Wordpreneur.com

Yesterday, we took a look at a few of the very basic ways blog publishers can monetize their sites. I left out techniques specific to writing new posts since, if you remember from the start (and the title should be a clue), this is all about trying to generate income from editing and publishing other people’s stuff.

Yes, boys and girls, AdSense, affiliate programs and other revenue models that revolve around “advertising” can indeed pay off. But advertising isn’t the only possible way to monetize this project.

Here’s the other method I alluded to that I don’t see brought up too often: After the site’s up and running and has enough content, sell the whole site. Cash it out, in other words, and move on to the next thing.

Here’s a step-by-step for instance…

1. You know a thing or two about turtles, so you register a good turtle-specific dot com from Go Daddy and have it resolve to your Site5 hosted server.

2. You set aside space on your Site5 hosted account for your new turtle site. You use Fantastico to install a copy of WordPress in this new space. Now, when someone enters your turtle domain in a browser, your newly-installed WordPress copy pops up.

3. You go to EzineArticles and start gathering all the decent turtle-related articles you can find. You get 30 nice-sized ones, which you then proof/edit and organize on your site. Add a few introductory paragraphs here and there and — voila! — you’ve now got a workable site with usable content.

4. You add AdSense advertising. You also start submitting the site URL to a few directories and Search Engines. Might as well do the basics and try to get some traffic in while you search for a buyer.

That’s pretty much it, isn’t it? How much time should that have taken you (assuming you’re already past the technical learning curve): I’d be surprised if that whole thing takes you a couple of days of focused time to do. But for the sake of argument, let’s make that a clean 16 hours total shall we? That’s conservative, but still keeps it squarely in “just working part-time” territory.

The big question is: How much can you sell it for? Well, there are a number of factors involved that will affect the value of the finished “product,” but the simple straight answer is… not much. I think $200 minimum is reasonable, $300 if you have a halfway decent design bone in your body and sell direct (more on this in a bit). I’ve seen them sell for more (particularly those with truly good domain names), but there’s a reason why you can’t expect a heck of a whole lot:

You’ve got no traffic.

With that in mind, even if your out-of-pocket at this point is a negligible $15 or so ($10 for the domain, and a token $5 for the hosting, even though if you’ve worked it right, the hosting for the new site shouldn’t have cost you a thing). That still leaves you a relatively small hourly. Not bad, certainly way better than fast food, and you’re working with words.

Ah, there’s the rub, isn’t it? Without traffic, you really can’t sell the sites for much, so if you want a higher return for the time you invest, you’ve got only one thing left you can do, right?

Work faster.

No BS: I can do what I described above in a day, and that’s if I’m going casually. No reason why you can’t. Do the math… the return on our time improves drastically, doesn’t it?

Now we’ve come to the part that’s probably got you nervous: finding a buyer.

Frankly, even though there are avenues for finding buyers online (like eBay), without traffic I wouldn’t, unless you’re exceptionally good at this site design and packaging thing and have a truly jaw-droppingly good dot com name. No? Try what I do: I sell direct.

I try to find direct buyers, usually brick-and-mortar operations local to me that are looking to expand their marketing avenues online. In fact, more often than not, I essentially presell the site before I develop it. No, they don’t commit to buying anything beforehand, but I sure do get them very, very interested.

And I’m no salesman. I have no doubt that someone who can do a much better job at the sales and marketing thing than me can bring those site prices up, maybe even double them… or more. I haven’t been able to, but that’s my shortcoming.

That pretty much is all there is to this plan. Fairly straightforward, I think. You’ll eat up a lot of hours with the first few, especially if you’re new to all the technical stuff, but pound away at it: It’ll likely get much easier and faster and, ergo, more lucrative.

Have fun!

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