Entries from March 2008 ↓

photo credit: bbaunachHow do you normally write? I’ve always liked to pretty much get the whole idea in my head (or at least the general overview all worked out) and then just sit down and write beginning to end. That’s great if you can write with no distractions but if you have a spouse and kids around you don’t often get a lot of distraction free time.

Try jotting down the outline of what you’re going to say. It makes it far easier when you do get interrupted and may help you write better focused posts that arrive at the conclusions you want to reach.

Continuing in our series of posts on how to make the world (or at least our consumer electronics) better we now have devices that use a touchscreen are driven by open source software and have a WiFi connection. These devices are a easier to use and interact with than what we’re used to today and their open source nature means that you never have to be satisfied with their shortcomings. You’ve already downloaded some interesting mods to your dishwasher and you’re wondering where to go from here.

While that open source control software is great for when you want to tweak how your devices operate there should be an easier way to add new functionality to your devices. And then there are times when you want to export the functionality from one device to another. The best way to do this is via an API - an application programming interface.

In recent years APIs have become a foundation of various websites. Amazon has its webservices that allow people to find products for sale. eBay has similar APIs and also provides ways for sellers to add items to the site. Sites like Flickr offer APIs for searching for images and Google has APIs for products like Google Maps which enable developers to quickly build applications using Google’s core functionality. Perhaps the ultimate example of extensibility through APIs is Facebook’s applications which allows developers to add functionality to a user’s Facebook profile page.

As you can probably see APIs come in two flavors: those that export data/functionality and those import extensions into the application or device.

Importing New Functionality

photo credit: tombothetominatorWhich devices can benefit from allowing users to import new functionality? Lots of them. My new digital camera has some amazing software that allows it to detect the human face on the screen to make sure the face is in focus. If your camera doesn’t do that wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily add it. And how about red-eye correction. Again something that some cameras already have but there are certainly other applications you could add. Maybe some software to allow you to stitch photos together into a panoramic shot? Sure you can do that on your computer later but if the camera could do it you could correct that one shot that was off a little or darker the the rest because a cloud passed by. Or how about some OCR - optical character recognition - right on your cell phone camera? You’re in the store and see a piece of furniture but you’re not sure it’ll fit the space you have. Snap a pic, turn the image into text and send a text message to your spouse.

photo credit: KhürtEntertainment devices would benefit greatly from being able to add new funtionality. TiVo started down the road of allowing people to write extension that could run on the device but seems to have unfortunately back off from the idea. It’s a shame because I’m sure there are dozens of great idea that could be added to the device that many more people would undertake if it didn’t involve having to open up and hack the machine. The possibilities for a device like an Xbox which is really a very powerful home entertainment computer are nearly endless.

Exporting Capabilities and Data

The flip side of having APIs which allow you to extend the functionality of a device is to have APIs which export a device’s functionality and data to other devices. Back to the digital camera imagine if your digital camera (which already has WiFi capability) could operate under the control of your computer. Set your camera anywhere in the house and your computer could use it to take pictures. Make your own time lapse video of your plants blooming. Or turn it into an instant spy camera that uploads pictures of your cat to your private web page so you can spy on him while your at the office. Today you can go out and get a wireless web camera to do these things but the digital camera is far more ubiquitous than a web cam and many people don’t need that kind of functionality on a regular basis.

Not for Everyone?

While I’d be a huge fan of applying all these principles to every device APIs probably aren’t necessary for everything. Even I have trouble thinking of a good API for my toaster. Devices that are good candidates are devices which have capability that can be export for other devices to use or devices that are good platforms for running new functionality.

Hopefully if you’ve been following along with this series you’re getting an idea for how opening up the devices around us can lead to exciting new applications. If you’re a product developer for Sony go ahead and build these ideas into your next generation products but if you’re not thinking like this is still a useful exercise that will help you open yourself up to new idea in the areas where you do work. Next up: a fictional device that combines all these idea and will sell a billion copies as soon as someone builds it.

If you’ve decided that buying a website is a good approach for you to take to either start earning money on the Internet or to grow your Internet business you’ll want to take steps to ensure that you’re buying a site at a good price. What’s a good price is hard to determine and actually varies widely from one buyer to the next. Most valuations that a seller will quote are nearly useless (automated valuations are completely useless) and rules of thumb like 12 months earnings are also of limited use.

