Ten Grand in 120 Days

Okay, so recently I’ve been analysis the best ways to generate revenue from each of my sites. In my naivety (and apparantly a very common thing amongst beginners when it comes to online revenue) I believed that AdSense would be my holy grail. This is not the case.

I am only really used to making money by offering my services as freelance, and having a fixed stream of revenue coming from various websites is a new thing to me. Thus, the first thought was to head over and sign on for AdSense. But over the last week or so I’ve just been receiving that mortifying message upon logon:

Todays Revenue: £0.00

I am definitely doing something wrong, wouldn’t you say?

So, as I said, I took a more indepth approach towards how I am going to market my various websites and I’ve figured the following:

1. AdSense will not be a viable source of income for an application based website such as SiteSellr.com because the website simply doesn’t offer enough in terms of content - it just offers a very basic service. Thus, a subscription based service would be better.
2. Even for the websites I create which do offer up to date content (watch this space.. One word: NuKreative) AdSense may still not be the key, as my target audience will be website developers / designers and it is commonly thought that this market glosses over basic text ads etc, especially once they spot “Google” in the corner.
3. My other projects will not make revenue from advertising whatsoever (Fragage and others). So no point in talking about them.

SiteSellr.com

In light of the above information, I’ve decided to implement a subscription based service for SiteSellr.com instead. Subscribers would have access to a wider variety of features such as customised images, lack of linkback in BBCodes etc.

Setting the price for this, however, is tough. But my best estimate would put it at a subscription of approximately £5.99 or £4.99 per year and aim for high-volume sales. I’ve come up with this because the service is so peripheral and inessential that people will not be willing to pay much more for it. Although, I do believe it is worth the small fee because it’s a unique service and there are no other websites of this sort that offer a simmilar service. It isn’t even possible to post a direct link to a specific conversion for xe.com

NuKreative

Although none of you know what NuKreative is really about just yet, I’ll let you know this. Because it targets website designers and developers, who tend to gloss over google ads, I’ve decided that offering monthly ad placements (for originally a low cost, and a rising cost as visitors and PR picks up), would be much more convinient. Simple logic really.

Please, post comments! Let me know if you think my observations are correct, or whether you think I’m being a total muppet.

- Jonathan

What is SiteSellr?

I’d like to introduce everyone to my first contributing project to the Ten Grand saga - enter SiteSellr.com!

I came up with the idea for a service which provides an easy solution for displaying a product’s price in multiple currencies on sales pages and forum threads (for example, in the SitePoint marketplace) approximately a year ago. I found it hard to believe that such a blindingly easy-to-solve problem had not been addressed. I for one hate having to go over to xe.com to find a products price if it’s being sold in AUD for example (not so much a problem for USD though).

Thus, I created a script called MoneyXC, which takes currency data from the European Central Bank, parses it and uses it to provide up to date conversions. The advantage of using a runtime generated GD Image is that on each load the script recalculates the conversion based on the latest exchange rates directly from the ECB. Perfect.

Or not. What problems have I faced?

Numerous issues came to light during the development of my idea, namely:

• What about pages that don’t support dynamic images?
• What if I don’t want it to seem as crude as a simple script which parses $_GET variables?
• I can’t store the images as this would take huge resources, and the images would only be updated if I used a cronjob… What a drag!
• Limited number of currencies availiable
• Limited use of images, designs etc

The fixes

So, naturally, I also came up with solutions for these issues, as any good developer would. And these are what I’m planning to implement over the next couple of days and weeks.

• Fool other scripts into thinking it’s not a dynamic image, but a static one, using .htaccess to convert ?amount=400&currency=USD into /amount/400/currency/usd.png
• Implement a members only system which would have a subscription fee (£4.99/year) and would allow for users to modify colours, fonts and background images for their script.
• Users would also be able to chose how many and which currencies are displayed on each image.
• Free version would also include the ability to modify which currencies are availiable, but would be using the SiteSellr.com template and colours.

And in that order I shall develop these.

Keep your eyes peeled, this is an ongoing development!

As the title would suggest, I’ve actually come to completely despise the wordpress skin shown in my previous update. Back to the drawing boards…

Check out Will Smith’s beautiful portfolio in the meantime: http://www.authenticstyle.co.uk/

I love the style, and it might just be the kind of style I head for when I design the skin.

Good evening everyone,

This is a very quick update. As a lot of you know I released SiteSellr.com this week and it has been received well on the whole - everyone likes the unique idea! A bit more development (user accounts, customisable pics etc) and it should be sweet. Keep an eye out on that one.

On the other side of things, the wordpress skin is going to code over the next week or so. I decided to keep it conservative, just inviting with emphasis on content. Basic, I know, but the focus, as I have said, is on content.

I’m also going to write a couple of posts introducing each of the sites over the next week or two (one every two or three days), so keep an eye out! First post will be regarding SiteSellr.com and my plans for it.
As you might have guessed from the wordpress skin preview, another project will be NuKreative.com which I will also introduce in a post very soon!

Keep reading, sign up to the RSS feed.

- Jonathan

Launching on June 1st 2008, I shall be aiming to earn £10,000 GBP in 120 days. This blog is going to cover my story. Whether it’s a success or faliure, who knows? But I can’t wait to find out!

I shall be skinning the blog and optimizing it for SEO over this month before the June 1st launch.

You guys can just sit back, relax and enjoy the show. I’m going to be running various projects simultaneously with the end goal of £10,000 - the projects however will continue after the 120 days ends. This blog will also remain and be availiable a case-study I guess.

You guys can learn from my success, and likely my mistakes too. This is just the journey of a website designer who made a bet with a hot girl. Show-off. Foolish, I know.

- Jonathan