Howdy, my name is Chris Beasley. If you’re a member of SitePoint’s Forums you know me as aspen, the team leader of the Manage Your Site section.
I built my first website in 1993 or 1994 and published my first site that was meant to make money in 1999. I’ve been at it ever since. I now own nearly 100 sites on various topics. It’s sometimes hard to explain to people what it is that I do, especially people not in this Industry. Most people assume I build websites for other people, in actuality what I do is closer to owning a magazine or television station. I publish content and collect advertising revenue for the most part. I got my start doing consulting for other people of course, but working for a pain in the butt client for what is in comparison very little money just wasn’t the life for me. I thoroughly enjoy being my own boss, working from home, and cashing large checks. Also, I still make money when I sleep, when I take a vacation, when I go out to eat. Residual income like that is the benefit of having something you own generate revenue for you, rather than having your income directly tied to your labor. That fact is, even if you make $200 an hour you can still earn no more than $1600 a day with a standard work day, or $4800 a day if you could conceivably work for 24 hours. Sure, those are high limits, but they’re still limits. When your business makes money for you, regardless of how much you work, there is no limit. I’ve grossed 5 figures in a single day before, and I probably only worked around 4 hours that day.
So making money is easy right? Nah, not really. Sure, I do very well now, but there was a time when I was on a very strict budget, when my wife paid most of our bills with her receptionist job. It took years of work to get to where I am now. I was at a disadvantage though; I didn’t have someone like myself to get advice from. On the other hand the Internet is more mature now and there is more competition.
You shouldn’t worry too much about the competition. As much as we’d like to think otherwise the Internet is still in it’s infancy and it has a lot of growing to do. The sites you make today (and yes, you should start as soon as possible if you want to do this) will be established in 5 years. If you really made website publishing your job and worked on it on a daily basis I honestly think it’d be nearly impossible for you to not be making a decent income from it in 5 years. You’d have to make some pretty big mistakes to fail in the long run.
That’s enough pep talk for now. The focus of this blog is obviously going to be on website publishing, and otherwise how to create passive revenue streams with the Internet. This encompasses things you may not have thought of. For instance if you’re a programmer and you make a script to sell, you’ve created a passive income stream. There are more ways that just advertising or affiliate programs for making money. I will also include some discussion on ecommerce as it is an important part of my business and an important revenue stream to consider for anyone who owns a website.
I used to design and program my own websites, more recently I find myself outsourcing that work more and more. I never was too great of a designer, and I don’t always have time to program. However, I will occasionally blog about technical issues as they relate to website publishers or revenue generation. Additionally I plan to blog about SEO and other Internet marketing topics, as they are so important to what I do, again though as they relate to making money with a website. None of these ancillary topics will be treated with as much depth as you’ll find in the SitePoint blogs dedicated to them, but I plan for this blog to be more of a practical how-to rather than having a more narrow academic focus. As such you should expect to find me blogging about a wide range of ancillary topics, both because I am such a jack-of-all-trades, and because if you’re publishing websites it helps if you are too.
Well, that’s all for now, I hope to make my first “real” post in a day or so.
October 14th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Great!
I will follow what you blog as much as I can.
October 14th, 2005 at 1:09 pm
Looks promising!
Good Luck!!!
October 14th, 2005 at 1:10 pm
Chris, you sure are inspirational story! :) Can’t wait for you to get more frequent in posting here (till now I used to search for your posts on forum daily).
October 14th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
Alrighty then…! You’re talking my kind of topic material so whenever you’re ready to as they say back home “Kick this pig” I’ll be right there with you….
October 14th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
I’m looking forward to your posts!
October 14th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Chris:
Keep it coming! I think that you have it figured out. I can’t see making any serious money by designing web sites for other businesses. I agree that becoming a “web publishing company” and a “web TV station” is where the big bucks are waiting. Tell us more!
October 14th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
Definitely looking forward to this blog. Maybe it can help me turn my belly button lint enthusiast page into a big money maker.
October 14th, 2005 at 4:01 pm
I was waiting for a blog like this. Good luck! And looking forward to it.
October 14th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
I can’t wait!
October 14th, 2005 at 6:28 pm
[…] Check out Chris Beasley’s new blog on Sitepoint, Website Revenue Strategies. Chris is known as aspen on the Sitepoint forums and also is the owner of WebsitePublisher.net. […]
October 14th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
Were listening!
October 14th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Welcome Chris!
I’ve always enjoyed your very informative posts in the few years I’ve been here and I’ll look forward to you blog posts now too! Congrats on a job well done in building your business and thanks for your willingness to share that knowledge with others!
Cheers,
Steve
October 14th, 2005 at 8:30 pm
Looking foward to some great advice and tips! I will definately be following this, I plan to open a couple more websites this year, hopefully you can help maximize my revenue for them. :D
October 15th, 2005 at 3:07 am
FANTASTIC !
I’m interested in everything you mentioned, with plans to run a very similar operaton myself. I can’t wait to see some material ;)
October 15th, 2005 at 4:39 am
This comes the week I’ve started designing my first web publishing venture and trying to move away from designing for others. Great timing and good luck with the blog.
October 15th, 2005 at 8:39 am
Someone should check/edit the article for grammatical errors before publishing.
October 15th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Looking forward too. :)
October 15th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
I am more than interested. good luck!
October 16th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Sounds yummy!!! I’ve been creating websites for clients in the last 5 years or so, and indeed, many of the clients can be a pain in the ass… I am getting tired of this! Looking forward to reading your posts! Be sure they are very appreciated. One of the things I’d love to learn is what kind of content websites you think might work best… the ones that can display high paying ads(having very popular content) or the ones for wich you have a great passion and can develop a lot of high quality content, although the public isn’t too large.
Thank you Chris.
October 17th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
I concur with the rest! Looking forward to your insights.
October 18th, 2005 at 8:01 pm
There’s already more content than I have time to read at websitepublisher (your homepage), but I’ll keep an eye on your blog here. :)
October 19th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Hi Chris
Thank-you for the story so far, very interesting. Would it be possible for you to identify a few web sites employing the principles you will be discussing. Can you provide guidance on how to research initial ideas and any billing systems you recommend.
Maybe readers of the blog would like to contribute ideas of their own also so we can harness the power of sharing knowledge around the world?
Thanks again
January 11th, 2006 at 5:35 am
I think I just got some inspiration to work on my website … good work Chris!