Evaluate Current and Future Income

The first step toward determining a good price for a website you’re looking to purchase is to carefully evaluate it’s current and future earnings. The common pitfall here is looking at gross revenues (before expenses) vs net earnings (after expenses). It’s important to look at what the current site owner is spending on advertising, hosting and any other expenses. If a site earns $1,000 a month but spends $500 a month on advertising and $200 a month on hosting it’s worth a lot less than a site that makes the same but spends nothing but $10 a month on hosting. You should also look carefully at how the expenses may change - if you have an existing server with excess capacity you might be able to eliminate the hosting expense. More importantly look at how the income may change. Perhaps you have existing relationships with advertisers in the niche that you can leverage. One of the best ways to purchase a site for a great site is to purchase a site that’s worth more to you (because it will cost less and earn more) than the site is worth to others.

Market Determines Price

photo credit: Petrick2005Valuations for a website are worthless because the real value of a site (or any business) is what some purchaser is willing to pay for it. In commodity investments (stocks for example) the market is very efficient because there is a lot of supply and demand and a centralized marketplace. In purchasing a site the market will very often come to an improper valuation of a site. It may be because a sale draws a lot of attention and in the excitement the purchase price is bid up. It could also be that a site goes unnoticed or people fail to anticipate the potential of a site and so it sells for less than it would in an efficient market. You can take advantage of these inefficiencies to get a good price for the site you want. Sometimes a lesser traveled forum will draw less traffic and less competitive bidding for a site. Look for times of the year (Christmas season or summer vacation season) when there are fewer buyers and the sales aren’t getting as much bidding.

A particularly good way to get a great price on a site is to approach the owner of a site before they know they want to sell it. If you find a site that looks like a good starting point for you but it doesn’t appear to have a lot of recent development the owner is often going to be willing to sell a site they’ve neglected for some short term gain. Without the competitive bidding you can often purchase these kinds of sites for less than a similar site listed in a popular marketplace.

Build vs Buy Costs

photo credit: billjacobus1It’s probably counterintuitive but another great way to buy a site at a great price is to avoid buying it and build it instead. If you’ve decided to purchase a site in the first place it’s likely because you’re unable to build the site yourself but you may come across a great site idea that’s not getting a lot of traffic. Rather than buy the existing site, check to see how much it would cost to have freelancers build a similar site for you. If you can have it built for less than it would cost to purchase the existing site you’ll have some extra dollars saved that you can apply to promotion.

The Deal is Out There

Buying a site can be a great way to start or expand an Internet business. It’s important though that you do that work that it takes to ensure that you’re getting a great price. Don’t be disappointed if a site you’re interested in gets bid out of your price range. If you do the work you can find the site that’s selling from a great price for your situation.

Only a single man could think that having more than one wife would be a good thing. So what am I talking about with this harem vs wife thing? Obviously a sensational headline designed to draw attention (hey blogging is all about transparency, right?). But now that I’ve got your attention let me talk about being an entrepreneur on the web and either getting married to a single site or developing a collection of sites.

The Monogamous Relationship

photo credit: avlxyzIf you’re starting out on the web it may seem intuitive to start out with a single site that gets all your attention. That’s not a bad idea - specially when your time is limited. If you’re working on a single site you avoid the problem of balancing your time between different sites and you allow yourself to become intimately familiar with your subject area. A single site is great if you’re really passionate about your topic. Of course focusing your energies on one site has drawbacks. It’s difficult for a new site (in any niche) to gain significant traction and which sites are going to succeed and which are going to fail isn’t often readily apparent. Then there’s the added risk that the niche you chose to focus on becomes irrelevant or overtaken by a dominant competitor. If you were focusing all your energy on a banner exchange (gone out of style) or website statistics (Google Analytics moved in for free) you’d be forced to make a complete change of course.

Dating Sisters

An alternative to running a single site is to run multiple sites within the same or closely related niches. This has some advantages over a single site because your properties can cross promote each other. While you may need to increase your knowledge over a broader area than when running a single site you won’t be completely scattered all over the place. You still run the risk of having your niche go away but you should be less vulnerable to a big competitor since each of your sites will (or at least should) take different approaches to your topic. Think of it like you’re dating sisters. You may need to learn each of their likes and dislikes but you only have one set of parents to meet. Of course it could make Thanksgiving dinner an interesting affair.

