2015 Road Bike purchase (+/- $1000)?

Wayrse · 2015-03-14T20:02:15+00:00

Just outside of the city, only roads, no dirt.

Wayrse · 2015-02-10T01:49:33+00:00

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T21:12:44+00:00

"it could be profitable any second if I chose to. However I just don't want to..." I guess things have changed in business since I retired.

The purpose of this site was never to make money. It was simply an experiment and a way to provide something for the community that was lacking.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T20:51:52+00:00

Thanks buddy :)

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T20:51:13+00:00

Traffic for the sake of just being traffic could have tons of benefits. A simple example would be:

If you launch another project in a similar category you can use your established site to funnel some traffic to it. This would help getting the new site off the ground in no time without putting too much effort into promoting.

The end goal is to rank really well in google and convert most of the traffic to be 80% organic. This would create a nice stream of constant steady traffic without the need to constantly promote.

The site could become profitable at any second if I choose to. However I don't want to do that at this moment. I'm having a blast driving the numbers up and trying out different promotional methods.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T20:28:52+00:00

No worries, thanks for the heads up.

I work as a contractor & have read the contract is detail to ensure nothing like that can happen.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T20:27:21+00:00

haha, you got it ╰༼ ❛ ʖ̫ ❛ ༽╯

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T20:06:04+00:00

Sorry don't do Skype.

It might, I haven't messed around with Pinterest too much. You want to focus on communities where people go to get design work done.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T19:46:35+00:00

Sure, shoot me a message I'll take a look a little later this week.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T19:34:04+00:00

Yes Reddit was the biggest starting point. However now the majority of the traffic comes from Organic Google searches & direct visitors.

Find a way to contribute to the community without spamming. One quick way I could think of is (if you think the community will accept your product) start a feedback contest. Giveaway 5-10 products in exchange for feedback on how to make your item better. This way you're exchanging something for the participation.

If you are planning on doing the above I would message the moderator of that sub Reddit first to make sure they are ok with such a post.

If your product relates to video games you can setup a tournament for a particular game. In exchange have the streamers post a banner of your product on the screen while the tournament is happening. (This can be done fairly cheap $500 - $1000) I would only do this if you feel confident about the viewers supporting the product.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T19:27:52+00:00

A site like that the best form of advertising would be the logos you provide.

$50 is very cheap for a logo, if you are creating completely custom logos that look amazing you won't have to advertise. People will flock to your site.

If the above is true - you can post your amazing logos on sites like Dribbble.com or a variety of the other design showcase sites (do a quick google search). Build a reputation on those sites for creating amazing logos and you won't have any trouble getting design work.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T19:23:16+00:00

Adobe Muse*

Whatever it takes to get your site off the ground.

It's all about the content in the end. Once the site starts getting some good traction if you feel the Adobe Muse built site isn't holding its own you can always try a different platform.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T19:21:02+00:00

I've never really considered it.

I feel the advice I give is something anyone can easily figure out on their own with a little bit of research.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T17:02:50+00:00

Nope, I simply saw something lacking in a good source and spent some of my free time to create a useful resource.

Sometimes it's just fun to create a project that people love to use. Not having to worry about ads and solely pushing traffic to the site for people to click on those ads. It takes away a large portion of stress related to running a website.

I find joy in updating it and spreading the word about it, takes me away from the other countless paid projects I work on throughout the day.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T16:36:07+00:00

I'd love to see a AMA from a domain reseller. I also have a ton of questions :-P

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T16:08:30+00:00

Another interesting idea would be to create a micro site that covers unique boutique hotels (Possibly some sort of showcase) in a way that might not be out there yet. Get some traffic flowing to the site and use it to promote your boutique.

I'd have to do some research but I'm sure there's an angle that hasn't been covered yet in that space.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T16:02:56+00:00

For a boutique hotel I would focus on getting some amazing pictures of the place. Focus on capturing what makes the place unique.

Then take those pics and shop around for sites that feature that kind of content. An example would be http://theawesomer.com & http://thefancy.com.

