Thank you for all of your predictions about the money-making sites in the previous blog post. Some of your predictions were downright depressing and made me question my continued existence as an entrepreneur. Others created possibilities, which I appreciate. All were thoughtful, mostly.
Let’s add some information. What I’d like is to give you a sense of my thought process so that you see the logic of this strategy.
The boxing site was the first one launched. I came up with it by working with a personal trainer who happened to have been a professional boxer at one time (not Evander Holyfield by any means but a solid contender), and who created a terrific boxing fitness program. He also shared with me that, contrary to some of your posts, the fitness world has lots of online certification programs. So we partnered to create the site. It took about $1,000 to create it with videos (initially before additional development). It did well. By “well” I mean that it costs less to get a customer than customers are willing to pay.
So that led to the idea that other certification sites might work, too. This includes astrology (which turns out to be profitable), the coaching site (which is testing soon) and healthcare marketing (which is testing soon). Simply showing a medical practice the healthcare site in an early draft stage has led to an engagement that pays for all four of these.
The free networking site is something I came up with to pursue a different strategy. Here the strategy is to cover costs with ads and book sales (like sitepoint) but eventually sell out to someone at the currently high “cost per active user” rate of $5 to $40. I have no idea where this will lead, but will keep you posted. This site DOES however have a specific target market. I will focus on specific communities, thus a geographic rather than industry focus. Once one community signs up, I move to the next. And I pursue some creative and free marketing strategies that I’ll get into later.
So what does this mean?
1. If you get a successful site, roll out similar sites in different categories.
2. Roll things out inexpensively. It costs me $700 for the average site, such that 2 or 3 users pay for the development.
3. Test and invest in what works. The boxing site is so good that I’m rolling out kickboxing and some other programs in the next month, with a world champion kick boxer.
4. Know what it means to have “enough.” My goal is to have a few sites that earn me a good living from home. I figure if I can get 5-10 boxing-style sites up, I can achieve this goal.
5. You can market anything to anyone, if you focus on what they want and deliver good value. In the case of all of these sites, initial feedback from actual prospects and customers (not web developers) is positive.
More info to come….
Comments?
Andrew Neitlich