Playing the Field

As with the relationship analogy, playing the field (building multiple sites focusing on multiple niches) is probably a tactic that’s best for the early stages. There’s really nothing wrong with trying a bunch of ideas and seeing what sticks - and more importantly what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. But unless you’re some superhuman genius you’re not going to be able to become an authority in too many areas. If you find you’re unable to keep up a site or don’t enjoy running it you always have to option of selling it (or simply closing it if it doesn’t have much value) and focusing on what you are good at.

A Long Term Affair

photo credit: funkybug (Atlantic City/ Philly for the weekend)One time when it’s possible and good to run sites in two different niches is when you have a “day job” and a “hobby” site. Perhaps you’re a successful technology pundit who also enjoys digital photography. Or maybe you’re a noted online marketer who enjoys fine dining and writing restaurant reviews. You can roll all your interests into one blog or you might just find that this online entrepreneur thing is so enjoyable that you do it for work and for fun. As long and you occasionally step away from the computer this can be a great way to keep your online activities fresh and exciting.

So What’s for Me?

Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages and no one can tell you what’s the best situation for you. But be aware that all of these are viable options and don’t be afraid to consider your options. Whatever you decide be sure that you go into it with your eyes wide open. And unlike some relationship decisions you can change your mind and switch between approaches as your situation changes

I’ve been literally and figuratively out on my own for quite a while now and as you can imagine that has both advantages and disadvantages. I covered some of the advantages of being solo a while back and now it’s time to address the disadvantages.

Every Advantage is a Disadvantage

photo credit: .:Axle:.Raise your hand if you saw that coming. But really it’s true. Pretty much everything I listed as an advantage of being solo also has a negative side. You decide the agenda also means there’s no one to tell you what to do and makes it easy to get lost. When you’re solo you get to set the agenda but you also need to spend thoughtful time considering the agenda or you can just end up wandering aimlessly. You get to decide the technology but that also means you can spend a lot of time evaluating technologies and it’s easy to spend so much time chasing after the latest new thing that you don’t accomplish anything. You don’t have to take outside funding but it’s also much harder to raise outside funding if you do need it since a single person project can often sound like a quaint hobby to bankers and venture capitalists.

No Sounding Board

If you’ve worked in a good, dynamic team environment you’ve probably developed the habit of walking into someone’s office and saying “Hey what do you think about this?”. Sometimes a new perspective on a problem is all it takes to find the obvious solution. Sometimes you find yourself building a complicated bit of software only to have a team mate say “Hey, that already exists”. While it’s a problem for programmers its even worse when you wear the designer’s hat and you’re trying to plan new or improved functionality. What seems like a great idea to you may be of interest to no one else. For the solo entrepreneur it’s important to find an outside counsel for these situations. It may be taking your technical ideas to a forum or chatting with a user about a planned feature. If you just take your own idea and run with it with no additional feedback you might end up spending a lot of time building something that no one else wants.

Wearing Too Many Hats

photo credit: Robyn GallagherWhen you’re solo you get to do a lot of varied tasks but you also have to do things that are outside your core competencies or areas of interest. When I undertook my “big successful site” I found that I actually enjoyed a lot of the non-programming tasks. Promotion and monetization are not something I had thought a lot about before they were thrust upon me but I did enjoy learning them and doing them. Even some sysadmin tasks can be fun - you can squeeze a ton more performance out of Apache by tweaking the settings. But there are plenty of other tasks that are either no fun - answering support e-mails - or I just wasn’t able to do - making the site look nice. If you’re solo and find yourself with a task you can’t manage it may be time to hire outside help. Hiring a designer is pretty much a must if you’re a programmer and building a site and support and sysadmin assistance can be picked up quite reasonably on a part time basis.

So is Solo Good or Bad?

Balancing all the advantages and disadvantages I’d have to say that solo isn’t necessarily the ideal way to run a web development project. If you can find that small group of people who have the ability to commit to a project then run with it but being solo is better than working with people you don’t like or people who aren’t as dedicated or talented as you may be. The disadvantage of being solo can be overcome and if solo is your only chance at running a project you’re excited about then don’t let those disadvantages deter you.

photo credit: cambodia4kidsorgIf you’ve been following along, you understand what ROI means, the various types of investments that are required of an online project and the various types of returns you can expect. But so far this is a meaningless number (or worse a collection of hard to quantify costs and benefits). Why should you care about ROI and how can you use it?

