Starting a website is a great way to earn income on the side. The overhead is relatively low and after initial advertising, usually with some luck traffic could be self-sustaining. However it is a rocky road at the beginning to get users.
Recently I started a website with 2 others. We decided to first create an LLC to protect us as well as afford us scalability if we wanted to create more websites in the future. We chose the name, Racooda, and dedicated it to side jobs which was a tough decision but a great one in retrospect. Getting the idea for the website was very hard, being that most ideas are already taken. Also the domain name was tough because so many jerks out there buy domains and squat on them, looking for the best offer. Racooda ended up being a derivative of the word barracuda, which we all agreed was fun to say.
The website took about 3 months to make in my spare time, and after hack-testing it and making sure we were golden, we opened it up to the public on January 1, 2008. Reaching out to friends and family, we got a good amount of traffic and attention, earning about $8 in the first week from ad clicks. Then things seemed to taper off.
We printed fliers and put them all around, on tables and stands in malls and stores, even a few cars. What I saw was discouraging - traffic actually dropping after the fliers hit the public. We're on the verge of printing another 1000 and I'm hopeful that the smaller size of the new batch will help us carry them easier and will look less spam-like.
Online advertising has been tough too. Every place we've tried to post about Racooda has either banned me or deleted my post, from myspace forums to offtopic.com. They claim it's spam. I even cut down my posts to what sounds as honest as I could - "i just started a website and am looking for feedback" but NO avail - I'm still a spammer apparently.
Other free methods we've tried are myspace bulletins, discussion boards / forums, wikipedia and networking with people we already know. Wikipedia was the quickest to delete my post - about 3 minutes. The fliers might get shrunken down also to business card size I'm expecting, which would make them easier to carry around.
Next month will be paid advertising month, where we will go into a few local newspapers and see what happens with that.
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When I saw that you wrote this blog five years ago, I doubted that your business is still running. I’m happy to be proven wrong. Now about your post, many think that advertising a website is child’s play. Today, bloggers are very sensitive to spam, so you couldn’t just aimlessly search for blogs and put your URL’s there. Couple it with the Google Penguin update and you got your work cut out for you. I’m impressed that you persevered, and even used traditional methods to complement your advertising scheme. I wish you more success in the future!
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