Business advice sought by tyro
Discussion
Guys,
This is a bit of a cheek I know but I thought that some of the responses to the chap who wanted to make Cornish pasties in, I think, Bury, were very useful to me (and, I seem to remember, him as well). Some of the comments were well thought out and researched, real genuine help.
I’m a tyro in working for myself. I’m after business advice on a small business I’ve started. It is unlikely to challenge Apple in the speed of build but it’s mine.
Go to www.rv8r.co.uk, or
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
All it is a downloadable guide for, at the moment, certain TVR owners.
Business Link have been very helpful. As someone who has never run his own business before I can’t praise them enough but their advice has been general rather than specific.
I was wondering if there’s anyone out there who has experience with IT, publishing and selling space.
It’s going well at the moment and I want to keep the impetus up.
But be gentle with me.
This is a bit of a cheek I know but I thought that some of the responses to the chap who wanted to make Cornish pasties in, I think, Bury, were very useful to me (and, I seem to remember, him as well). Some of the comments were well thought out and researched, real genuine help.
I’m a tyro in working for myself. I’m after business advice on a small business I’ve started. It is unlikely to challenge Apple in the speed of build but it’s mine.
Go to www.rv8r.co.uk, or
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
All it is a downloadable guide for, at the moment, certain TVR owners.
Business Link have been very helpful. As someone who has never run his own business before I can’t praise them enough but their advice has been general rather than specific.
I was wondering if there’s anyone out there who has experience with IT, publishing and selling space.
It’s going well at the moment and I want to keep the impetus up.
But be gentle with me.
Derek Smith said:
Tyro is an alternative, and the original, spelling for tiro, meaning beginner or novice, someone ignorant of the specifics of a speciality. I believe tiro is Americanised.
Thank god for that... I thought you were a T-Rex.I have nothing helpful to add, but best of luck with everything!
Steve in Stoke said:
Are you looking for a way to publicise it more, or to monetize the website, or to earn from guide itself?
The idea is to sell space. Advertising in the Resource itself, advertorials (word doesn't exist, I know), banners and hotlinks on the emails.The Resource will be updated every couple of months so it will almost be like a periodical. It will be a complete download. I have other ideas, like 'personalised' Resources for dealers on disc, that sort of thing.
Once all on-costs have been taken into consideration, most magazines make virtually no money from the sale of the mag. It is all advertising.
Happy to give you some pointers Derek. You don't need to charge people for it, what you need is to know who it is that is downloading it. Armed with that information, you can offer advertisers, whether that be in the publication itself or on the associated website, a much better ROI because they can target their promotion on the specifc types of people who will be reading it. Of course, given the subject matter, you will already have a good idea of who is a likely reader. However there may be subtleties that you can exploit.
We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
easiest way to earn a couple of quid would be to have some google ads on there, google will pay you for each click through on an add that comes from your website, I'm not a developer but as I understand it you dedicate a space on your site to google adds, they then fill it with ads relevant(ish) to your content.
Unless you have lots and lots of traffic to your site I wouldnt expect a huge sum of cash though.
If you dont already have some analytics with your hosting company it might be worth signing up to google analytics, its free and you just need to dump a few lines of code in your pages so you can see how much traffic you're getting.
Also looking for some help in getting a higher "natural" search engine result for your site would be worth looking into, there are companies that will charge for this but I'm sure you'll find a guide on how to do it yourself. It used to be as simple as bunging a load of keywords at the bottom of a page (metadata??) but its a bit more complex now as the search engine bots/spiders are a bit more clever.
Unless you have lots and lots of traffic to your site I wouldnt expect a huge sum of cash though.
If you dont already have some analytics with your hosting company it might be worth signing up to google analytics, its free and you just need to dump a few lines of code in your pages so you can see how much traffic you're getting.
