My $20,000 YE Project is almost done

**rogercbryan** · 03-24-2008 02:27 PM

I may be getting ahead of myself but I wanted to get some feedback on a project before I spend any more money.

What is the basis for my idea?
traffic + content + links = profitability(sort of the simplified version)

A little back ground. Each of these projects independently were started based on people I met on YE. Originally all were supposed to be stand alone businesses. What I’ve found while working on these projects is that I think they’ll work better as one venture then they ever will as stand alone projects.

Time spent: 10 weeks
Money spent: $7000 USD
To be spent still: $3000 USD development
$10,000 USD marketing

Project 1: Traffic (100% owner)
This project didn’t cost all that much but it has proven to be tricky (from a profit standpoint). The site is Bux Sense which I have been talking about for over a week now on YE. I purchased this site from a YE user and then spent a few $s having the script changed to do some special features. My current script allows advertisers to pay to have real traffic directed towards their site. We do not claim to be able to drive business. I’m very straight forward about the fact that we only drive generic traffic.

Project 2: Content & Delivery (50% owner)
I signed an agreement with a YE user who had a company that paid writers to develop articles for its customers. Each article is approximately 350 words and can be custom written for the purchaser and automatically delivered to a blog or a website with our RSS segment feeds. This gives our customers a way to keep real daily updating contact on their sites. The articles are published through a Wordpress blogging feature so that we can take advantage of their SEO tools.

I had to pay a couple of developers to get this feed feature to work correctly. In the end I’m very pleased with the ease of use. The actual article site will re-launch in the next few weeks. I’ll put a post on YE when its ready.

Project 3: Links (100% owner)
I’ve started buying every PR3 or higher directory or article site I can get my hands on. As I link each of them together and I drive generic traffic towards them I hope to be able to continually increase their page rankings. As that happens I will then be able to sell or exchange links with other similar sites. I’m hoping for the spider web effect. At some point I should have enough PR value to charge for this service.

Overview:
As I said I started each of these ideas as independent ideas. What I’m thinking now is that when you put all these pieces together:

traffic + content + links = profitability

Does the formula look accurate? If I can get each element to work and then sell a bundle package like this:

25,000 generic visits to your site each month
Daily content updates based on your industry automatically delivered to your site
High PR Back Links to your site

Would you as a site owner buy this service? What would you pay? What types of other services would you like? What types of packages?

I need feedback. I’m pretty much already financially committed to following through with this project. I’d like some feedback so I don’t end up with a $20,000 failure story I have to post to my blog later.

Thank you!

**meaghannf** · 03-24-2008 02:39 PM

Just an fyi - I tried to register on your site and entered YE as a referrer but got an error with registration. When I tried again, without anything in the referral box, I didn't have a problem. Might be something to look into? Good luck with the site!

**rogercbryan** · 03-24-2008 03:09 PM

Are you trying to register as a user or are you trying to post an advertisement?

**hugh009** · 03-24-2008 03:12 PM

Hi, Roger! I work very closely with the leading Internet Marketers and they would be your PERFECT beta testers. If you would like to pursue that avenue let me know in a PM.

Hugh

**rogercbryan** · 03-24-2008 03:16 PM

Originally Posted by hugh009

Hi, Roger! I work very closely with the leading Internet Marketers and they would be your PERFECT beta testers. If you would like to pursue that avenue let me know in a PM.

Hugh

That could work. Give me a few more weeks to finish everything up.

**meaghannf** · 03-24-2008 04:27 PM

Originally Posted by rogercbryan

Are you trying to register as a user or are you trying to post an advertisement?

As a user.

**meaghannf** · 03-24-2008 05:04 PM

Also, your site has a lot of potential but you're going to loose a lot of business by not having a clean site with proper spelling and grammar. In particular, I've noticed a number of errors on the "surf ads" page. You have a category that reads "Charity & Non-profit Organisations" which should read "Charity & Non-profit Organizations" and one that says "Travelling" which should say "Traveling." It would be worth your time to put the text of every page into your word processing program, check the spelling and make any edits necessary.

**capforge** · 03-24-2008 05:43 PM

First, I don't see how you are committed to spending the entire $20,000. Either you spend it or you don't. What you have already spent is called a sunk cost- you can't get it back. But there is no reason you have to keep spending. You may also be able to sell what you have to reduce your loss further. But, that is another topic.

What I noticed on your site is that it says you are having problems with alert pay, but in the next sentence you say to sign up with them. Seems like a pretty mixed message.

Then, as a clicker, it says you have to spend "only a few seconds" per site. But then in trying to entice advertisers, you say "minimum of 20 seconds" which is a lot longer than "only a few seconds" so as a potential advertiser I would have to wonder.

If I was you, I would stop further spending and development until you have figured out who your market for this service is, what they are willing to pay, and how you are going to successfully reach them, and whether you can do the whole thing profitably. It sounds like you may not have done that kind of planning yet, but it would definitely be a good idea to do so before plowing ahead.

