TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

I Have An Idea For a Website That I’m Considering

If you’ve only been reading my blog for 2-3 years, then you might think that I’m solely an affiliate marketer.

The fact is, though, that I actually have a lot more experience with creating websites from scratch and monetizing them. It’s how I made my living from around 2004-2012, with my blog and affiliate marketing income taking over since then.

The main reason I turned to affiliate marketing around 2012 is because in early spring of 2011 I sold my largest money-making website. I agreed to a non-disclosure regarding the actual sale price, but let’s just say it was around an average 2-year salary.

While a nice chunk of change in one go, it also meant that a lot of residual money each month was gone, which is why I decided to give affiliate marketing another try.

I’ve had many other websites too. Probably around 30 or so. Almost all of them have been sold off now, although I do still have some abandoned sites lying around such as Movie-Vault.com and PublisherSpot.com (some more are listed here). Feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested in buying any of them from me!

The point I’m trying to make is that I have a lot of experience building websites, many of which have made a decent amount of income (although I’ve made just as many if not more which were complete flops!).

The Idea

Anyhow, I can’t remember exactly when, but sometime around a year ago I came up with an idea for a new website that I thought would be great.

First of all, I think that there’s a definite need for it. Why do I think this? Because I’ve personally been in the situation many times where I could have used such a website, and I know others have as well. It solves a problem that people are constantly having.

From my research, I couldn’t find an existing website that addressed this. In fact, I was surprised! I did find some websites when I was searching for domains that had the rough idea in mind, but never actually built a website around the idea. There may be some simple apps around this idea out there (I haven’t looked), but the idea is really best suited in a website (at least at first).

It’s a website that has enormous potential… I’m talking about the sky as the limit. This is what gets me excited. It certainly has the possibility of “blowing up” in no time.

It’s a free website and has an open demographic; anyone and everyone can find a use for this website.

While free, I have 3 monetization ideas for it: standard display advertising, optional “promoted” areas which would be suited towards larger companies, and a possible credit system, although I am not too sure about the last one as it may make the website too convoluted for the regular user. I am never concerned about monetizing a website though.

Development Costs

It is not a content-based website. It is more a community or social-based site. This would aid greatly in spreading the word of the website too, as social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook would be a big part in propagating its arrival.

Development-wise, I’d rate it about a 5 or 6 out of 10 in order of complexity to program. It’s a unique idea and will be media-rich which is always a bit of a pain to deal with, and there will need to be a comprehensive administration area in addition to the main core of the website.

It’s been a few years since I outsourced for a website to be programmed up from scratch so I may be off a bit in my estimates, but perhaps $4,000 – $5,000 for programming might be close to reality.

Design + HTML would be the typical standard costs… probably around $3,000.

Then you have other costs such as domains and possible custom introductory videos, etc. maybe $1,000-$2,000.

All in all, it will probably cost close to $10,000 to get off the ground. I didn’t allocate any money for advertising or promotion.

Do I Want to Take This On?

So I’ve had this website idea for around a year now. It’s always on the back of my mind.

And when I have something on my mind that I can’t shake, it’s very difficult for me not to do something about it. Whether it’s something I want to buy or an idea I want to implement, I usually end up buying it or implementing it.

I mean, a year ago I posted about how I was thinking of investing into real estate and 12 months later I am literally holding the keys to my first income property in my hand.

There are a number of problems with developing this website idea though:

• With my health as it is, I’ve been having a very difficult time focusing and working lately.
• My company’s income is currently low as a result of the above and having just bought an income property
• I still have existing websites which have been abandoned. I should get rid of them first.
• I have other priorities I need to take care of first such as finishing my corporate taxes and getting caught up with e-mail.
• The idea could fail miserably. This really isn’t a concern though since my whole business live has always been about calculated risk.

So if I did take this on, I’d probably make it a personal perquisite to get my taxes sorted out first, sell at least 2 more of my websites, and then get all caught up with e-mail. Then it’s also possible to use a different address for your business and this gives a lot more privacy so comes highly recommended. We used a virtual office service in the Scottish city of Glasgow as the business was close to there and it was a brilliant service so a great example of what to look for.

That way, I’d have a lot less baggage and would be able to focus on the development of the new website.

There’s also the possibility of partnering up with someone else. I’ve never partnered with anyone in a business endeavour in my life before though…

There are also options such as having others invest in the project for a piece of the pie, though it may be difficult to do that properly legal-wise. I actually did exactly this back in 2009 and had a number of interested parties, but ultimately nobody invested in me. It’s a good thing they didn’t too, since after I ended up funding it myself it ended up being my worst venture ever!

If I did get investors into the project though, I’d probably want to up the development costs a bit and spend a little bit on promotion, so maybe closer to $15,000-$20,000.

I don’t know. Creating a website with a budget (as opposed to launching one for essentially free) is always a risk. I really don’t know what I will do.

But it’s certainly an I idea have and it’s constantly reminding myself of its presence.