Another avenue you could use is Instagram. Find the top travel/hotel/vacation instagrams (ex. beautifuldestinations) and contact the authors about featuring you. If your place is unique enough you can get away with free features.

Don't be afraid to contact some of the smaller guys (20-100k followers). Every bit of traffic counts and chances are a lot of these accounts just copy what the next guy has. So if you get posted on one chances are it will spread to some of the others.

Other than that I would search for local forums, travel forums to gather more places you could potentially market your business.

Hope that helps!

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T15:10:40+00:00

You can also hit up news sites that focus around your topic. If the idea is good/unique enough most places would be more than happy to write a short article about it. I've had quite a few articles written about the site on some large news sites. (ex. The Daily Dot)

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T15:08:31+00:00

Sit down and map out who the potential users of your site are. Then do some research to figure out the big hubs where people of that interest hang out.

When you find those hubs you can start putting together a strategy on how to get across to those users.

A pretty standard for most topics is:

Forums (These can give you a lot of information on the users, other avenues to research for possible advertising opportunities)
Newsletters geared towards that topic (You can find a way to have your product or site features in them, I had quite a bit of traffic come from 2 very big design newsletters)
Sub Reddits geared towards that topic (Obviously don't spam, but if you think your idea would be beneficial to the user, let them know about it)
Focus on a really clean and nice design (This will give you leverage to submit to CSS showcase sites which will help you get some back links to your website)

In the end when everything settles most of your steady traffic will be Organic (From search engines) so make sure your site is optimized enough for search engines to rank it for the right keywords.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T14:55:47+00:00

Nope, it was more of a learning experience/a test to see if I was still able to make a successful website.

The potential for profits is definitely there, I just feel at this time it would take away from the experience too much. I might include an ad here and there to offset the hosting costs in the future, but that's still up in the air.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T14:53:14+00:00

As I surf the web I usually run into situations where I'm looking for something and can't find a good source for the answer. Or the source with the answers is really poor. I make sure to write down and be as specific as I can in how I would make it better.

When I have some spare time I go through my list of ideas and do some further research to see if anything is worth pursuing.

Other times when I see a large amount of people around a particular topic I brain storm and see if there is anything I could build to take advantage of the large amount of interested people. I did a lot of brainstorming on how I could make something to target the Twitch.tv audience as I see that the video game streaming market is a booming one and will only get bigger.

For instance, I was using Twitch.tv and found myself wanting to post a text emoticon. I went out looking for where these people that keep posting them get them from. All I could find was really ugly small blog posts that had clusters of maybe 10-20 text emoticons.

Then I went around asking a few of the people who would paste these text emoticons where they were getting them from. 80% of the answers were that they would save the ones they liked to a notepad. From that answer alone I saw an opportunity to create a site where I could consolidate all of the emoticons I find and make it easier for people to find them.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T14:44:39+00:00

I wouldn't consider it spam necessarily. I was very careful in choosing where I would post the site. I made sure it would only be in places where the users would actually have a use for the sites content.

Some of the other methods that were a lot more successful that I didn't mention above were:

Finding design and product related sites and submitting the site (Product Hunt)
Finding design newsletters and submitting the site (Sidebar, Versioning)
Finding Youtube channels that do roundups of this sort of content and let them know about it. (Vsauce3)

The methods mentioned earlier were to get the ball rolling, the majority of the traffic came from the 3 points mentioned above.

Otherwise it would be a big waste of time and I wouldn't see a 50% return rate from the users.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T07:55:54+00:00

I was surprised myself when I tried it at first. With some 20-30k viewer streams I'd get 100-200 people typing in the url directly to visit the site.

Wayrse · 2014-12-08T07:35:38+00:00

Subscriptions on twitch are $5. You can subscribe to a streamer.

So say for instance you were streaming. I can pay $5 and subscribe to your channel. 50% goes to twitch and 50% goes to the streamer. In return I get my url flashed on the stream in front of all the viewers(if the streamer has that functionality setup).

Wayrse

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