can probably wait until you're getting big traffic to your site and actually making money. copyright - just put in the footer "(c) copyright 2011, business name, inc."

Me and a friend were pondering the thought of how to get traffic to our website without mindlessly spamming forums such as these to advertise our website. We dont want to pay the sites that you need to pay for traffic, all they do is ping the website making it seem as though people are actually accessing your website. Any thoughts/help?

Do it yourself SEO or hire someone to do it for you. If your product / service has the margins, maybe try google adwords for the keywords that people are searching for.


My first suggestion though, is to make damn sure there is a market that's willing and able to purchase whatever it is you're selling. Testing this is a MUST.

 

[CraigD]

I now realize it will help to tell you all to know what im doing, especially kwerner (BTW i found your information useful Speed++ 😀). Me and my friend are intending to make a website solely for FPS gamers. It will follow the mold of sites such as mmo-champion and gamershell. It will be a forum with game reviews and we want to add video but are still trying to figure out how? <-- Ideas? We want to include ads using the isocket.com tool to make money from selling ad space on the site. As well as including a membership plan to get rid of ads on videos (if that ever pulls through) and also take ads down from the site. It will include a 1, 3, 6 and 12 month plan. The prices are as follows. 1month=15$, 3month=12$, 6month=9$ and 12month=5$. We are thinking of holding back membership until the site gets at least 10k views a day. We are also still trying to work out the kinks to the getting rid of ads for members etc! Sorry for the constant ramble :S. All im trying to say is that i want to grow in this forum and contribute my info and im hoping that this project and business plan will come through so i have a story to tell and good information to follow for future fastlaners! Everyone here seems to be very helpful and who knows maybe i might make a connection or two in the future here XD. But i just want to thank everyone who has and is going to help me in the future as i will do my best to return the favor. I also realized i said sight when i meant site in the last post, my english isnt perfect and it is a forum but still .

 

[CraigD]

Hey thanks man! This website has an ubundance (Hope i spelled that right XD) of information that i plan on using, now instead of one i have two good sites ill be checking in on everyday lol.

 

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[Inphinity]

I'm going to play a little DA here, so please, take this post in the way it is meant - critical questions to ensure you've thought of things, and not as any sort of attempt to discourage you

Where will your content come from?
What content will you have other than a forum?
What does the $15/month membership get other than removing ads from the forums?
What will you offer that, say, GameSpy, GameSpot, IGN etc do not, other than being genre-specific?
Have you looked at sites like Curse & Zam to see how they approach a fairly genre-focussed approach (albeit not FPS-focussed)?
What sort of ads will you use (interstitial?)?
What advantage will there be over using a forum (such as the official forums most developers provide) for a specific game the user is interested in?

I'm a gamer. Sell me on using this site

 

[kwerner]

What does the $15/month membership get other than removing ads from the forums?

Yeah, this was my biggest question too. I don't believe people will pay even $1 a month membership, just to remove ads from a site.

 

[Ferrari Girl]

I have never paid to remove ads from a site.

 

[Inphinity]

The Awful Forums are one of the more successful paid-membership forums that I'm aware of, and they have a one-off membership fee of US$10 which removes most of the ads and gives you access to more areas of the forum, and also allows you to post. That is, you can browse the basic forums, with ads, for "free", and that's about it. They also use a micro-transaction style store where you can buy avatars, name changes, archive search etc for small amounts (including as gifts to other members) to generate further income. It's a forum that appeals to a selection of niche personality types and interest areas, and has about 150k registered members (for those paying attention, that's US$1.5million in membership fees, plus whatever else has been spent on micro-transactions, plus advertising income).

A monthly fee for a forum is quite acceptable - provided the content and features are sufficient that the members feel they get good value for their fee.

 

[CraigD]

Hey guys I enjoy all the feedback and me and a friend are taking a different approach and we are going to use our resources. Me and my friend have been in the world of professional gaming (being sponsored, going to tournaments etc.) and came up with a better idea that will not pose to much of a problem. We started big as you can see, with dreams of making this site godly. We then realized that this wasnt for us, however we have come up with a different idea based on the same Genre Specific mindset we had. Here was our thought.

WARNING! THIS MAY BE LONG.


We have come up with an idea to make a game site devoted to FPS gamers aspiring to be better. Whether for the seasoned pro or the failtastic noobsaucee wil be there for you. Below youll find a list of things on the site, following a description of how it will work (in our mind). The site will include the following:
1. Forum
2. User Accounts
3. Videos seperated by game showing strategies for maps, team stats etc.
4. About the Pros section

Now this may seem like nothing, but the ingenuity and time that will be put into this site will make it worthwhile. Here I'll delve into each key thing seperately giving a breif description of whats in mind.

1. The forum will have two parts, the basic section for free users to benefit from and a membership section, where you have to be a member to get in, this will include tips from the pros as well as way more than the basic section. (Read on the to find out what the Pros are. Also the basic section will not have a lot, so becoming a member will be key for the most part.)

