Some things I have learned over the years…
I’ve been a webmaster since the 90s and have learned a few things about building successful websites. While the passion for the next new thing is still there, I’ve realized there is more to it than just having the latest and greatest and going for the big payday.
Building value is often better than making money directly
While quick cash is nice, building long-term value will eventually make you more money. For example, in the long run, a programmer is usually better off writing his own scripts which he can sell over and over again than he is doing jobs for others. Likewise, a writer is usually better off creating his own blogs than he is writing posts for other people’s blogs, etc.
When a company paid me thousands of dollars to write a script, I thought they were doing me a favor. Now that I do the same work for myself, I realize how much they underpaid me!
When starting projects, take upkeep time and costs into account
When you start a new project, it’s very easy to only see initial costs (both in time and money). That makes it all too simple to underestimate the time it takes to keep a site running after it’s built. Especially if you run and update your own sites, a few blogs or tgps can easily soak up most of your time.
Moreover, keeping projects running (adding content, managing traffic trades, managing ads) is much more boring than starting them, and it’s where people most often lose the motivation to turn their projects into a success.
That’s why automating boring tasks is usually a good idea. Also, it’s a reason why “build and forget” sites typically do better than many sites requiring constant upkeep in the long run, when considering the time/money ratio.
I used to manually create link-bait for each image on one of my blogs. After calculating the time, I realized taking the afternoon to write the script would save an hour or two each day. So, one script will save me hundreds of hours per year for just 4-5 hours to write the script. Plus, no mistakes!
Making money with many small sites is easier than with one big site
It’s what many people do wrong: they start a single big project that takes up all their time, rather than many small ones that each take very little time. That makes them much more vulnerable to failure and changing markets than they would be otherwise.
Creating a single “build and forget” site that takes you a week to create and nets you $100 a month is easy. Do that every week, and after a year you’re making $5200 a month. Do it for 10 years, and you’re looking at a very nice income.
Moreover, it gives you the opportunity to expand your most successful projects, and kill off the least successful ones. In the long run, following this strategy, you’ll probably end up with several huge sites.
After getting kicked out of Google for one of my major websites, the importance of this became very clear. Big sites are important if you have a driving passion for what you are doing and the traffic exists. Otherwise, having lots of smaller websites is a better business strategy.
Don’t expect success overnight
When you’re working on a project, it’s tempting to dream about how it will be a huge success right away. Alas, that’s usually not how it works. Like many good wines, projects need time to reach their full potential. It often takes weeks, if not months, before a site starts bringing in money.
Every website I have successfully built took months to start making money. But, once they start, they rarely stop!
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