Also looking for some help in getting a higher "natural" search engine result for your site would be worth looking into, there are companies that will charge for this but I'm sure you'll find a guide on how to do it yourself. It used to be as simple as bunging a load of keywords at the bottom of a page (metadata??) but its a bit more complex now as the search engine bots/spiders are a bit more clever.
miniman said:
Happy to give you some pointers Derek. You don't need to charge people for it, what you need is to know who it is that is downloading it. Armed with that information, you can offer advertisers, whether that be in the publication itself or on the associated website, a much better ROI because they can target their promotion on the specifc types of people who will be reading it. Of course, given the subject matter, you will already have a good idea of who is a likely reader. However there may be subtleties that you can exploit.
We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
I'll PM you if that's OK?We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
To be fair my initial impression is that you'll really struggle to make any real money through this - simply because of volume. You have a very niche site, which will not draw enough volume to be able to give the advertisers enough conversions from advert to sales. Selling advertising on this model is all about the volume - so a site which is of value to a very few people and then only updated at long intervals simply cannot provide the turnover. Even if I owned the car I would visit once, get the download and never (or very rarely) return. Unless I'm missing something here - are you going to offer lots of these guides for different models and become a bit of a specialist Haynes competitor selling online? This may work if you charge for the guides and go into more mainstream models.
Sorry to be somewhat negative, I run an IT business and in the past have helped run an enthusiasts forum which got next to zero in advertising revenue and have a realistic view of the revenue available and its low unless you can prove high volumes. You are somewhat competing in the price range against goodle adwords etc - which pay pennies per click. How many guides have been downloaded? 100s? At pennies per click you've earnt a few quid....
Sorry to be somewhat negative, I run an IT business and in the past have helped run an enthusiasts forum which got next to zero in advertising revenue and have a realistic view of the revenue available and its low unless you can prove high volumes. You are somewhat competing in the price range against goodle adwords etc - which pay pennies per click. How many guides have been downloaded? 100s? At pennies per click you've earnt a few quid....
Just being negative for a moment (which is a good thing to be when assessing a business idea):
1) It would seem from the earlier PH thread that most people (550) who want a copy have already got a free one.
2) If I wanted to do some DIY work on the car then I'd much prefer a book that I can put somewhere nearby, like Steve Heath's. A PDF and a laptop aren't the same, nor do I want to print the whole thing out.
3) There are 550 copies 'in the wild' that you cannot stop being copied and passed to all and sundry.
I agree that your version can be updated but given the small market and points above, I don't think it's a goer unless it's just a hobby and you'll be happy if you only make £50.
1) It would seem from the earlier PH thread that most people (550) who want a copy have already got a free one.
2) If I wanted to do some DIY work on the car then I'd much prefer a book that I can put somewhere nearby, like Steve Heath's. A PDF and a laptop aren't the same, nor do I want to print the whole thing out.
3) There are 550 copies 'in the wild' that you cannot stop being copied and passed to all and sundry.
I agree that your version can be updated but given the small market and points above, I don't think it's a goer unless it's just a hobby and you'll be happy if you only make £50.
GreigM said:
To be fair my initial impression is that you'll really struggle to make any real money through this - simply because of volume. You have a very niche site, which will not draw enough volume to be able to give the advertisers enough conversions from advert to sales. Selling advertising on this model is all about the volume - so a site which is of value to a very few people and then only updated at long intervals simply cannot provide the turnover. Even if I owned the car I would visit once, get the download and never (or very rarely) return. Unless I'm missing something here - are you going to offer lots of these guides for different models and become a bit of a specialist Haynes competitor selling online? This may work if you charge for the guides and go into more mainstream models.
Sorry to be somewhat negative, I run an IT business and in the past have helped run an enthusiasts forum which got next to zero in advertising revenue and have a realistic view of the revenue available and its low unless you can prove high volumes. You are somewhat competing in the price range against goodle adwords etc - which pay pennies per click. How many guides have been downloaded? 100s? At pennies per click you've earnt a few quid....
I'm sorry not to be clearer in my business model.Sorry to be somewhat negative, I run an IT business and in the past have helped run an enthusiasts forum which got next to zero in advertising revenue and have a realistic view of the revenue available and its low unless you can prove high volumes. You are somewhat competing in the price range against goodle adwords etc - which pay pennies per click. How many guides have been downloaded? 100s? At pennies per click you've earnt a few quid....