2. User Accounts, now the way we picture it user account will run like so. You register only when you want to become a member, and the basic section etc is open to the public. Now some people may find this stupid but its not, in fact it follows the same principle as arenapwnage.com . Now im not here to advertise that i was using that strictly for showcase purposes. On the register page we will sucker the viewer in with a benefits list, listing the free benefits next to the member benefits (which will be the difference maker we hope).

3. Videos, now this is going to tie direcly into membership but I put it up for the purpose of showing you what we plan on doing. Since we have and still do game at tournaments and so on, we know people. People that would be glad to post a video a month for say 20 bucks (per video). Now what this does is A) Gets the author of the movie to want to get people to go to the website, which leads to B) and some of these guys have sponsors which lead to oppurtunities such as advertising on the site, they advertise us on theirs so on.

4. About the Pros, what this will do is show the real people behind the video and show people that we arent some slapstick gimme your money kind of company. We are there with actual pros who know the ins and outs of the games they play.

3. (Contin.) These videos will have a tab, when clicked on it will bring up a screen listing games such as Halo 3, 2, 1. COD, Counter Strike etc. Making it easier for the customer to get around, then when clicked on will have sub tabs. Such as when I click on Halo 3 it brings up, Map strats, 2v2 strats etc.

Now that all that is out ;P you guys can get a breif taste of what were are trying to do here. Check out that link above honestly, thats how we want this site to be really. Not copying but taking and idea and applying it to our own. We are thinking about making membership 20$ to get unlimited access for life to all our forums, videos and news. I think this is a deal any gamer wouldnt pass up if the site had credentials (THE PROS) and the clean layout without ads clumping the screen (a little wouldnt hurt). Thoughts?

-CraigD

 

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[Lusches]

Why should I register on this website and pay you my money ?
To see a advertisment-videos ? I don't see a real value here and I wouldn't register on a site like this.

 

[emilybon]

I have to say that I really like the harshness. It really makes you think about if your idea is good or not, and possibly improve upon it.

 

[CraigD]

Why should I register on this website and pay you my money ?
To see a advertisment-videos ? I don't see a real value here and I wouldn't register on a site like this.

I would normally be rude and tell you off for not reading the content but in this case. The people who game will know exaclt what im saying, you just dont understand it. And if you game i encourage you to delve further into it. The lack of knowledge on the subject is showing when you say things like this, and your lack of reading skills. Wow... Doesnt that hurt to be negative? Lets keep the feedback positive please...

-CraigD

 

[ChrisRempel]

Craig,

In the gaming scene you generally have two very distinct pros and cons:

PROS: Relatively easy to generate tons of traffic. 4 or 5 figures a day in unique traffic is not unreasonable once you build up your content, backlinks and exposure/integrations with other networks.

CONS: Monetization is a real bitch.

Gamers, as we all know, are a fairly savvy bunch and they have come to expect a whole heck of a lot from an entertainment-driven industry for a price range of "free" to "dirt cheap". This means that conversions across the board are going to be horrible - as will average visitor value.

It also means that justifying the value of pro videos, etc. is going to be very difficult. Your production value has to be insane, and to compete you'll need to price it based on MASS MARKET exposure. Which means it's only "Fastlane" if you have MASS-MARKET reach. Not an easy accomplishment.

If you "sell ads", you need to have massive traffic inventory before any serious advertiser will take you seriously. (I speak from experience, having been active in a related niche and struggling to make it with 20,000 unique visitors a day).

So what do you do?

Well, here's 2 potential scenarios I can come up with off the top of my head. These are by no means the "only" pathways. I'm sure there's thousands.

But maybe this will get the gears going in the right direction here...

Idea #1: Multiplayer Pre-Screening Membership

Anyone who's played multiplayer stuff before has had to deal with the idiot 13 year olds who just nonsensically ruin the game by acting stupid and filling the in-game-chat areas with their newly-acquired fascination with swear words. This may be really fun when you're in grade 6, but if you're a serious gamer, it's annoying.

Solution? You've either got to just play with your own friends in private sessions, or you have to somehow keep on looking for quality hosts.

Here's the idea... you become a "host service" for all, or some of the top multiplayer games. But there's a twist - you only allow your subscribing members to join, and before someone can even become a member, they need to be screened somehow. (Savegames, some other kind of proof, etc)

This means that you guarantee serious gamers only. Therefore, a much better MP experience.

What's that worth? Not sure. Test price points ranging from $9 - $29/mo.

Can you get a few thousand members to join? Yeah, probably - depends on the execution and how much value you can add to the MP experience. Serious gamers would likely love something like this.

Plus, there's some barrier to entry here since it requires a bit of infrastructure and elbow grease.

Idea #2: SaveGames and Other Goodies - "Free", sort of...

And this one's far more straightforward, and it all hinges on volume.

You find something like TrialPay or CPAlead.com, and use them as gateways for gamers to access some very choice files. Maybe like exclusive cheats, savegames, maps, etc.

These would have to be exclusive or otherwise worth a 30 second hassle for the avg gamer, most of which will be savvy.

They pay about $1 per action, so if you get 1000 "downloads" a day... well.

It's a good start.

Not as solid as the other biz plan, but perhaps more attainable.

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Bottom line: Gaming is a massmarket industry. To "make it", you need serious value and serious reach. There are far easier markets to start with...