In the end, ROI is the real measure of success or failure of a project. If I tell you that my online project makes me $2,000 a month that might sound good but if I spent $50,000 in startup costs and had to sell my soul to get that return then it’s not a very successful project.

Figuring ROI

The first step in using ROI to guide your business decisions and evaluate your past projects is to be aware of the investments you make and returns you see.

1. Estimate ROI. When you start a project (this can be a new site or simply a modification to an existing site) take a minute to estimate the costs in money, time and intangibles as well as the returns.
2. Track ROI.As the project progresses keep a record of the actual investments you make and when it launches the actual returns you see.
3. Evaluate ROI. After you’ve done this for a while you can use the actual ROI to refine your future investments as well as see which of your past project where the most successful

Guide Your Decisions

It’s pretty simple really. If you have 3 or 4 potential projects you can work on, estimate an ROI for each and work on the one with the best ROI first. In reality it’s not quite that simple since you often need to balance long term rewards with short term ones. Maybe you find that one project should cost little and net you $5,000 over the next two months and another project will require some time and money investment but yield $2,000 a month for years. Which to chose will depend a lot on your situation - your ability to make the investment and your need for immediate income. But considering the ROI of each option can still help guide your decision.

Evaluate Your Past Projects

photo credit: seeks2dreamWhy would you want to evaluate your past projects? Do you really want to know that you spent a fortune building a site that had meager returns? If you want to improve your future decisions then it’s vital that you understand the outcome of your past decisions. As an example, lets say that you find that a past project was more successful than you at first thought it might be. It required a few months of your time but the returns were far greater than you imagined. If you can do another similar project this information may allow you to make a greater investment (hire some freelancers to do some of the work) because you’re confident that the return will be there. On the flip side if you find that you’re spending a lot of time on short, inexpensive projects that don’t bring any significant return then you can avoid those types of projects in the future.

Some Real Life Examples

While running my “big successful site” I noticed another site in the niche that had some cool integrated eBay listings on their page. A little legwork and I found that they were using a very simple API through eBay’s affiliate program with Commission Junction. I was able to add the feed to pages throughout my site with very little work so I went ahead and did it even though I expected very little return. The feature was well received - though it was income generating for me the users found it helpful and treated the addition as new content. They also responded well to it and it produced hundreds of dollar of commissions a month for me. Very low expense but a high return taught me to look for opportunities like this in the future. .

On the same site I was also running the Amazon affiliate program. It also was a bit more difficult to add than the eBay program and I expected that it would yield good returns but the actual commissions from Amazon were minuscule. Because of the size of the site I was approached by Buy.com who wanted me to add their own affiliate program to the site. I spent days looking through their feeds and negotiating rates on the phone with their affiliate manager and in the end never even implemented the project. If I had looked at the ROI I achieved from the similar Amazon offer it would have been clear from the start that this wasn’t a good use of my time.

As an aside, I think the eBay offer worked better on this site because it offered up unusual items that were related to the content. In the case of Amazon I could offer up related books and DVDs but people looking to buy the books and DVDs would likely just head to Amazon directly. In the case of eBay people were discovering items they didn’t even know existed. This doesn’t at all mean that the Amazon or Buy.com offers won’t work well in other situations.

Wrapping it Up

Hopefully this series has given you an idea about how to take a more professional business approach to your online endeavors. I’m not suggesting that you become a slave to the ROI numbers. You should however, understand what the potential numbers on both sides of the equation can be and give some careful consideration to expenses and returns as you decide what you’re going to do with your online business.

Since we know what ROI is and the various types of investment we can and need to make in a web project let’s take a look at the fun side of the equation and examine the kinds of returns we can hope to see.

Direct Monetary Return

photo credit: Tanya DropbearIf you’re putting cash in, chances are you’re hoping to get cash out. The direct monetary return you can see from a website is just that - cash that the site earns directly. If your site is an e-commerce site then the direct monetary return is the profit you make on selling items. If you have a content site then the direct income is from whatever monetization strategy you use - selling advertising, promoting an affiliate offer, fees you charge for products or services or in some cases a tip-jar for you blog.