The idea is not to sell space on the website. As you say, there's not much money in that, if any. But my Resource goes out to owners of specific models of TVRs every couple of months, straight into their inbox, onto their computer. The advertising will be sold on the Resource, not the site, although if you buy a bit of the Resource, you'll get a bit of RV8R as well. Whilst it is not like a magazine, the advantages of an advertorial includes it staying on the Reosurce ad infinitum.
What better, at least this is what I will tell advertisers, than to have an advert for everything required for, say, an oil and filter change right by the article showing how one might do just that?
There's ways of upgrading interior lights all the way to supercharging and major modifications to the bodywork.
Simpo Two said:
Just being negative for a moment (which is a good thing to be when assessing a business idea):
1) It would seem from the earlier PH thread that most people (550) who want a copy have already got a free one.
2) If I wanted to do some DIY work on the car then I'd much prefer a book that I can put somewhere nearby, like Steve Heath's. A PDF and a laptop aren't the same, nor do I want to print the whole thing out.
3) There are 550 copies 'in the wild' that you cannot stop being copied and passed to all and sundry.
I agree that your version can be updated but given the small market and points above, I don't think it's a goer unless it's just a hobby and you'll be happy if you only make £50.
It is not intended to compete with SHpub's offerings. For a start I couldn't afford the PLI for such a publication.1) It would seem from the earlier PH thread that most people (550) who want a copy have already got a free one.
2) If I wanted to do some DIY work on the car then I'd much prefer a book that I can put somewhere nearby, like Steve Heath's. A PDF and a laptop aren't the same, nor do I want to print the whole thing out.
3) There are 550 copies 'in the wild' that you cannot stop being copied and passed to all and sundry.
I agree that your version can be updated but given the small market and points above, I don't think it's a goer unless it's just a hobby and you'll be happy if you only make £50.
By having 'upgrades' every couple of months there is incentive to register as you will get an original. I'm quite happy for it to be distributed 'unofficially' as the hope is that the recipients will want the upgrade as soon as it comes out and the only way for that to happen is to register.
If someone brings out a new product they will, surely, want it to be brought to the attention of 750 (at the moment, increasing daily) owners of the very car it is aimed at.
Or am I wrong? One large car club used to sell 40 workshop type manuals per month. They sold 7 in the last 12 months. That's seven in total, so charging for mine would, I feel, limit the possibilities.
As regards pdfs, I did a bit of research and found that people prefer the 'interactivity' of a browser based book. Whilst I accept what you are saying about a book being handy, the next 'upgrade' will include printable pages of specific parts of the resource where people can print it off, take it with them out to the car and then discard it once the job's done.
Don't worry about being negative. I'm after advice. All I'm after is honesty and experience.
Derek Smith said:
miniman said:
Happy to give you some pointers Derek. You don't need to charge people for it, what you need is to know who it is that is downloading it. Armed with that information, you can offer advertisers, whether that be in the publication itself or on the associated website, a much better ROI because they can target their promotion on the specifc types of people who will be reading it. Of course, given the subject matter, you will already have a good idea of who is a likely reader. However there may be subtleties that you can exploit.
We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
I'll PM you if that's OK?We provide consultancy to publishers on this type of thing based on our own online titles, the biggest of which profiles 120,000 users and turns over circa £1.5m - www.accountingweb.co.uk
Happy to answer any specifics for you.
For those who think there's nothing in it, our managing editor works on the basis of profitability requiring a minimum audience of 600.
Derek - I sold both display and classified ad space for years in both business and national press, plus I ran subscriptions campaigns for the likes of emap and ipc mags, and am a litho and digital printer. You helped me out a while back on an enquiry I had on another PH forum, so here's my chance to return the favour 
Drop me a PM if you want to chat and I'll let you have a number.
Drop me a PM if you want to chat and I'll let you have a number.
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