Creating a web business is a bit of a generic idea and could conceivably cover everything from Google on down. For our purposes however, we are talking about creating a website that brings in traffic and for which you can place advertising or affiliate promotions on. Building a small web business is of course most suited to freelancers working in web design and development, but really just about anyone can start a blog or build a small website these days. There is also always the option of trading your services with a web designing freelancer to have a site built for you.
One important point to make about web business is that it can be both harder than you expect and easier than you think. This sounds like a contradiction, so let me explain. There are a lot of people around who will tell you all about how you can make hundreds or thousands just by doing … generally speaking these people are full of hot air. Building a solid web business takes time and sustained effort, and you will need to provide value to your visitors. On the other hand, the web is filled with stories of ordinary people who have slowly built up very profitable blogs and websites which provide a steady income with very little maintenance.
The great thing about a web business is that it is a very exciting medium and you can easily get wholly consumed and ditch your freelancing altogether (which is what happened to me!)
Blogs
Blogs are the posterchild of little web businesses and you’ll find loads of sites around telling you about how to make money with blogs. There is such a wealth of information around that I won’t repeat it all, try visiting sites like http://www.problogger.net and http://www.johnchow.com to learn about how you can make money with blogging.
One thing I will say is that you should choose what topic you blog about very carefully and spend your time focusing on writing interesting material, not making money. If you bring traffic and readership, money will follow, not the other way around.
Content Sites
Building a content site means creating say a site full of MySpace templates, writing Photoshop tutorials or building a site which contains some other sort of content that people are interested in. The trick with content sites is both having something people are interested in and bringing in the traffic. Researching search engine optimization (SEO) is pretty important here as well as looking into what sort of sites make money.
It can be good to browse through Sitepoint’s Marketplace (http://sitepoint.com/marketplace) to see what sorts of sites people build and what sorts of revenue they generate. Be wary of purchasing established sites however unless you know what you are doing as it can be a bit of minefield in terms of accuracy of listings and payment fraud. Building your own site tends to be a better way to go, and you can always sell it off later on through a site like Sitepoint.
Applications
For the really savvy freelancer, you may be interested in building a complete web application. Many web brands you may have heard of started out this way. One particularly famous example is 37Signals (http://37signals.com) who started out as a web design agency and built a series of web apps on the side such as the well known and well loved Basecamp.
Web apps can sell subscriptions or run advertising, however make sure you research who else is out there doing the same thing as the last few years have seen an explosion in small web applications and the proliferation of choice can lead to low customer take-up of new products and services.
Tips for Web Business
Here are some tips for starting a web business
- Research
It pays to research very thoroughly before you dive in. Learn all about your chosen product type and read up on blogs and forums about how others make their money. A bit of research can go a long way as there are often some very obvious hurdles and pitfalls that newbies fall into.
- Focus on Your Users
If you can make something popular, whether it’s a blog, content site or web application, the money will follow. So focus on great content or a great application, something that your users love and worry about the money after its popular.
- Start Small and Learn the Ropes
If you’re new to business on the web don’t try to do and learn everything at once. Start with something small – say a semi-regularly updated blog or a very light web application – and then build from there. Starting with a small test run will help you learn a lot and will allow you to make any mistakes without too much effort or cost.
- Give it Time
Like plants, web businesses take time. They take time to build traffic, to build search rankings, to build a userbase and most importantly to build up revenue. If you expect to build a side income overnight you will be disappointed.