Direct monetary returns from your site are pretty straightforward but in some cases the web adds one extra little twist and that’s passively generated and residual income. Passive income is simply the effect that web content can stick around for a long time and continue to earn you money. If you have a blog and write an article that promotes an affiliate offer, someone may find it in the search engines a year from now, respond to the offer and generate income for you. You did nothing in particular to drive that specific action but it yields income for you anyway. Residual income is also usually associated with affiliate offers, but in particular those offers that give you a continuing payment as long as the visitor you send them remains a customer or a payment based on what that customer spends over a continuing term. A common example might be a web hosting affiliate offer that will pay you for every month that the users you send remain a customer. These are still direct monetary returns but the fact that they may occur over a longer time period adds some twists to how we use ROI later.

Indirect Monetary Return

Indirect monetary return happens when you don’t actually monetize your site directly. In some cases you can think of this as your site being an affiliate program for your offline business. For example if you own a garden shop in a town you might run a blog about gardening. If that blog drives traffic to your offline shop then those sales are an indirect form of return. In this case since so few of your readers are potential customers it would be silly to use this as your only form of monetization but it might serve as a secondary source of income.

photo credit: jurvetsonIn other cases this indirect monetization can be the primary income derived from a site. Maybe a national brand of canned tomatoes runs a site with cooking tips and recipes. They might do no other monetization of the site than mentioning their brands when the recipe calls for a product they make. On a more individual level someone who works as a consultant can use a site to help establish them as an authority in their field. If your blog gives you the reputation as a top expert in SEO/SEM then you can be sure that you can command huge fees in consulting deals. Noted experts might also have opportunities to write books, publish articles and speak at conferences that they wouldn’t have unless their site established their authority.

Non-Monetary Benefits

It’s not always about the money. Sometimes the biggest reward you get from an online project might be the recognition it brings you or knowledge that you’ve helped someone else. Some people blog just because they want to have others read their opinions. Some people start a fan site because they just really love that actor/band/movie and want to encourage others to share that love. Since the costs of a website can be very low it can be worth it for some people to run a site at a loss as a hobby. If you’re looking to run a website as a business however these non-monetary returns can still be a powerful secondary reason to do what you do. It’s a lot of fun to sell someone you run a site and find out that they’re familiar with it. It can also be awfully encouraging to see a positive review in a magazine or online even if it doesn’t drive much traffic. These non-monetary benefits are another good reason to do something that you’ll be proud of.

Life and Lifestyle Benefits

While not a direct result of any one particular investment you make, the successful online entrepreneur can experience lifestyle benefits that are not available through a regular job or even a regular small business. Besides the pride in working for yourself and not having a boss, online endeavors will typically allow the entrepreneur to work when they want and where they want. This makes an online project a great option for stay at home mothers (and fathers) or people who want to live in out of the way locations.

Finishing the Equation

We introduced ROI as return/investment and now we have both the investment and return parts of the formula. But as you can see both investment and return can take non-monetary forms. It’s not always easy to boil ROI on the web down to a nice simple ratio. An exercise that can be helpful however is to assign monetary values to these non-monetary costs and benefits and use those to derive a final ROI number. I’ll talk more in the 3rd and final part of this series about why we want to estimate those ratios and how we can use the concept of ROI to guide our decisions and judge our past performance.

ROI - return on investment - is a common enough term that most people generally understand what it means. In an investing context ROI is generally measured as profit / investment and used to evaluate the relative merits of two different investments. So for example if you invest $1,000 and yield a $200 profit your ROI would be 20%.ROI is a useful measure in other contexts as well and particularly in the world of web development and making money online ROI is really the ultimate number that will decide if a project (or task) is successful or a failure. But ROI in this context has some slightly different nuances since both return and investment can mean a variety of things.

Let’s take the term in reverse order and start by examining various forms of investment as they relate to web development.

Monetary Investment

photo credit: sunshinecityThe most readily apparent form of investment is a monetary investment. Startup costs vary widely with web development projects. Depending on who you are and what you’re building startup costs could involve millions in programming and design. For a smaller scale or solo developer startup costs are generally more contained - perhaps the costs of a custom template for your site and and few off the shelf scripts. For a blogger your costs might be as little as a few bucks for a domain name and a small hosting plan. In some cases direct monetary startup costs can even be zero - it costs nothing to startup a blog on wordpress.com.