**rogercbryan** · 03-24-2008 08:05 PM

I appreciate all the feedback about my gramatical errors. The site just launched this week and has not been proofed.

Does anyone have any opinions on my business plans that I posted in this thread? This really wasn't a 'review my site' post.

megahannf- you only need the YE if you are doing an advertisement. If you are registering as a user please follow the instructions on the site.

capforge- I think you have confused grammer (all be it important) with my business plan. While I am dyslexic and my programmer is from another county we do have plans for a site review once I know the features are working. Think of this a test period. When you say stop spending money until you know your customer I think I was pretty straight forward with what I was offering and what I was asking for in my business outline I posted.

As an advertiser as I said in my plan the viewers are not potential customers. What you are buying is traffic. They view the site for 20 seconds and then they click a link that sends them to the site for a second before they close the window. The wording used of a couple of second vs. 20 seconds doesnt seem all that important?

I'd like some feedback on my business idea..... anyone????

**capforge** · 03-25-2008 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by rogercbryan

capforge- I think you have confused grammer (all be it important) with my business plan.

I didn't mention grammar.

Originally Posted by rogercbryan

When you say stop spending money until you know your customer I think I was pretty straight forward with what I was offering and what I was asking for in my business outline I posted.

You missed the point. What you are offering is not the same as knowing your customer. You can offer anything you want. The question is, does anyone want it. My comment was that as a potential advertiser (i.e.- the person you hope to make money from) I would not be impressed with the offer or the quality as it is currently presented. Yes- it does make a difference to me how long someone might spend on my site- particularly if you are promising 20 seconds but only delivering a few seconds.

So, in my opinion, until you figure out who wants untargeted paid traffic to their website, and how much they will pay for it, and if they will buy it from you, the rest of your plans need further consideration. Otherwise, you run a real risk of burning through your remaining capital with nothing to show for it.

**Gaulkin** · 03-25-2008 06:06 PM

I think you could of spent your 20k on a better investment but thats just me.

**usakos** · 03-25-2008 08:51 PM

You should change your page bkg color to simply white, the dark bkg color takes away from your site. You're probably using designers from SE Asia, if so, then try to proof read your content before you actually upload your pages for public viewing.

**rogercbryan** · 03-26-2008 09:12 AM

Originally Posted by usakos

You should change your page bkg color to simply white, the dark bkg color takes away from your site. You're probably using designers from SE Asia, if so, then try to proof read your content before you actually upload your pages for public viewing.

Good idea... I have a site review set for the end of the month. I would like to have a list of things to do so I only have to have them spend one day on the site.

I think I will try a white background.

**rogercbryan** · 03-26-2008 09:16 AM

Originally Posted by Gaulkin

I think you could of spent your 20k on a better investment but thats just me.

I look at it like this. Once I have spent my $10K I will have about $5-6K in tangible assets (websites, databases, and domains). So I'm only putting $5K at risk.

The key is the other $10K for marketing. I will be risking 100% of that if I dont have a solid product. The reason I made this post was that I was getting to the point where I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and I didn't want to spend the rest of my development money with out getting some feedback from potential customers.

It's hard to put an unfinsihed product out there for review. I kind of consider everyone from YE as my testing partners.

I truly feel that I'm on to something so if you could elaborate as to why you think this has been a bad investement please do. I could have easily spent this money somewhere else, but chose this project becuase I do see long term potential.

**rogercbryan** · 03-26-2008 09:24 AM

I didn't mention grammar. .

Grammar by definition is the use of words. So while there is a grammatical error in the first paragraph (as you pointed out) that was not what I was asking for. I did thank you for pointing out the grammatical error that you found.

You missed the point. What you are offering is not the same as knowing your customer. You can offer anything you want. The question is, does anyone want it. My comment was that as a potential advertiser (i.e.- the person you hope to make money from) I would not be impressed with the offer or the quality as it is currently presented. Yes- it does make a difference to me how long someone might spend on my site- particularly if you are promising 20 seconds but only delivering a few seconds.

This is simple wording again. So in your opinion you are confused by the term couple of seconds and 20 seconds as you feel they are not the same. I did post that we are not giving you potential customers so from a time stand point the amount of time they spend on your site in not important. What is important is the actaul click they make that takes them to your site at one point in the process. This gives you traffic based on search engine criteria.

So, in my opinion, until you figure out who wants untargeted paid traffic to their website, and how much they will pay for it, and if they will buy it from you, the rest of your plans need further consideration. Otherwise, you run a real risk of burning through your remaining capital with nothing to show for it.

The whole point of this post was to ask YE users if they were interested in a product like this. I never said I knew exactly what to offer. I think you may have glanced at what I wrote and then decided to make your post.

I appreciate your feedback but you seem to be only half reading what I post. I do encourage you to re-read everything and then make a post again. You do seem to have some insight into what I'm asking.