I have a lot of inspiration for this post because I just got finished listening to ShoeMoney’s webinar for the second time about monetization and it has got me pretty excited. Well, actually it’s a combination of ShoeMoney’s webinar and some actual results that my partners and i have been seeing on our first online property, NascarView.
In just a few weeks we have been able to launch the main NascarView website, which consisted of a WordPress Blog / News type theme and a message board. In just 2 weeks we have already got about 120 members on the board. Granted, these are not big numbers, but we are just getting started. Our primary outlets for marketing the project have been Facebook and Twitter. Just so you know, I have been directing my clients toward these two social networks for a while now and have seen some awesome results from both in terms of promotion and community growth.
In ShoeMoney’s webinar he had 4 bullet points for Getting Started:
- What’s your passion?
- Focus on building your content.
- You don’t need Google.
- Don’t kill your website before it gets started.
I am only going to touch on the first two points in this post.
What’s your passion?
For me this is easy, NASCAR is clearly one of my passions. Not only is it a passion but I have had the privilege of working with some drivers and high profile clients inside the industry so it’s a great mix of business and pleasure.
Focus on building your content.
Jeremy brings up a good point on this though and it should be noted that if you are going to build a successful website it is going to take work, sometimes a lot of work before you actually see any results from it. In doing so you are going to have to focus on adding content. This is a lot easier said than done sometimes. It really helps if the point of your website is something that you are very passionate about. It will act as a motivational tool to help spur you on to add more content.
In closing, these two points are probably no-brainers to a lot of you that have been in the industry for a while but I think that it’s a great idea to re-emphasize them and apply them to personal projects that you might have going on the side as well. I think that sometimes we, as developers, build so many projects that we sometimes get wrapped up on the mechanics and forget to pay attention to the big picture. Also, this is information that I share with my clients on a day to day basis when approached for advise regarding startups.
If you are interested, here’s a great blog post w/ an excerpt from Jeremy’s webinar on video, click here.
Questions or Comments?