There are also non-startup costs that are typical for web developers. These include advertising and promotion investments, licensing/partnership fees and hosting/bandwidth costs. A frugal web developer can do promotion for little or no money by seeking free backlinks and applying other free SEO techniques but very often a web project needs an advertising boost to get started. This might include paid inclusion in directories, paid blogger reviews and CPC programs like AdSense. Most web projects don’t need to be concerned with licensing fees but if you need to purchase access to some data for the site to work that will be an ongoing investment expense. Hosting and bandwidth costs will vary according to the type of site and can be anything from negligible in the case of a blog to overwhelming for video sharing sites.

Time Investment

photo credit: taiyofjAnother form of investment is easy to downplay but is vitally important when measuring the ROI of the projects you undertake. With my “big successful site” I could claim that I was getting a positive return after less than a year while earning a meager income. That’s because I had tiny monetary costs associated with the site - just a domain name and shared hosting account. But in reality that ignored my greatest investment which was about man year of labor. Your time may be free to you but it’s also a limited commodity and so when you spend time on something you are truly making an investment.

One thing you can do when you work to evaluate your ROI is to attempt to assign a monetary value to non-monetary costs and benefits. In the case of an investment of time this more difficult than it might at first appear. You can work out your hourly rate at your day job and say that the time you spend at your web project costs the same per hour. But for most of us that’s not necessarily a direct comparison. If you weren’t working on your web project would you have the option of spending those hours on your day job? Perhaps a better method is to look at what you give up in order to spend time on web development. If your project comes at the expense of watching American Idol you can say that your time is free. If your project comes at the expense of spending time with your family you can say that your time is priceless. The real cost of your time expenditure will depend on your own personal situation and is likely to vary over the term of your project.

Social Capital Investment

Once you’ve figured the money and time you need to spend on a project you may think that this is all that you’re going to invest in your web development project but that may not be the case. If you’re launching a social site you’ll need to seed it with some early participants. So you e-mail a bunch of your friends and ask them to checkout the site. Or perhaps you’re launching a content site and decide that you want to promote it via a post on a forum you’ve been frequenting. Assuming these things are ok with your friends and the forum policies these are good techniques but again you need to be aware that the ability to make these requests of friends and forums is limited. You’re spending some of your social capital to get your friends or forum readers to your site. This investment may cost you in the reciprocal demands that these groups will make on you in the future or it may just cost you in the ability to use the same techniques again in the future. I’m happy to help a friend launch a site but if he’s asking for help every other week it’s going to get old quickly.

Reputation/Integrity Costs

On the web as in life you may find yourself faced with a money making opportunity that is on the shady side ethically or morally. Perhaps you’re considering launching some MFA sites with screen scrapped content. Or maybe you have an opportunity to run bulk e-mail campaign that makes money but goes against your moral code. When evaluating an opportunity remember that if it’s not something you can be unquestionably proud of it may have a cost to your reputation or you own self image. Some are hardened and say they don’t care but for most people these costs will affect you either now or in the long term

Lots of Investments

I’ve look just at the investment side of the ROI equation here and as you can see the potential costs you face when undertaking a web development project can be quite varied. Next I’ll take a look at the more fun side of the equation and look at what kinds of returns a website can bring and how to use the whole concept of ROI to guide your business decision.

If you’ve decided to try your hand at making money online you’ll soon find that one option you have is to purchase an existing website. Between auction sites, webmaster sites and marketplaces dedicated to sites for sale you’ll see that there are a lot of websites available for purchase. At times purchasing a site can give you a great head start to making money online but there are a number of things you need to consider before you buy an existing site.

Know the Niche Trends

photo credit: jvreeIf you see a site that looks interesting you’ll want to be sure you understand the current trends in that site’s niche. If you don’t already know the niche well be sure to do some research first. You want to particularly look for a niche where market forces have recently changed. One recent example is web directories. These lists of sites are very popular locations where webmasters can add their site - sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee. Aside from the very large and well know directories however, the primary advantage of being listed in a directory was for backlinks in the search engine. You’ll notice that I said was. The search engines - and Google in particular - recently made some changes that diminishes the value of links from a directory. While this may not have affected traffic and listings in directories yet it is likely that these types of sites will continue to diminish in value over time. When you’re buying a site - or building one - in a niche that’s new to you, you’ll want to be sure that the niche is growing or stable and not contracting.

Look for a Site with a Unique Advantage

If you’re going to buy a site instead of building it yourself you’ll want to be sure that the site you’re buying has some sort of unique advantage. That advantage can take many forms - perhaps you’re not a great designer and the site you’re considering has a fantastic design. Maybe the site has some well established traffic - this is vital for community sites where building initial traffic is the most difficult. Sometimes the site has a great domain name or ranks well in the search engines. Ideally you’ll want to buy a site with a well established market position. As an individual, it’s unlikely that you can buy a site like Facebook that has a huge established position but a site that’s considered one of the best its own small niche will still have an advantage over a newcomer.

Be Sure You Can Grow the Site

If you follow some of the “purchase a site” discussion on a webmaster’s forum you’ll see lots of questions like “how much time does it take to run the site”. Those people are setting themselves up for failure because they’re only concerned with “can I maintain the site”. If you’re buying a site you need to ask yourself “can I grow the site”. If you can’t add content, improve the design, fix the SEO, drive traffic or improve the monetization of a site then it’s not for you. It’s tempting to buy a site for 5x its monthly income and expect you’ll be profitable in month 6 and in some cases that does work but the truth is that most sites that aren’t growing are declining. Even if the current owner claims they spend only a few hours a week on the site. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert in the content, SEO, design and monetization - it may just be enough that you’re willing to learn these things or hire outside help. More important however is that you have at least some initial ideas on things that you can do to improve the site.

Beware Buying the Wrong Part of a Site

photo credit: wheneverWhenever you buy a site, regardless of what you might think, you’re only getting part of it. That’s because part of the assets of a site is the site creator. For some sites the creator is inconsequential - no one really cares who’s behind a site like Flickr. But for other sites the creator is practically the only asset of the site. This is the case if the primary draw to the site is the identity of the creator or if the creator is an important part of a community site. If the creator of a site is famous (even if just within the niche) or a good portion of the site’s traffic is made up of friends and family of the creator it’s safe to assume that much of the site’s traffic will be lost when the creator leaves. A blog with a single author is very difficult to take over as is a forum where most of the questions are directed to or answered by the site’s creator. While the site may otherwise look good chances are the you won’t be able to recover from the loss of the key asset.

Is Buying Right?

While there are a number of pitfalls to avoid, buying a site can be a great way to start making money online or grow your money earning assets. With a bit of research, an honest assessment of your own abilities and a willingness to work after the purchase, buying may let you own something you could never build on your own or merely give you a months or years headstart toward building your own market leading property.

If you update your blog on a daily basis (or other regular basis) do you like to write all at one or every day? One of the cool features about most blogging software is that you can schedule a post to appear at a later time and date. You can also simply write ahead and store posts for the day when you just have nothing to say.

All At Once

There are some advantages to doing a week’s worth of blogs all in one day. You can get into “blog mode” and will be able to write your posts faster. If blogging isn’t your main employment you can leave yourself with dedicated chunks of time to focus on your main job. And by writing ahead and storing posts you don’t have to worry about that dreaded writer’s block hitting on a day where you really want to get a new post up.

The all at once approach can also take some pressure off and allow you to refine a post until it’s ready and avoid posting sub-standard work. If you feel you absolutely have to publish today and you don’t have anything good ready you may publish a mediocre article and that could be bad - you don’t want a new visitor showing up to less than your best.

A Little at a Time

Writing and publishing on a daily basis also has some advantages. If you attempt a week or more’s worth of blogs at once you can get burned out while writing on a daily basis may be an easier habit to establish. A week’s worth of blogs can take quite a while to write and you may not get the 4, 5 or 6 hour chunk of time you’d need to do it all at once. If you’re a blogging addict you may also find that even if you write ahead you’ll be yearning to write on a daily basis (though that’s not always a bad thing).

Writing to publish immediately is also critical if you’re going to be writing on timely topics. If you’re reviewing an event it’s best to publish it as close to the event as possible. If you’re covering a news topic then you’ll want to get it out before the news has been covered by everyone else.

Mix It Up

photo credit: rileyroxxPersonally I find a blended approach works best. Since most of what I write is not timely I can write a day or more ahead and relieve some pressure. I can also interject with more timely stuff in addition to my regular posts.

Whatever you chose though I’d suggest you at least try the other approach. If you regularly write ahead you may find that the pressure to put something out now actually makes you write better and more interesting posts. If you’re a daily type you might find that the blogging groove really helps and the more relaxed pace produces better work. At any rate mixing things up can help keep blogging interesting and that’s vital if you’re going to survive as a blogger.